Mhsc

Kudus is unbelievably overrated. He's powerful but virtually no technical skill, no intelligence. His output on paper is just as bad as the eye test suggests. Thought the £38m West Ham spent on him was toppy for what he is tbh. Made some sense a couple of years ago when we were really shit, but definitely does not make any sense anymore, especially for a big fee. Fuck that.

These transfers are also revealing what Maresca really thinks about our players. All year when he was talking a big game about Sanchez I was rolling my eyes because it just felt like there was no way he believed the words he was saying and was just stuck with the guy and saying anything bad would only make the situation worse so he tried to put some confidence in him to get what he could out of him while stuck with him. Curious who else might be 'surprisingly' for the guillotine - maybe the nicer Maresca is about you the more you're in danger! (he was very positive about Malo Gusto and NJ...)

One interesting question is if we do sign Mike for GK, who is our number 2 next year? Surely Sanchez never accept that. Doubt Petrovic will, but maybe? Jorgensen is terrible and if we got stuck having to play him for a long period it would basically be writing off the season. I guess in an ideal world Petrovic will suck it up and agree to compete for at least a season with Mike? It seems like a total waste tho.

A classy exit to be fair Honestly he seems like a nice guy but he just didn't do enough to pay the sort of wages he probably wants, just another player who Man Utd gave stupid money to. He should get a move back to Bundesliga or basically any league outside of PL and he will have a great career still. Good luck to him tbh

Last summer we started a new trend of going from 0 to full announcement on random names so I'm not listening that much to rumours My guess is some name(s) we've no idea about at this moment will be the real signings and most of what we see in the press is just agents paying for PR

I think people were just scared of his injury record weren't they? As we have been in nonstop injury crisis for about 5 years now. Don't recall people thinking he was shit as a player tbh

Not sure he is better than a fully fit Fofana but in terms of our CBs that actually play then yeah, agreed he is better I just don't think he's good enough to carry Colwill tbh.

Guehi is fine I suppose, very unambitious though for one of our weakest positions, and our scouts have a terrible track record of scouting CBs so I would still have question marks about his ability to adapt to a possession based team. Its a lot easier to impress for Palace - Chalobah also looked solid there. If we do a Guehi we have to sell Colwill and rebuild the whole CB pairing, if we're sticking with Colwill we need an insanely elite CB to carry him defensively (strong, tall, fast, intelligent, experienced).

For Man Utd special price - £85m plus add ons.

Not like they didn't try before - they just kept getting rejected! Caicedo and Lavia knew better

Excellent idea tbh

In the short term I am happy if we are signing Delap and he joins immediately and travels for CWC For £30m it is a no brainer, if he's shit we sell him for the same or similar to any PL club or even a championship outfit And suddenly we have at minimum a genuine striker off the bench and someone that we can ping balls at and scrap for us. That might be a low standard but that's how low the standard of our bench has been recently. And its just the minimum - there's some reason to have higher hopes for him. I am unhappy if we finish the transfer window with NJ and Delap as our options for PL 2025/26 unless we are signing some complete madman goal scorer for another position - we need to add a decent chunk of goals to the team since Cole fell off on that front, simple as that.

The thing is we sort of need a goal scorer that does big numbers, because without Cole being a big time goal scorer we just don't have the numbers in the side anymore. So we need to go after someone who can realistically get us 20+. My ideal scenario would be going hard and signing both Delap and Gyokeres and then we have the opportunity to maybe move NJ to left wing and suddenly maybe we have goals back in the XI and on the bench too. Being totally stacked up front and moving on anyone that doesn't turn out to thrive (either to a new position or out of the club) is what the best teams have always done. That said I don't know if its financially realistic although getting back into CL and playing CWC will surely help. And we need to keep enough budget to sort out GK and at least 1 excellent CB.

