Jype

Aubameyang has a contract till 2025 at Barca worth £185K/wk so I doubt he'd take anything shorter than three years or accept any less wages than he's on at Barcelona if he were to move. Aubameyang is 33 years old and has been on the decline for a while now. Anything more than a one year loan for Aubameyang would be madness.

Belotti and Aubameyang. Is it 2017 again? Just need Morata to pop up in some rumors to make it a hat trick.

That's where I find Romano very annoying. He just re-posts the same piece of information over and over again without adding anything new in order to get tons of clicks, likes and re-tweets. Sure that's how he makes his money but he milks these reports way too much. The information about the new bid came from Ben Jacobs first with a lot more detail than Romano's tweet.

I really do wonder if the people creaming their pants over Gvardiol have even watched him for more than 5 full matches or if it's just the good old bandwagon effect where everyone just pretends to be an expert on him despite knowing next to nothing about the player aside from the fact he's young and highly rated. Don't get me wrong, I too have heard plenty of good things about him and would happily take him in the squad but I just find it funny how he's somehow gained this god-like status on this forum despite actually proving very little in his career so far.

Or Gvardiol might have a season not so great and a year from now no top club would even want him. The same happened with that Lacroix dude or whatever his name was, last year he was all the hype and this year he's already forgotten. At least Fofana's proven himself in two countries already, including EPL.

Why? Is Gvardiol supposed to be better than Fofana? I don't agree. As long as Fofana has fully healed from his leg break I'd say he's currently the better player of the two and they're both still equally young and developing. Fofana is already settled in the PL and will probably settle quicker.

Either that or his GF has told him she'll dump his ass if they have to move away from Barcelona. Those really are the only explanations that make any sense. 😂 edit: @ZAPHOD2319 beat me to it.

Well I don't know if Boehly has called him or not but it's a 100% confirmed fact that he desperately wants to stay at Barca.

"New Chelsea owner Tod Boehly personally called Frenkie de Jong several days ago. The Dutchman listened and reiterated his desire to fulfill his contract with Barça. Despite the no, Chelsea keep trying." I don't get why both United and Chelsea seem so insistent on going after this guy when it's always been clear his heart is in Barcelona and he's desperate to stay there even though they continue to treat him like shit. We saw first hand how quickly it turned sour with Lukaku who hadn't wanted to leave Inter in the first place so do we really want to see if we can make it happen again with another player who's reluctant to sign? Frenkie might be a lot more talented as a footballer than Lukaku but if the attitude is not right to begin with he will never reach his best level and even some minor setbacks can quickly snowball into a big problem.

Anthony fucking Taylor will ref this.

Koulibaly was already on high wages at Napoli and has been rated as one of the best defenders for years so it makes sense for him to get a pay rise in his last big contract.

Let's not applaud yet. Could still easily end up going the 'Bakayoko' route that Monaco just chooses not to play him in order to avoid the purchase obligation. But at least that's one less deadwood to clear out for now.

Yep. Looking at the list of released players and the players who are about to leave there will have been very sizeable cuts to the wage bill of last year. Lukaku, Werner, Rüdiger, Christensen, Saul and Drinkwater all gone with the likes of Batshuayi, CHO, Ziyech, Barkley, Alonso, Emerson, Kenedy, Sarr, Kepa potentially still to go if the club can find takers for them. That's already £1.1M a week saved in confirmed departures (though Lukaku only on loan) and should all of the rest go as well it's another £900K a week removed. Even if some of the deals involve some kind of salary compensation or some of the players end up staying the figures will still very likely add up to total savings of at least £75M a year in salaries alone, let alone the savings in removing future amortisation costs.

Nah. Most sources (Romano, Di Marzio etc.) placed him around €10M a year net after taxes, which is around £300K a week. Could be some inaccuracies in the figures reported of course, but should be in that ballpark.

Three years left on a £270K/wk deal which is a lot higher than he deserves based on his performances over the last two years. Even the highest paid players at Leipzig are on half of that so even if Werner accepts a wage cut they'll probably still have to offer him a high signing fee to join them. They simply can't afford to pay a high transfer fee and pay Werner high wages as well. The transfer fee is said to be 20M€ with bonuses taking it up to 30M€ so depending on how those bonuses are structured it might still be a decent enough total fee. These reports are from the German journalists who broke the news first, let's wait to see what the likes of Law and Ornstein say on the fee.

Sterling and Koulibaly are on around £300K/wk and saw some reports of Cucurella being on £120K/wk, although I wouldn't be surprised if it was a little higher because it was a very big transfer. No reports so far on the future prospects Chukwuemeka and Slonina.

The outrageous salary is the only reason for the fee being so low. There just isn't a big market for him at those wages so if we want him gone it's best to just accept whatever we can get.

Is that supposed to be a dig at Tuchel? You won't find any manager in the world today that has more pull than Guardiola so there's no shame in 'losing out' to him. Besides, didn't we just nab Cucurella when City had been after him all summer? Sure they weren't willing to pay as much in transfer fee as Boehly did but Cucurella could easily just have gone the route of Raphinha/Kounde and keep strict with his demands to go to a specific club and there's nothing Brighton could have done but ultimately lower their asking price to make it happen. Instead he spoke to Tuchel and was happy with our project too and ended up joining.

'Never reached his previous form'? Before his failed Man Utd stint (age 20 btw) he had only ever played for Palace in the Championship where he scored 6 league goals a season. Since going back to Palace he's played 8 years in the PL and aside from a blip in form in 2019/20 he's been very consistent with his level for a long time, averaging around 10 non-penalty goals a season for the last 5-6 years. If that's not 'reaching his previous form' I really don't know what is. Like I said in my previous reply I'm under no illusion Zaha's a top class player but he's still a good one. I wouldn't pay a big fee for him but if available on a reasonable deal I wouldn't say no.

I actually wouldn't mind him at this point. Never was that big a fan when previously linked to him but after seeing all these expensive big name attacking signings from other leagues not being all that great (Lukaku, Werner, Havertz, Pulisic, Ziyech) and our own Hudson-Odoi not developing as much as we'd hoped I wouldn't necessarily say no to Zaha anymore. He's a PL proven player who averages around 15 G+A in the league per season and can play any position in the front three. Not a world class player by any means but would improve the squad and for me definitely a better punt than someone like Depay or Aubameyang. The forward market is really dry at the moment, as proved by United's pursuit of Arnautovic. Zaha's contract at Palace runs out in 2023 so maybe he'd be available at a decent price too?

Not sure. Havertz, Broja, Sterling, Mount, Pulisic and one more is fine for depth. If really needed, Gallagher or Carney can play in the front three as well. Last couple of seasons the squad's been too bloated so trimming it to a more healthy level of competition is not a bad thing IMO.

Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel. 😂

Both are shit though.

30-35M€ plus bonuses isn't a bad deal for Werner, as long as there are no salary compensations included.

Lukaku as well.