Pizy

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.

Sounds like Kepa to Napoli isn’t happening now. The club was probably planning for his wages to be off the books this summer so I wonder what happens now. Surely he’ll be desperately searching for a new club so he can try to get into the Spain WC squad.

I just can’t imagine they’ve spent the entire summer desperately chasing him and have now just given up when his future still isn’t resolved.

Would be a huge boost to us if United signed a couple of midfielders now to confirm that they’ve moved on from De Jong. If they sign Rabiot and one other then that’ll signal they have indeed dropped their interest.

Good point. To be clear, I wasn’t calling for us to sign him. With Timo gone and CHO potentially going I wonder wtf we’re going to do, though!

Even Auba makes more sense than Zaha at this point. At least you’d know for certain that he’d only be here for a very short spell. Zaha we’d probably have to offer a 3-4 year contract and he’s just about to turn 30. That’s an absolute no-go.

Doesn’t spending a combined ~30m on a couple of teenaged midfielders suggest the De Jong rumors are kind of farfetched? I know the Italian kid if signed won’t be coming to the first team this season but still.

De Jong leaving Barca at this point is probably going to take Xavi straight up telling him he’s not in his plans. Or more likely, Laporta making Xavi tell Frenkie he’s got to go for financial reasons. We just have to position ourselves to be immediately ready to pounce if that happens. I’d like to think that terms have already been presented to him/his agent in the event that he decides to go.

Hope we push it through before Spuds at the weekend.

True. I’m just saying that there’s going to be some tough decisions for Tuchel to make if he has KK, Fofana, Cucurella, and a fully fit Chilly to consider.

He CAN play on the right for sure. But as evidenced by where he has appeared thus far in a Chelsea shirt and where I saw him play most in the Napoli footage, I think he looks best on the left. What that means for Cucurella if/when we do sign Fofana is what I’m curious about. Because we ain’t spending £55m for a player to sit on the bench.

I think with KK and now Cucu, Tuchel is considering the left side of our defense settled. So Gvardiol wouldn’t make much sense now. We want a right sided CB which Fofana is.

True that we’re overpaying but I don’t agree about it setting a bad precedent. The precedent has already been set by multiple PL clubs. If you want a player from a fellow PL club and they 1) have multiple years left on their deals and 2) their current clubs don’t actually want to sell them, you’re going to have to pay mega money.

If we have to rely on Trev or RJ to start a lot of games this season then we’re not making a serious step forward. We have to stop this “such and such player can play this position if necessary” mentality. This isn’t how a big club should operate. “Azpi can play this position, Reece James can play that position.” Yes, they can, but not as well as Fofana can.

Why? We need him. Unless you want to see Azpi playing CB for the whole season?

The market for top attackers is as bad as it’s ever been. The options seem to be signing someone old and past their best like Auba, signing someone who simp,y isn’t that good but could be a stopgap like Memphis, or you take a punt on someone from a smaller club and hope for the best. Feels like at this point we should take someone cheap who we can move on next summer if they don’t work.

I think we should just take any info about De Jong that comes from the Spanish side as bullshit. Way too sensationalist and over the top. I think what Ornstein reported this morning is the most level headed and believable. His priority and primary desire is to stay at Barca. If he is forced to go he still hasn’t decided where to yet and both United and Chelsea are still options. Annoyingly, this will probably drag on until the window closes.

It’s more than decent, it’s exceptional. Signed on a free, was utterly atrocious as a footballer, could sell for €15m profit. That deserves a round of applause.

My heart just skipped a beat when I saw Ornstein tweet “Chelsea have reached verbal agreement with….” 🤣 I thought it was going to be Fofana or De Jong but it’s just about Malang Sarr. Which tbf is almost as exciting!

I think the club were fine getting any decent fee for Werner. The only way we were ever going to get big money for him was if some other PL club came in for him which didn’t end up happening. We’re probably just happy to get his £290k per week or whatever it was off our books.

If Rabiot is their alternative to De Jong rather than someone they want in addition to De Jong then they’re even more incompetent than I thought they were. I simply can’t believe that’s the case. They surely want both.

Getting Werner, Lukaku, Barkley, Kepa, and CHO out in one summer would be crazy. Ziyech and RLC links have died, unfortunately. And I wish they were all permanent instead of mostly loans. I’d upgrade Pulisic if given the chance as well but that’s probably too much turnover at once.

Yeah, I think this is a pretty good read on the situation. He seems pretty desperate to stay. Unless Barca themselves tell him straight up that he HAS to go I think he will pull a Dembele in the end and reduce his salary.

Like I said last night, if we genuinely want De Jong I feel like we have to move very quickly now. United were embarrassed yesterday and are in scrape the bottom of the barrel desperation mode in the market looking at names like Arnautovic and Rabiot. They’ll be at the point soon where they’ll be on their knees offering De Jong to write his own contract terms. If they don’t sort their midfield out this week they could be looking at an Arsenal of last season start where they go 0 points from their first 9 available. So if we want him it needs to be within the next couple of days.

Barca really are a disgracefully run club. To go balls to the wall signing 10 players when their wage situation is catastrophic is insane. Hopefully we can swoop in and take advantage with De Jong and perhaps one of their strikers.