Mhsc

Cole Palmer is a Kai-esque half 9. I think he will play there if we lose NJ, until we sign someone else in Jan or next summer. Feels like maybe the last big money signing when the right opportunity comes up.

Yeah I did not see that coming, don’t understand it tbh. Didn’t understand us sending Nkunku out in preseason to play on that god awful pitch that looked like it had grenades thrown on it either.

Yeah we'll see I guess, Sterling was also predominantly LW historically so maybe they'll switch to play inverted, or maybe we want a rightie on the right and a leftie on the left?

GKs Sanchez+Petrovic RBs Reece+Malo RCBs Disasi+Silva LCBs Colwill+Badiashile LBs Chilwell+Maatsen Pivot Enzo+Lavia Pivot Caicedo+Ugochukwu LAM Mudryk+Palmer SS Nkunku+Carney+Gallagher RAM Sterling+Madueke CF Jackson+Broja 23 not including Chalobah who I'm assuming is off, or Fofana who is broken, or the many randomers (Bettinelli) and kids we've got around the place that I'm assuming don't count in the target number based on Poch's previous comments. About what we were aiming for. I'm still concerned we don't have enough goals in the team but a lot will depend on so many players and how they work out. Maybe some people will emerge as big goal scorers.

Yeah it is bonkers but transfer values also are a bit related to salaries, if he is going to accept say 50k pw like Madueke/Gallagher is on then overall the spend annualised over his time here will be pretty cheap tbh.

Well fuck! Blink and you miss it, sometimes we really don't fuck around. Some regulars probably haven't even finished work yet and going to login and be like "who the fuck is Cole Palmer?" Welcome aboard Cole please score against City and do a massive run to Pep to slide on your knees right in front of him celebrating furiously

I do wonder what the long term plan is. Are we going to call it "done" after Cole and just add say ~1 big signing a year that enhances the XI? That seems hard to believe given we've got so many senior people who manage the squad. Our team is so young and stacked with talent that needs time to grow, we could be planning to pretty much stop doing business for a long time, or we might be planning to buy and sell a bunch every year, selling off people that have had their shot and not reached the level we want and replace them with the new U21 prospect we've scouted, or someone from the loan army that's grown a lot. Just hard to visualise what next summer might look like. Could imagine we could be selling Madueke, Gallagher, Ugochukwu, Carney, <insert random list of players - all respect to that list I just gave just wanted to pick some names for sake of argument> and replacing them with Angelo, Santos, etc from the loan army and then buy a new crop to loan out and perhaps the odd big signing to improve the XI?

There's always cameras even if it is not being streamed or shown anywhere live, I've always managed to get a good quality copy of the game to watch after the game but sometimes it is impossible to find it during. We'll see what pops up later. Can't Chelsea stream the game to the website? Or they don't have the right?

Yes, I see him a bit Kai-esque as well, but on a fraction of his wages (currently he's on 25k pw), he is a much better investment than keeping Kai around and hoping for the 'transformation'. Guessing Palmer would go on to 50k like Madueke / Gallagher on a long term contract vs Kai was on £300k pw for us and seemed to be pretty much run out of steam development wise at a level that wasn't cutting it. I think it is a decent potential signing but not one we should get crazy excited about, no more than we are about Carney at least. Useful squad player who will have a real shot at breaking into the lineup, like Carney did. Present moment squad situation may mean he would get his chance almost immediately too.

Honestly I've got no beef with us picking up 'scraps' from City, should have taken Lavia, Gabriel Jesus and Zinchenko too when they were up for sale. Minimum is that the people they let go become very useful squad players wherever they go. They don't let bad players even exist in the first team squad.

He would be a similar purchase to Carney for me. Might work out and might be ready to even play for us now, but its really hard to say until they get a run of games and we just see. If the deal is right, there is a tonne of potential upside, and little downside - probably the lowest expectation for his career would be that he ends up at a midtable PL club. It is definitely a much bigger bet than Kudus so the deal has to be for far less money and far less wages.

