It's only a matter of time before Bryan Mbeumo becomes a Manchester United player. While the delay has understandably become frustrating for fans, it still feels inevitable that it will happen, and potentially in the next week.
That won't stop Brentford from digging in and trying to increase the transfer fee as much as possible. They've sent a clear message to Man United by saying they don't even need to sell Mbeumo.
"There's not so much (progress with Mbeumo)," Brentford's director of football Phil Giles told BBC Sport. "We are in constant dialogue with him and representatives about that. As it stands at the minute we don't have an agreement in place for him to leave."
"It is not impossible he is still a Brentford player next season if we agree he is going to stay," Giles added. "He is certainly one of our best players, if not our best player, and we need our best players. There's no harm in keeping your best players."
Ah, the classic, we don't need to sell him stance.
Man United fans don't need to panic about Brentford's latest stance on Bryan Mbeumo
And maybe it's true that Brentford don't need to sell and could find a way to retain their star forward, but it feels way too late for that. Football journalist Fabrizio Romano has been all over the Mbeumo news, and it has become undeniable that he wants to move to United and that it's close to happening.
On Sunday, Romano reassured a United fan who was worried about the delay, writing: "Mbeumo deal absolutely on. Let them work."
And he went a step further in another update.
"So don't forget the Bryan Mbeumo deal for the next days, for the next week also, because Man United will be pushing and pushing again to get it over the line," Romano said on his YouTube channel. "So the 'here we go' is still a strong possibility for Bryan Mbeumo as a new Manchester United player."
Brentford can say they don't have to sell Mbeumo, but it's hard to imagine negotiations going this deep, the player saying he wants the move, and then it falling apart. It sounds more like a tough negotiation to finalize the terms of the deal than anything else.
It still sounds like a matter of when, and not if, Mbeumo becomes a United player. There's certainly no need to panic, regardless of what Brentford say publicly.