OneMoSalah

We dont need a solid striker though or someone who could turn into a good one in 3 or 4 years, we currently need somebody who is good enough and ready to go. Obviously has to be the right player but I get the feeling this is another experimental signing. A bit underwhelming to be honest but lets see he might surprise. Getting 12 goals in La Liga, where players like Joselu scored 16, Iglesias 15, Muriqi 15, Unal 14, Morata & Castellanos 13, Sorloth & Aspas 12 also… its hard to say if its promising or not. Fully agree. The squads already heavily populated with young players who “could be” good/top players. Plus with Broja here as well who Poch is keen to use this season by sounds of it, I don’t really get it. Why have 2 young CFs? Both at similar ages who both need to play regularly to kick on? Unless he is some sort of world class must have player but honestly not sure…. Maybe he will surprise us but 12 goals last season in La Liga is hardly hugely impressive. I suppose its the risk we take. At least he isn’t a £70-80m signing though.

Lots of reports that United going to offer 55m for Mount and if we reject that end their pursuit.

No way we are getting Tchouameni off of Madrid. Not a chance in hell. Depending on the Rice deal (if he goes to City cannot see us getting Caicedo as we have to offload guys to compete in that price range), even getting Barella would be difficult. Particularly as the reports were that after Newcastle were apparently looking at him for £50m, that their valuation of him was at least double if not triple that. Lukaku & Chalobah may sweeten the deal but it remains to be seen if Inter or the players really that keen on actually leaving.

True. The clamouring for Bakayoko on here was crazy too. Numerous comparisons to Yaya Toure, ‘he will be our midfield general for years’ etc etc…. he was the least impressive and interesting player from that Monaco team too. Fucking insane. Fofana kind of falls into the same category as the usual loan army signing from the previous ownership. Wasn’t given a chance last season so the likelihood was he was probably always going to end up being cut with the clubs dire need for selling players and a more experienced CF considering Armando is back up and running for pre-season coming around. I mean if DDF played last season and made an impression, I would of understood the signing but he didn’t. At all. Was that Brighton transfer genius that recommended him too. Again not surprised. His mind has been made up for months, probably hasn’t helped that a certain % of the fan base seem to have turned on him. Not to mention all the reports of the numerous changes around the club, mainly staff, which had affected/left some individuals disillusioned. Could he be one of them? Or did he feel the club dicked around too much to offer him favourable terms? Who knows. Fresh start probably do him the world of good anyway. He went from future Chelsea legend to a money grabbing cunt because he wouldn’t sign a 7 year deal or whatever it was he was originally offered. Or so you’d think reading half the nonsense spouted on here at the time. People above already mentioning money as well - point proven.

A pointless buy under Boehly & co. Theres a surprise. Thought these supposed 101 footballing geniuses we hired were behind his signing?

Rice is certainly more than just a holding midfielder though, as is Rodri who has popped up with some big goals in this new formation they’ve been playing. Rice can easily play box to box and has started adding ball carries, goals and assists to his game. Where he fits in at City is hard to tell but if they continue with their formation they used this season, he could easily play with Rodri in that 2 and they could use the likes of Stones in their backline again as opposed to in MF. It definitely again adds quality into an already quality team - which again, I wouldn’t be surprised if City evolve again tactically.

So tell me then whats the masterplan now then? All well and good saying lets be proactive and not reactive on Kante but by the sounds of things, there is a very good chance Rice and Caicedo will likely be City and Arsenal players (well you would assume Arsenal would just give Brighton the £90m they offered for Rice if Rice goes to City - any competent club would). Then we’ve lost/are losing 2 good players with experience and who out of the midfielders we have should of been nowhere the top of the chopping block whilst Gallagher and Loftus-Cheek are at the club. Are we going to rely on Andrey Santos, Enzo Fernandez, Connor Gallagher and Loftus-Cheek all season? Is signing another prospect in Lavia really going to yield results that will undoubtedly be needed in the short term to get next season and the project back on track? We’ve already missed out on Ugarte. Rice & Caicedo go next then there aren’t a lot of options. Really don’t see how shopping around for 3rd/4th/5th choice midfield options is a good thing. I would say its ridiculous in fact. If we were being proactive the Caicedo deal would already be agreed and done but we’ve hamstrung ourselves by spending hundreds of millions in the summer & January windows by the looks of it, meaning our budget and targets are really at the mercy of other clubs. Or we have to prioritise certain signings. It is looking likely that other than Nkunku which was done in January, we could not sign anybody until we see a few sales (Mendy, KK, Ziyech, Mount, Havertz). Who knows who will be where by then? Yeah but if we pulled the Havertz deal we would just be shooting ourselves in the foot. I mean think about it, who is realistically going to pay the £60-65m for him we want? Bayern wont. Madrid refused already to go over £45-50m. It is clear we need to sell to buy too.

