Howay

Is ASM wearing one of those basketball shooting sleeves btw?

Almiron absolutely should have put something on target there. He’s proving so far why RW is a priority for us.

Tbh it’s canny clear no one knows who the clubs targets really are. I didn’t see a single person link us to Maddison before the reports about us bidding come out, as Strawb and others say we’ve no real clue if Cornet was actually a deal the club were working on or if it was just the journalists. Personally I really hope we get at least one attacking player in, I think our attack is lacking in real quality so it would be great to see a Maddison or someone like that come in to help. I think it’s clear they know this and want someone in, and while Maddison may prove to be out of reach they bid a high amount for him which could go to a different player - so I think we can be canny confident we will get at least one more in.

It’s ok lads, if we do miss out on Maddison he’s only a slight upgrade on a player he is absolutely fucking nothing like that we have already .

Personally I think Maddison would be the biggest statement signing so far. It’s taking the best player from a side that a season ago were miles ahead of us. Bruno obviously is a star and a massive statement, as was Trippier, but I just feel signing probably the best (or close to best) player outside the top 6 from a PL rival is a real statement of intent.

I think ewerk is right, I think as OTF says it’s more seen in terms of amortization so total price of transfer + wages over contract rather than when the cash is paid. The only timing thing I think would be if we did the loan with obligation to buy, that plays with the timing for FFP purposes as it doesn’t start the amortization on the transfer until the permanent deal takes effect. The club does seem to have some cash flow issues, which the loan is looking to address - it’s probably been discussed but these loans are common and I think get round rules to do with how cash is contributed in by ownership, or maybe also plays with FFP. The good thing is our side do look to be very savvy in terms of how they’re doing things with FFP, but don’t want to take the Man City approach of almost ignoring it then possibly fighting it.

I really hope that bit isn’t true as I’m fairly sure Burnley paid pretty much that price for him themselves and he’s since proven he can handle the PL.

Agreed. It has the added plus that we will then be a bit better stocked and perhaps perceived as a little less desperate, which could possibly help in other negotiations. I agree with their determination to fight for price and payment to be all on our terms but as you say the season starts soon.

The mackems will be explaining how it’s just to make us feel good, and really they were MLFs and big marras first.

I agree it’s part of it but it’s a really low ball offer for probably one of the best players outside the top sides. We’ve also done this a few times already this window and then just pulled out before complaining about unrealistic valuations. I’m perfectly fine with them not wanting to sign £50m players, but why do we continue to chase and underbid for players in that valuation bracket? Belotti is available for free, Cornet has a release clause, etc it’s just a weird strategy and as things stand it hasn’t worked this window as we are going into the season with the exact same poor attack.

Aye I’m confident that we will sign attackers. It’s hard looking at the end of last season as there was a lot of momentum/excitement from the takeover/just get to summer safe and we will be flying attitude, if we look at the lack of goals scored/assisted from our forward line even over those games it’s still fairly low. Almiron, Fraser, and Murphy struggle at this level for goal involvements, they have other aspects to their games but we really need goal involvements and “fret” up front as our CM doesn’t create/score loads outside of Bruno’s late season run.

I think he’s quality if used right, Chelsea’s play style doesn’t suit him I honestly think if he had ended up at Liverpool, as he was often rumoured to, he’d be miles better than he is doing now. Chelsea are a bit of a funny side, they’ve had a rough time getting a striker to work in their team in recent years. There’s surely some way round the wage thing, maybe talk Chelsea down on price and pay him the extra in lump for a reduced wage if it’s really going to upset members of the team.

It’s class like, the ridiculous mental gymnastics he’s undertaken to convince himself signing a current England international, who won La Liga the prior season, when we were 19th in the table wasn’t ambitious.

Agree with Strawb on the topic of selling ASM, I’ve mentioned how frustrating I find ASM but as things stand he’s probably our best attacker (Wilson would be the other contender with everyone else miles behind). We’d then have to buy a LW, RW and possibly backup striker. I will say mind, if we could sell him for some high fee like £50m we’d be bonkers not to take it. It gives us a massive boost in terms of FFP as that whole £50m is captured in this year, with any player we buy having fees and wages spread over their contract.

Aye true, forgot about Pope he’s legitimately one of the best keepers outside the top six but I guess it doesn’t count since he’s from a crap side.

Back to dreamland for the mackems. Firstly no one wanted to allow him to have 10%, him asking for it is different to anyone allowing it. We’ve signed one player from Burnley and none from Leeds newspaper links = definitely true and going to happen (also Man City and Barcelona have just signed Leeds players), never mind that we have signed Bruno Guimeraes from Lyon, Kieran Trippier from Athleti, and Sven Botman from Lille for a combined fee of nearly £100m it’s definitely hard to see a difference from Mike Ashley.

They’re out the loop tbh. Most the information they get will be from the other side of the deal now I reckon, that’s why transfers like Pope, Targett, possibly this one and the quick movement on Botman caught them by surprise. I still think we will see a lot of movement late in the window too as teams will be wanting to trim their squads down to 25 men so might start assessing who they can get decent fees for etc.

5 goals from 8 starts is canny depending on how long the 16 sub appearances were, it seems they really want a young striker to rotate with Wilson and maybe Wood. Class there basically wasn’t a single link to this kid until his agent flew into Newcastle tweeting about it.

Aye I think we likely have a few like that lined up, where we will keep trying until late to land our higher up targets but then start triggering clauses. Kind of like Wood was except a little less of a panic as they have had more time to select players that are quick buys.

Aye he flat out doesn’t understand FFP at even a passing level. You can’t just say “we have X to spend” and it mean total transfer fee like people did years ago, that’s why like I’ve said before the £60m he was told for FFP reasons is likely right and we’ve spent somewhere around £20m of that so far in terms of how that £60m is calculated. That’s why his budget keeps going up, he was initially saying all we had was £60m but now we can spend basically double that the fucking head case.

It’s also yet another example of them being wound up about something that hasn’t, and probably wont, happen. It may as well say “I’ve heard they want Jack Cork for £200m if that’s what they get then us buying Stewart halfbridges for £50 shows we have a brighter future”.

Paqueta and Bruno is a brilliant CM pairing, we then either play Bruno deeper like he played at Lyon with Joelinton as the 8, or have Joelinton screening with Bruno 8 and Paqueta further forward. I don’t really see the point in holding off and losing out on a top class Brazilian international because Fraser/Murphy/ Almiron are poor. With that midfield we might actually start to control games. We could then sign one of Cornet, Dennis, Sarr for something around 15m, and/or Belotti on a free. If you were meaning in terms of 25 man squad, Anderson doesn’t count towards it and imo we should look to offload Shelvey if we got Paqueta as he triggers an extra 12 month extension with 3 more appearances.