If you genuinely believe all of that, then it is pointless trying to continue this argument.
Of the last 30 players to leave Porto, either on loan or permanently, 2 went to Wolves. Only one of whom was a Mendes client.
Porto aren't going to refuse to sell anybody a player, so long as they get an acceptable bid. Even if they're a Mendes client.
They might not want to play for West Brom, but a year or two at West Brom can get them where they want to go. Just like a year or two at Wolves can.
This is the reality of the situation. But you keep complaining about how bent the Dingles am.
You call it an argument, I call it a debate. Name me a single Porto player available this summer that we could have signed that would have wanted to play for us that would be better than who we have brought in. You'll be kicking dust trying to find a workable example. Ironically that is against the backdrop of Porto struggling, I watch a fair bit of the Premier Liga.
Now I'm going to go off on a slightly detailed tangent about Mendes and his relationship with Porto as you raised it, which interplays with the earlier poster referring to Daniel Levy moaning that fans have no idea how complex transfers are.
What your post fails to appreciate is that it is common place in Portugal for players to have
third party ownership with Mendes. Jota was one of them. Mendes has more power than the club. Porto don't get much choice in the matter when Mendes owns shares in the players. What happens is club X (one of Mendes carousel of clubs, we are not on the list) bids for the player. Porto then can accept or reject, BUT if they reject they have to buy out the Agent's share of the players rights, they can't afford to do so, so they have no actual choice but to accept if Mendes wants the deal to go through and he engineers all of these deals, all related with each other, moving players around 6/8 clubs in Europe. Typically you have Mendes representing the selling club, the player and the buying club. Just for good measure to make things even more dodgy the owners of wolves own a stake in Mendes agency, so when they buy a Porto teenager for £35m who has played two games (who even does that) Mendes gets a ridiculous 25% cut of the transfer fee, being £7m, that goes back into his agency, and the wolves owners get a slice back of their own cash as they part own the agency.
The interesting thing about the Portugese league is that the top clubs by law have to publish the transfer details, that's why we know that Mendes got a 25% cut of the Porto £35m teenager deal from a couple of weeks back (rather than the standard 10% commission) and co-owned Jota before moving him onto Wolves and then Liverpool.
Wolves have 13 Portuguese players, all managed by Mendes. His power is unrivalled, Jose Mourhino works for the bloke, when Mourinho managed Madrid Mendes had his own office in the training ground. Similar process is underway at Spurs now. It's one of the key reasons Levy took Mourinho on, because of his relationship with Mendes.
You can read about it yourself here:
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/football-leaks-wolverhampton-conflict-of-interest-a-1239829.htmlThen in this environment you have Downing representing an unfashionable club with a meagre budget.