Jype

Probably a good idea to separate them. The likes of Lukaku, Aubameyang, Pulisic, Ziyech, Hudson-Odoi, Ampadu and Sarr are halfway through the door already and never going to be a part of the squad this season so having them around is just an unnecessary distraction. The primary training group is already large enough as it is with plenty of the youngsters being kept around to show Poch what they're made of before deciding who to keep and who to loan out.

I don't see how Brighton can claim the transfer fee for Rice as any kind of benchmark for Caicedo. Rice is much more experienced at the top level (+200 PL games for Rice vs 45 for Caicedo) and not to mention Rice being a HG player with the infamous English tax included in the price. If Rice goes for £105M then I'd say £75-85M for Caicedo is fair enough.

I watched it at work but thankfully everyone else was already gone so I could cry in peace. 😭 His time had come and it's 100% the right time for him to leave (or rather it should have been last year already) but now that it actually happened the video still hit me like a fucking freight train. A proper club legend. Azpi's farewell message makes Mount's look even more fake. Azpi really spoke from the heart while Mount's 'goodbye' was like a statement drafted by his PR rep and looked like someone was holding a gun to his head and forced him to read it. 😂

Good. Fuck Inter and their penny pinching.

Dybala could actually be a decent shout and I wouldn't necessarily be against it. Apparently he's on a salary of around £120K/wk at AS Roma so nothing outrageous. For a £10M release clause and reasonable wages we could do a lot worse as a rotation option for a couple of years. Assuming Poch will play a 4-2-3-1 he could be the primary cover for Nkunku in the middle of the '3' or even play up front every once in a while. While he's probably not suited to playing as the lone number 9, having a player Nkunku behind him could make for an interesting partnership? There's been no solid sources linking him to Chelsea though so it's probably bs.

Could be a good loan destination for him. With Maddison gone there could be an opening for him to be a starter?

Clearlake own 60% of the club. The rest of the shares belong to Boehly, Walter, Wyss and some smaller investors together. Of this 40% group Boehly has by far the largest personal stake (rumored to be around 20%) as well as the right to represent these 'silent partners' in any decision making process. According to multiple reliable reports the voting rights between Clearlake and Boehly's group are split 50/50, despite the shares being 60/40 in favor of Clearlake. So whichever way you put it Boehly has a massive say in what happens around the club and is not just a 'public face'. Which is okay, as long as he's learnt (and continues to learn) from previous mistakes. I for one think it's a sign of some decent progress that he's taken a step back and is trusting people with more football knowledge to do stuff in his stead, but of course the jury is still out.

Good. He's a great player but seriously, fuck Inter. Always playing the 'we are poor' victim card when looking to buy/loan players but when it's someone else interested in one of their own they'll fleece you for every last penny and then some. It's not like they don't actually have the money because they do 20-30M€ transfers from other Italian clubs all the time but they just don't want to give any to the English clubs because they're envious of all the money in the EPL. I doubt their local rivals Milan have any more money than Inter but at least they're open to doing fair deals, as proven by the moves for Tomori, RLC and maybe even Pulisic later on. Milan even paid a small fee (€3M) for Giroud but now in a similar situation Inter are refusing to pay a penny for Azpi.

Already done or pending final confirmations: Havertz £60M + 5M Kovacic £25M + 5M Koulibaly £17M Mendy £16M Ziyech £8M Loftus-Cheek £15M + 3M Kante contract expired Felix loan expired Zakaria loan expired = £141M initial fees + 13M add-ons So these are the ones already completed or just about to be finalized. In addition to bringing in a lot of income these moves also take around £1.5M a week off the wage bill (£70-80M a year), as well as trim down the squad size by a whole 9 players. Already under negotiations: Mount £55-60M to United Pulisic £10-15M to Milan CHO to somewhere for £10-15M Azpilicueta free transfer to Inter Lukaku to Inter --> ideally a straight transfer or loan with a firm obligation Bubbling under: Maatsen permanent move for £15-20M? Ampadu permanent move for £5-10M? Chalobah maybe sold for £15-20M? Sarr to just about anywhere to get him out Aubameyang to just about anywhere to get him out Pull off all these moves and it could easily end up surpassing £250-300m sales in a single summer transfer window while also getting around 20 players off the books, the vast majority of whom are seriously undesirable to keep. Still a long way to go and lots of deals to conclude but the signs are promising IMO. Once most of the outgoings are done we can finally start focusing on incomings for the rest of the summer.

Yeah, with Gusto arriving it will be much easier to give James a rest every once in a while. That is assuming Gusto isn't a total dud of course. Especially now having a season with no European football the match load for James should be significantly lower than usual so let's hope he can get over whatever's injury problems he's been having over the last couple of years.