The timing wasn’t right to sell then though, I mean as an ambitious football club you don’t sell your best player right after winning a CL when your objectives have to be looking to build on that and compete with Man City and Liverpool in the league. Tuchel and Marina would of got slated for letting such a thing happen. Just like how Boehly & co should be getting slated for letting him walk out the door so easily. If we could of got Kante to stay on lowered wages and a 1 year plus 1 extension he would of been useful to have around. Undoubtedly. Would suit Poch’s philosophy down to the ground. I don’t think he would of been difficult to convince but project sign everyone under the age of 21 and hope in 5 years time it bears fruit is in full swing. Even letting Kovacic go is a huge mistake. City in for Rice so if that happens then Arsenal will go for Caicedo undoubtedly. So who are we going to sign? Eric Dier?

If a club offers £30m or more just sell him. Who cares which club. And before the spreadsheet warriors start - fuck off 🤣

Obviously their facts? I mean am I disputing that they didn’t happen? I think you’ve got the severity of the injuries the wrong way round also. Reece and Ben both suffered big knee/ACL injuries in the last few seasons whilst Kante really was just the victim of little reoccurring niggling injuries although this season he did miss an awful lot of football. And his hamstring couldn’t of been that bad that when he came back some of his performances looked alright? Or his games for France? I think people are just writing his him off for his age. Which is moronic aa their have been bucketloads of players in their 30s in the past 5, 6 or 7 years that have continuously proved this notion wrong. It doesn’t help that we seem to only be interested in buying 18-21 year olds either as well as people seem to think buying really young necessarily means better also. It it well noted Reece has had a lot of injuries in his career already. Multiple that have been reoccurring, particularly with his knees and ankles. And Chilly had his ACL and reoccurring hamstring issues this season? Hardly “little tweaks that just need time” are they?

Needs to focus on getting himself fit and sustaining a good run of no injuries over the next few seasons. Has all the tools to be an absolute stalwart here but has to get that part sorted. Particularly when people have shown how important playing is regardless of how good you are with the whole Kante situation.

Criminal decision by the club. Absolutely criminal. But what a career and at least he’s gone to somewhere where we wont necessarily regret it as he isn’t playing for a direct rival/competitor.

Maybe on the books it looks good but football isn’t played on a spreadsheet. Also not to mention we wouldn’t give half as much a shit about this side of it if Boehly, Eghbali & co had been a bit less excitable in certain transfers in the summer (Cucurella & Koulibaly) and January (Mudryk as well as actually maybe looking at selling some of the players who had no future here). But on the pitch, what we lose/have lost in those players - its not easy to replace. Caicedo could easily be another Cucurella and for the £100m plus fee that Brighton will want - I wouldn’t be surprised. Lavia could be another Carney but at almost triple the price if you trust some of the reports. We need some sort of proven quality with similar characteristics and leadership skills to replace these kind of players. Its as if we haven’t learned any lessons and are just going to continue throwing stuff against a wall and hope it sticks. Like there needs to be some sort of happy medium in our transfer strategy, it can’t just look good on a spreadsheet or we might as well become Benfica, Leipzig or Ajax. Also this injury thing re Kante. I am sick of hearing it. We just had what 2 seasons where how many players were constantly out injured? We just gave Reece a 7 year deal at the beginning of the season despite the fact he’s been in and out the team the last 2 seasons with injuries. Chilwell signed an extension despite the same fact he’s been in and out a lot in past 2 seasons. We wanted to give Mount an extension despite the fact he struggled with injuries this year? If these were in the same position would you advocate the same approach? Kante’s return and some of his performances were actually positives in what was a dismal season.

Lets be honest theres no such thing as loyalty in football these days. Plus he’s going from a club who finished 12th to 2nd, where there isn’t as much uncertainty around it. Again as mentioned, I am not surprised we have seen an exodus of players and staff this last 12 months, something is definitely happening at the club that whilst in the long run may work out for the good (or may not) has concerned me. No doubt players and staff in and around with more exposure to whats going on and involvement will likely have concerns. Just because they haven’t said they wanted to leave the club or shown that or necessarily went about anything like that, doesn’t mean everything is all good. Thiago Silva done an interview to French media after our CL exit that raised a lot of questions about the going ons in the club. Players like Jorginho, who turned down Man City to come here, Kovacic, who left Real Madrid to come here, Mason Mount, who came through the academy here, Ngolo Kante, Antonio Rudiger, have all left/are leaving for various reasons. Losing this calibre of players in a short period never looks good.