Age comes for us all! Salah will also suddenly decline at some point that would usually be within the next year or two, he's about to turn 33 as De Bruyne is just about to turn 34. It is an unforgivable act of gross negligence that we did not see these two play for us for 10+ years and form one of the greatest attacking sides in PL history Everyone involved in those decisions is now absolutely no where in football and for good reason

Roman would just sign Gyokeres and Osimhen both and tell Maresca to figure it out

I meant at the end of last season, or during the transfer window, just as right now we naturally look at Liverpool and think they'll do it again and are better than all the other sides, in the same timeline last year we thought the same about City, yet they totally collapsed. Liverpools stars are all old as City's were and they are about to spend a bunch of money to bring in the new generation (Wirtz etc). It all could be extremely disruptive and they could get better or they could get worse. They can't do nothing because two of their key players are potentially going to decline rapidly at any moment and another one is leaving on a free transfer. They also have to spend without big player sales to fund it this time as they have kept these guys to the end of their contracts instead of cashing in on them to rejuvenate the squad prior. We'll see what happens but I really don't think it is a given that next year will be plain sailing for them and several clubs who are similarly spending and well managed could do better next year.

Yeah sorry I was just throwing out a couple of random names - what I meant was sign some PL worthy forward / goal scorer asap so we have someone for the CWC, any of the names that are available and ready to move on the spot. Just because at this point I think its reasonable to consider that maybe we need 2 forwards and not 1, with NJ going either out of the squad entirely or being relegated to squad fodder with a lot to prove to get a place back (perhaps on the wing). I am assuming it will take time to negotiate a deal for an elite forward but we need to add goals to the squad asap really in any form otherwise CWC could be pretty grim and it is a huge prize pool available there

Perhaps - but ultimately the team is changing and form of individual players comes and goes in a way that is quite unpredictable. No one expected City to fall off this year either and Liverpool have never done back to back PLs (we only managed back to back once in our prime). Van Dijk will be 34 and Salah 33. They are right at that time when decline can come suddenly and "out of no where". Of course they could go on and dominate again, who knows. Personally I'd expect City and Arsenal will spend well and be competitive. If I was going to bet on anyone it would be City because their success speaks for itself and we know they don't mind cheating to win, so they will not let the rules get in the way of them fixing the squad. Arsenal only need to sign a goal scorer or two to look quite menacing as well.

I don't mind if we sign a Delap or a Cunha in time for club world cup as long as its not all we're doing there before PL starts Have to entertain the possibility that NJ becomes just a squad player or gets loaned/sold.

Personally I think we are in a new era where getting CL is far more important and a much bigger accomplishment than it used to be. Used to be 4 clubs basically nailed on for it, then we had the big 6 concept, now its basically an elite top 8 and then another 4 clubs or so that are pretty damn good too. When any club in that pack gets raided for their top players they buy new top players and maintain their status more or less, maybe even knock on and improve through good investment. Then beneath that you've got Man Utd and Spurs. Spurs are 17th and won Europe's second highest competition and will play in CL next year. I mean the league is really mad if you think about it, most clubs now have elite recruitment departments that use the best data and scouting networks, and the general standard of management is far higher than it used to be - the "managers" are now really just head coaches for the most part, and subsequently they're much better across the board at tactics/strategy while maybe being a bit less interesting in press conferences. All established PL clubs spend reasonable sums of money on individual players they feel they need, we've even got Brighton offering £30m+ for 17 year olds. My belief on all of this is also why I am more forgiving than most about our bad results this year, because when you look around basically only Liverpool could consistently win in this league in its current state - and personally I doubt they'll do it again next year.

Great performance, our players have matured so much in terms of game management it’s insane. They don’t play like the youngest squad in the league anymore. I assume that’s a wrap for some of our players, don’t expect to see them play for us again in PL if at all, but thank you for what you did to get us back where we belong. Hopefully this lifts the fan base for next year especially if we make a couple of really strong signings to blend into XI

Colwill sleeping as usual Just not a CB, never will be

Feel almost as tense as I did before our CL finals Can't imagine how the players feel. Hopefully even worse for Nottingham Forest players, for whom this is probably a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Its more important IMO You have to be a sensational, almost generationally good attacking team to get away with having poor GK/CB at this level. Adding just 1 striker will not turn us into that team, as in truth our wingers are hardly sensational either. We can however become a normal, slightly underwhelming not truly elite but consistently in the mix top side by sorting out GK/CB and just being bloody hard to beat. If we add that to this squad with this age profile we are a consistent CL side for a decade or so at least.

Osimhen is in many ways a terrible, ultra high risk, make or break signing - but at this point I'll take anything that will create a good mood in the fanbase We should just go and get him