My guess is fee would depend on other conditions. To a midtable club who will accept a buy back / huge sell on fee clause maybe they'd let him go for not much, to us (who wont even consider a buyback) they probably want more. I'd be surprised if we're interested unless it is gonna be sub 40m though.

Cole Palmer is an interesting shout. Played as a 9 under Pep against some good teams. Played on the wing. Played in midfield. Presses well. He's tall. Lots of boxes ticked. He probably would have got a lot more minutes as striker except they went and bought Haaland and Alvarez. Surprising pick but can sort of see it. Only thing is his best position has probably been RW which is where Sterling has found his form. But like I said, pretty capable in lots of positions.

Probably we'd have to pay him out the full balance of his contract to get rid... Grim situation that he is making more than some of our actually very good players.

Amazing work.

Come on Eghbali and team, time to get personal and gazump the gazumpers. I really like Muani tbh. Obviously, we're not gonna get him but I think he's fantastic and he is so intelligent and unselfish he could play in various positions very effectively, definitely the 9 or 10 positions but I think he'd be potent playing on the left and cutting in too tbh.

This old school model of letting managers spend money is totally insane honestly, given the sums involved. Shame it took us so long to come around to it.

Club was up for loaning him tells him all he needs to know. Tbh I'm not that familiar with Man Utd's current needs but "on paper" Cucurella can cover LB, LCB, and DM. He's a utility player. They might get use out of him over a season but it is a pretty desperate signing, can't imagine what Utd fans are thinking lmao.

Dunno what personal terms needed to be agreed, probably they're covering his wages and...you know..that's it. Guess it REALLY means that he is up for the move, and so are they. Phenomenal work by the directors to clear out the dross.

As I have explained in a couple of posts here before, because of FFP we simply cannot sell Cucu. We cannot afford book losses and his book value is currently about 50m so, maybe in 2 years when his book value is 28m we can sell. He needs a loan or two before he’s gone unfortunately. BEST case. He might not ever be sellable.

It is definitely possible we wont sign anyone imo. I think part of the reason we've been a bit slow on some of the moves and are still looking at it now is that we have a few cooks in the kitchen (at very least PW, LS and Poch but maybe Joe Shields as well) and all of them have to agree to every transfer which means that a lot of players we might otherwise have gone for could be turned away by 1 guy who's not convinced. No doubt some but not all like Vlahovic, Cherki, etc so we ended up not going for them. I agree with us being patient and waiting for the right opportunities - 100% more NJ like opportunities will emerge every window, they always do, new players / value opportunities are coming through all the time so taking our time with the absolutely insanely talented scouting group we've got you just know as the years go on with them working together the squad is going to become insane. BUT it scares me that Broja is our plan B for NJ if he is out atm. I believe the forward player they're talking about who can play across the frontline is more of a Rashford profile than a Cherki, and someone like that would make me feel pretty relaxed about the season and our top 4/5 chances.

Romano wont actually know that though. IMO he is a mouth piece for agents who use him to shop around their players and ultimately to make money. There is no way PW, LS etc or people in their team are giving him info - then he would know WAY more. Whenever he isn't saying something quite concrete, it is just noise to get views that is likely to not turn out to be totally wrong or disprovable later. Hence, he does loads of posts saying kind of nothing, and then when an agent feeds him something more concrete he publishes that and ties it into whatever generic narrative he's been selling previously.

Interesting how secret it is being kept. Wonder if its one of those where the selling club wants to make a signing first and we've got to wait and keep it quiet? In which case any rumour from the last weeks might suddenly just 'happen' one day.

Like Mason he is massively overrated IMO due to where he has come from and the opportunities he has had to play for them. He is worse than Carney imo. Wouldn't take him unless it is for the loan army to try to flip him for money. We need to find a first teamer who can play behind the striker (as a SS or LAM) and at a pinch play as the striker. Smithe Rowe is just more of what we've already got, except worse and injury prone.