Dougie Freedman rang at 10 past 6.
"Are you sat down?"
"Go on."
"I have had 20 minutes with Michael Zorc and 10 with Piero Ausilio, and I went looking for neither of them. They came to me." A door shut on his end. "Zorc opened by asking how much of Hakimi we own outright."
"What did you tell him?"
"All of it, and I said it slowly." A pause.
"Danny, they had that boy agreed in June. Loan, 2 years, medical booked. He rang them on the 3rd of July and told them he was coming to us instead, and Zorc has spent 8 weeks not understanding it, and he has just found out he has to play him twice."
"And Ausilio?"
"Ausilio wanted to talk about Perišić, and then about a 20-year-old of theirs, and then he asked me what we are doing in January."
Dougie let that sit. "That is the sporting director of Inter Milan asking the sporting director of Crystal Palace what we are doing in January. In 2016 I could not get a League One club to ring me back."
"Money."
