Pizy

Barca have some of magical voodoo over these players. It’s just unbelievable. They get incessantly pressured to lower their salary (after already doing so a couple of years ago during the lockdowns) and when they don’t the fans and media smear them. And then after all that terrible treatment players STILL want to sign for them or re-up on drastically reduced terms. It’s mind boggling.

I think that’s why we are after De Jong. If we couldn’t improve our attack and playing style with a winger we’ll try to do so by reshaping our midfield with a more fluid player.

SMS is gettable as well.

If De Jong doesn’t happen I wonder if we go for someone else or just wait until next summer. If we’re willing to spend £70m+ on De Jong it’s clear Tuchel thinks it’s needed.

I wouldn’t take AC back for free. Soft as hell and went back in his word after agreeing to our contract offer initially. He wanted to jump ship to a club in turmoil so he made his bed. Fofana is a colossal upgrade on him.

Would’ve been amazing to see Fofana in in time to play Spuds. Having him and Koulibaly manhandle Kane and Son and making freshly arrogant Spud supporters rethink their “we can win the league” predictions. Now it’s likely to be Azpi starting at CB again who the Spuds players will really fancy themselves against.

Kante missed several of the preseason matches and didn’t Kova? Maybe TT was just trying him deeper?

Gallagher should rotate with Mount not the deeper midfielders. Don’t see why a potential De Jong arrival would impact him at all. It’s Jorginho and Kante that would be seeing their game time reduced.

So that confirms that Ben Jacobs is definitely clued in and reliable when it comes to Leicester and Chelsea, I guess.

Where’s that 3rd Fofana bid already… Was hoping it would be done this week before Leicester play another match and risk him.

Use that anger to put in a great season, then. So Inter will take you for good.

From watching a ton of footage of him over the past few days he looks to me like the ideal Jorginho upgrade. He’s not really flashy or spectacular. He just looks fantastic at keeping the game ticking over. You can’t really press him because he’s so comfortable in those situations and can carry the ball forward very well unlike J5. What separates him from Jorgi and the reason I suspect we’re so interested in him is that he’s also extremely mobile. Don’t think Tuchel wants to see us get shredded through the middle any longer when we dominate possession and turn the ball over.

I’m still extremely skeptical that we’re prepared to pay huge money + his lost wages for a player in a position we’re currently loaded in. Not when we still really need a CB.

Nah, get FDJ and send them Alonso to compound their misery.

If it was a simple 1 season loan I’d reluctantly accept it due to the fact that he’s worked with Tuchel before. But as was pointed out to me here yesterday he’s on a multi-year contract at Barca. So if he signs for us now why would he agree to only 1 year where he’s got no longer term security and could be scrambling for yet another club a year from now?

I’d give our window thus far a solid 7/10. If we get Fofana I’d bump it up to a 9/10. Anything else after that would be insane.

United have apparently NOT given up on De Jong and want both he and Rabiot. We’re still far from having an easy run at him.

Probably are gems out there. But if we’re going to be splashing mega money on Fofana and perhaps De Jong I doubt we’d also have tens of millions to spend on some up and coming young talent that the selling club won’t want to let go of. If we sort out the rest of our squad I’m fine with a stopgap striker. Just not so sure about Auba.

Auba signing for me feels a lot like Higuain. Will probably score a handful of goals but isn’t going to change our fortunes at all. Underwhelming. Not many other options, though.

Matt Law now says that we will indeed press for Auba. Not sure how I feel about that. A striker that’s going to depend entirely on chances being served up to him on a plate. If you watch pretty much every goal he scored at Barca they come from fantastic service that seemed to mostly consisted of great Dembele crosses.

That’s the million dollar question. But surely after letting Lukaku and Timo go plus showing a willingness to let CHO and Ziyech go means that something is being worked on. God knows what…

I think at this point we can only let one of Ziyech or CHO leave.

Think Ziyech would struggle just as badly in the United side as he does here. So if we could get a nice little fee from them I wouldn’t actually mind. Stops them getting someone better. Look at how Sancho has looked since joining them.

So that’s several decent journalists reporting it. But it’s nothing different to what Ornstein said last week. We’re pushing and pushing but the player is still not ready to commit to leaving yet. Be good if we agree a fee with Barca like United did so that if he decides to go we’re ready.

I’m guessing Depay and some of the deadwood like Umtiti that feel like they fell off the face of the earth 5 years ago.