Vegetable

Had De Gea ever been Brighton player? There goes the answer.
Plus, buying actually decent, developed players didn't fit the club policy, even though it seems like a reasonable move regarding few positions and that I can somewhat understand, repeating Thiago Silva case any time soon seem mathematically unlikely.

That's quite shocking, especially given crazy inflation of outfield players.
But worry not, I guess next window we will barge in with 50+ million for another super exciting talented prospect to be found nowhere near this list now.

only 5 GKers on the planet are now valued at £30m and over

So, sounds like he rates Marseille over Chelsea but can as well stay here as he is not ready for a big move, lol. We've come a long way.
I think the problem isn't club's openness but rather existence of a club that would like to take him off our hands without us literally paying them to do so.

Keep seeing things about how players & coaches see quality or ability from him in training…
If competitive football matches were decided in training, ok fair, but they aren’t and we hear it far too often. Yet see nothing on the pitch from him to back up these claims.
Must go. No loan. Sell at a loss. Wasn’t at the level required when we signed him but also didn’t have a lot of experience in men’s football. Technically he is awful too, like really. Decision making also incredibly poor, wrong decision 3/4’s of time but if he had played another 100 games maybe be better - but again big maybe.
 

Not going to go into the forced sale thing itself, but wasn't one of the points of agreeing to pick Clearlake & co that they declared club can't be sold in next 10 years? Any of the partners selling their stake literally changes who is the owner of the club.

Interesting to see how brutal revolving door business model Clearlake adopted here. If you think about how absurdly long likes Kenedy or Baba Rahman were here, wow, night and day.

Yeah, all those financial limitations are just a race of who has the best lawyers and accountants anyway, but this Washington thing was perhaps the most cartoonish thing this club has done in previous five years; If all the red flags has raised the moment this move was announced it's not like they will forget and go to sleep the moment it was called off (for now). And as it is always with multi-million creative reporting, we will get cooked on something of Kakuta calibre in the end I guess.
Actually, I'm relieved our owners hadn't got the idea to adapt the techbro startup strategy of buying some club, outsourcing all the debt there and bankrupting it to benefit rest of their entities, surely no one would ever notice it.

Interesting to see how brutal revolving door business model Clearlake adopted here. If you think about how absurdly long likes Kenedy or Baba Rahman were here, wow, night and day.

Interesting to see how brutal revolving door business model Clearlake adopted here. If you think about how absurdly long likes Kenedy or Baba Rahman were here, wow, night and day.

Came here to say that this reasoning must finally stop. Core of this team, apart all the time in the world in the pre-season, had at least like 15+ top-flight games together + all the training. National teams are often bunch of fellas who see each other thrice a year and have like max 4 training units to integrate 3-5 new players. And they somehow manage to do it. Meanwhile we will be repeating that the players need to learn to play together until they will all get grey hair I guess. Experience of playing together gives the 10% extra edge, but the 90% foundation is executing the tactic and basic football knowledge. This is season 3 (?) of fresh start, folks will always come and go as they do in most of football teams.
I'm getting more and more convinced that godlike ballon d'or saviors Enzo and Caicedo are about as much use as Werner (credit due, he at least put the shift in) and Havertz were, only way more expensive. 

Brighton have new players, new coach and they don't look like they have that many 'teamwork' issues.   Even Liverpool went away from the Klopp methods and they still look good under Slot. 
The main thing is, you're playing at home to a plucky team, you get 7 shots on target and you can't score the 2nd goal that would have broken the game open. 
Palace will be just like Forest, Fulham and so many other sides that will come to the Bridge looking for that 1 goal as they know that may be enough to walk away with a point.  
As they say, there's no point having more possession if you're not going to do anything with it.  

Yeah, all those financial limitations are just a race of who has the best lawyers and accountants anyway, but this Washington thing was perhaps the most cartoonish thing this club has done in previous five years; If all the red flags has raised the moment this move was announced it's not like they will forget and go to sleep the moment it was called off (for now). And as it is always with multi-million creative reporting, we will get cooked on something of Kakuta calibre in the end I guess.
Actually, I'm relieved our owners hadn't got the idea to adapt the techbro startup strategy of buying some club, outsourcing all the debt there and bankrupting it to benefit rest of their entities, surely no one would ever notice it.

Positives:
- Cut throat getting rid of the dross at all costs, prioritising technical skill.
- Took advantage of good opportunities in the market, on excellent terms, for Sancho, Felix, Guiu & Tosin which upgrade our bench which was chronically super bad last year.
- Did not panic buy Osimhen, did not cave to stupid demands from Napoli, did not cave to stupid demands from Osimhen. Simple truth was there all along: he's simply not that good. We were only club in Europe in the end who got serious about him - which is just classic us really, everyone else knows better. He's extremely injury prone, 1 good season in his whole career, skull in literal pieces, can't pass, has Lukaku personality vibes, way more red flags than any other player we've looked at in ages. Given the Chilly+Sterling situations, it is obvious we should not go crazy on Osimhen especially without CL football and in PSR era
- Neto + Veiga look like gems, probably XI material, probably both big upgrades
Negatives
- Didn't convincingly sort out XIs joint number 1 problem which is CB and GK (probably, club obviously have faith in the group - we are all more dubious, I think...)
- Allegedly paying half of Sterling's wages while he plays for Arsenal, and just kicked that can down the road - he will cost us the same as Lavia, Noni and NJ combined per week to NOT play for us. Left it very late to start shopping him around. If we had forced him to train alone from day 1, by the end of the window surely we've found a buyer for him.
- Failed to get rid of Chilwell, who will probably be almost impossible to get rid of, as he looks like a Championship player but on 200k a week and unable to stay fit for more than a few weeks at a time. Hopefully we will at least ship him off to Turkey (maybe Jose would take him?) and cover 50%+ of his wages again.
- Have not sorted out a physical, classic number 9 for the squad: looked a bit at Sesko (chose to stay for another year), Samu (collapsed, probably for best), Duran and of course Osi but ended up with only 18 year old Guiu. We have to hope that NJ stays fit but we do have Felix false 9 as option now and he is very good finisher if he is kept in or around the penalty box instead of playing out wide.
- Chukwuemeka, Casadei, Kellyman, Deivid Washington, Angelo Gabriel, Tyrique George, Acheompong all still with us but very unlikely to get much game time - all of them could have done with a loan move. Hopefully we can still find clubs for them in the leagues that are still open for business but obviously a Championship loan would have been the ideal for most of them. No idea where Chuk goes.
- What was the point of KDH?
 

Transfer ban usually means club can't register new players, not that present players become slaves to the club for period of ban. You think such player would be in the group that stays?

It's obvious at 150k was without incentives with them and CL he would earn more but that Nigerian cunt wanted to secure the bag without any performance related bonuses.

Maybe some folks here just got wiser. Same could be said about Lukaku a while ago. There's probably a reason why Napoli want to bin this guy and replace him with the very Lukaku himself. Any sort of performance in leagues like Italy mean nothing. Nothing. And it's not like he is a injury-resistant player in his best form atm.

Shouldn't be on more.

He is not a star, noone wants him other than us and some desert merchants.