Losing Kante for nothing and agreeing a 30m fee (only guaranteed 25m as 5m is add ons related to performances) with City to sell them Kovacic is bad enough, never mind that it looks like our plans to replace them is to spend probably £130m minimum on Lavia and Caicedo…. I am sorry but our transfer strategy is fucking wank. Poch alone isn’t going to be able to give all the required experience and leadership to this group, we need some actual proper boys in there who have got a bit about themselves.

Going to be £100m upwards I’d imagine, any club spending a fee of £40-50m for Lavia is just going to further ensure that Brighton go well he’s worth more than double that. Not to mention they probably rank him up there alongside Declan Rice in terms of value (WHU talking about wanting £110-120m including player/adds on apparently).

We aren’t getting Caicedo for £70m. What a crock of shite. We would of got him in January if they valued him at that….

Interested to see how he does, hopefully he plays as a 10 as he won’t cut it as an offensive outright 9 here. We need a number 9 regardless. Coming from the Bundesliga that skepticism will always be there for me as we’ve seen with Werner and Havertz, scoring goals in Germany doesn’t necessarily mean its a given that it will translate to the PL. And if I am really honest, by no means does Nkunku look a better player than what Havertz did at Bayer Leverkusen but he is much more mature so he has that going for him. His numbers are good the last 2 seasons goals wise and from 2019-2022 he has good numbers for assists so its promising but again he has to bring that to this team. I think Poch will use him like he used Dele Alli at Spurs, in that role running beyond the CFs.

Partey cant be depended on fitness wise all season though - which is the same argument here for us letting Kante walk out on a free. Plus there isn’t a huge gap between him and Rice, in fact I would say there really isn’t much of a gap if at all. Partey maybe better technically but isn’t much else where he stands out as a better player, Rice more mobile and physically not much in it. I genuinely see Rice taking Xhaka’s place though not Parteys.

Tbf there were several people on here where saying City’s treble was tainted due to financial breaches and whatnot a few weeks ago and are now in absolute shock that other fan bases have the audacity to accuse us of having dodgy Saudi links because of PIF and Clearlake, although I’m pretty sure it was common knowledge prior to the takeover….. Have to be careful of how these dealings go, I do get the feeling that perhaps down the line this connection could be one that is further investigated by some of the footballing authorities. Not sure what they find but ultimately, think folk should focus on what happens on the pitch a bit more than off it, particularly in regards to these links for us and City last season. Or Newcastle. Or Man United.

Big ask maybe. In all fairness though, has anybody actually ever seen this kid play in mens football yet? I think he played in MLS but again, never seen him play once myself. Have seen a few MLS games when I was in Houston back in April & May though and the standard is absolutely atrocious.

Genuinely not concerned by him going, he had a very good first season yes and made some huge saves in that time in the CL games also but its not like he is going to a top club. That speaks volumes for me - if he was that good then he wouldn’t be going to play in Saudi, but he is, so yeah. Different to Kante though - should have kept him as he could still offer something here.

What did people expect though? We need to sell players. We cannot demand excessive sums and clubs know that. Been saying this for months now we will lose good quality players for lower prices. If any of these Saudi deals collapse for Koulibaly, Mendy and Ziyech though we are pretty fucked as it sounds like they are given us decent fees for players nobody else wants to pay for. There is also no way United will pay what we want for Mount and I am doubtful that Arsenal will pay €80m euros for Havertz as being reported, I don’t think any clubs that stupid (although we were).

Yep. I doubt he would of even continued playing for Villa if we didn’t sign him. Not under Emery anyway thats for sure. Don’t see him doing anything in particular that would make us regret selling him, not even convinced he would play at AC Milan just seems an odd link. Genuinely wonder what folk who believe he is going to go on and make us regret selling him see in him because even at Villa, he didn’t remotely catch my eye. Would of taken McGinn or Luiz ahead of him any day of the week - and even then I am skeptical of how those 2 would do at a bigger club.

Precisely. He only wants Inter so it will inevitably be a shit deal for us or another loan.