I agree there will of course be a ballpark.
You could look at it the other way of course. Once you've got a player over, and run the clock down, you can hope to put the pressure on when negotiating, especially when you know full well that he wants out and that due to the transfer window closing very soon, you are his only option.
Not saying this is what has happened here, but i do not buy into the suggestion that there won't be a great deal of fluidity when it comes to discussing personal terms. Of course if you start a deal for a player and the message comes back that they want 100k when you were expecting 20k then maybe the deal goes flat. But if Falcao indicates 200k, i imagine united will expect the people they employ to negotiate to try and get that down to 180k or 165k or 150k or whatever if they can. If the player doesn't budge then you start to structure things differently, loyalty bonuses, league/cup finish bonuses, goal/appearance bonuses etc.
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