Manchester City set valuations for certain transfer targets that they will not move beyond, a club lazily painted as having bottomless funds instead pulling the plug on any deal that they think is spending more than they should.
That appears to be the case with Marc Cucurella. Just as happened with Jorginho and Napoli in 2018, City have been in a queue of one to sign a player and yet their public refusal to meet the asking price of the selling club has alerted Chelsea to swoop in and beat them to a player with a higher offer.
Should Cucurella complete a move to Stamford Bridge, there will be shrugs inside the Etihad and a reminder of the transfer policy led by Txiki Begiristain. City would rather miss out on signing players than go against a fundamental pillar of their strategy.