Where does he play for Arsenal though? He won't bench any of Martinelli, Ödegaard or Saka and I doubt he'll bench Jesus either. On first glance he looks just as problematic to fit in for them as he was for us. Let's hope it goes similarly bad for them too.

True, but rather take a £14M one-off loss for the two of them put together and get a clean break with permanent moves. For context, Ziyech and Koulibaly total cost on the books for last season was £37M (salary+amortisation) so even by taking a loss it's still £23M saved for the next financial year for two useless players. Even if we count in the costs of their replacements (Madueke, Colwill) it's still going to be a massive net saving.

Time for Lukaku to put his money where his mouth is. If he wants Inter so bad and they just can't afford him then he might as well offer to make a financial contribution himself to make the move happen. But he's a selfish little prick so he won't do that.

Yep. Getting rid of K2, Auba, Ziyech and Mendy at break-even values would decrease squad costs by around £50-60M/y including wages and amortisations so even if there was no actual 'book profit' being made with these deals, the savings alone would provide a gigantic FFP boost going forward.

Nah it's quite simple really. Negotiating a new main sponsor at an improved value during a summer where the club have just finished 12th and have no European football on offer was always going to be tricky to pull off. The club clearly know it's a shady as fuck company and that gambling sponsors in the UK are about to be banned in the near future anyway so a short term deal is clearly the only one the club are willing to agree to. If the next season goes well it's going to be much easier to then negotiate a new long term deal with some more respectable companies at a value that is much higher than anything that would be on offer now. It's a scummy deal regardless though.

Yeah, agreed. After all he still has two years left on his deal so it's not like we can (yet) be bullied over the valuation like with Mount, so if a rival club wants him they should just pay up or fuck off. I don't even rate Havertz and wouldn't mind him going but if it's going to be to another English club there should be no compromise over the fee. Would sell him for anything over €50M to a club from another country in a heartbeat though.

How good is Emi Martinez with the ball? For the right price he could be a good option for a few years, though Villa probably have no intention of selling.

The problem with signing Bellingham was not so much a financial one, but rather there was just simply too much competition for him that he likely wouldn't have given us a second thought when the likes of Real Madrid were after him too, especially after the shit show of a season we've just had. Would also assume Bellingham will be on a significantly higher wage package than Enzo is.

As long as he's not doing it for a direct PL rival I really couldn't care less. And if he were to be a success at RM the chances of him later being sold to another PL club are very slim. He's had three years and 140 games to show what he's made of and he's had what, 10 good games and anonymous/shit for the other 130? It's clear he's not going to raise his game while playing at this club so might as well cut him loose and recoup as much money as we possibly can.

He can stay fit, yes.

Let's face it. He's clearly out of favor at the club, is on a high salary, is very injury prone, hasn't shown any kind of good form in years and to top it all off he has only one year left on his contract. If you think anyone's going to pay premium value for him you're delusional. 20-25M if there's enough interest but if we struggle to find a buyer who'll take on his wages we might have to settle for less.

How often has Sterling received a horizontal pass inside the box? Like I said in the post you quoted his off the ball movement has always been his best asset and if there's even the slightest amount of creativity in the team he'll score goals but right now he's being asked to do something he's never been good at which is making things happen all by himself so no wonder he's shit. The team's been a mess all season and it looks like a collective of players who've never played a game of football together in their lives. Nobody seems to know where they should play the ball and nobody knows where they should make runs to receive the ball. The attacks stop 30 meters away from the goal and the ball just gets shuffled between players until they lose it over and over again. Whenever the ball gets played out wide the full-backs or wingers just spam hopeless crosses high into the box despite there being nobody there who can even head the ball. Sterling's not been doing anything to raise his stock but the rest of the team aren't doing anything to help him either. I still think in a functioning team he could be a useful asset to have but being utilized in the way he has this season he's a pointless player.

West Ham have an option to extend Rice's deal for another year so if he's going to move this summer the contract situation probably won't affect the sale price, especially with multiple clubs interested. Wherever he ends up at I would think it's going to be for £70-80M.

Broja is a tricky one. After 6-9 months out with an ACL injury he needs regular games to get back to his best, and at this point it's still a question mark if even his best is good enough. That's why I would loan him out for the season and then look at his situation again in 2024. If he has a good season out on loan we can either bring him back for 24/25 or sell him once his value has recovered a bit from the drop off caused by the bad injury. And if his loan season is bad then he's not going to be good enough for us anyway. I'm pretty sure I read a few days ago that Sporting Lisbon would like Broja on loan, something like that would be good IMO. As for the goalkeepers yeah I agree something could be done there but for me it's way down on the list of priorities for the summer. If there's sufficient interest in one or both of Kepa/Mendy then we should sell and look for another option but I don't think it would be a disaster to postpone any GK decisions into next year.