Reddish-Blue

I still get the feeling that Hall's future is in midfield with the ability to play LB as required... Best case for Maatsen may be some sort of a sale with buy back option. (Similar to what City had for Lavia, let the kid develop elsewhere and if the opportunity arises in the next 2 years, we can still bring back Maatsen at a reasonable enough price).

Since when do we actually play with a #10? The last time we played with a traditional #10 was probably Mata. If I had to pick an attacking midfielder to go with our current group, it'd be Cherki over Wirtz. Cherki has that dribbling ability that we've missed since the young Hazard days. Not sure if Lyon are keen on selling their prized youngster though...

Yea Newcastle were keen at 15 million but then Southampton would have to pay us around 20% or more of that fee as a sell-on. They'd be better off negotiating straight with us, get a slightly higher fee in the process.

Macallister was a release clause though, bit different to Caicedo Caicedo is arguably their most valuable asset and they already rejected around the 65-70 million mark in January from Arsenal, he also signed a new deal with them (on the condition that he'd be allowed to leave this summer). Think it'll be closer to 90 million including add-ons and they know our alternative option ran to PSG.

Wonder if the club are concerned about HG criteria moving forward (just off the top of my head: Madueke, Sterling, Gallagher, Chilwell, Reece, think Colwill would count as U-21) Losing Mount, RLC hurts the HG rules and Gallagher/Chalobah have been linked to moves

Wonder if Reece's body will allow him to play as a RWB for longer periods of time...considering the hamstring and other injuries he's had on a consistent basis

Wonder if they have any midfielders available (the last one we got from Lyon turned out to be pretty good)...considering we're short in midfield heading into next season.

You can't really say that Vieira ain't that guy when we just had the likes of Potter/Lampard in charge of the club. They're all the same (as in none of them should be managing a top 8 side).

Sturridge at least got to a good level, was selected as part of the PFA team of the year in 13/14 for Liverpool, had a solid strike rate in PL football and even got 20+ caps for England which is pretty good for someone with niggling injury issues. McEachran just didn't have the work ethic to go with his talent.

Absolutely spot on, Mount's a good player and he'll do well with Ten Hag's system but Ashley Cole was top class, there's no comparison between the two. Ended up being one of the best signings as he was arguably one of the best LB's in Europe for almost a decade.

Gilmour wanted to be loaned out though, he wanted the game time to develop rather than sit on the bench at Chelsea. It's just a shame that there wasn't much squad planning going on as Gilmour would have been a handy midfielder to have in the squad heading into next season (with 4 first team midfielders being sold in the last 2 transfer windows).

Remember Carlo Ancelotti blooding in some of the youngsters in that cup game vs Newcastle (think it was Van Aanholt, McEachran, Kakuta and a few others). Never really saw the hype around Stoch or Borini, decent players on their day but if you had to compare academy players, the ones with the most potential in the past few years: CHO, RLC, Solanke, Reece, Mount, Livramento and Colwill (i'm sure there are others that i'm forgetting)

I don't recall many of the top 4 teams in past years having such a young midfield Normally you want your midfielders to be in that 23-26 age profile (as they would have played at least 3-4 seasons of top level football by that point in time), with say 1 youngster and at least 1 older head (28+) Enzo-Caicedo (if it happens) is a nice combo but we need someone in that Kante/Jorginho type of profile to come in and be the level headed one and lead the youngsters through those rough patches.

Wasn't Mount offered 200k (base) per week on a 6+1 contract at Chelsea? He declined that offer but he's happy to go to United for 250k a week on a 6 year contract.... For an academy graduate to be leaving for an extra 50k a week is actually pretty funny. People thought he was the next Lampard but that couldn't be further from the truth.

I get the feeling that it will end up being closer to 90 million.

Probably trying to keep whatever value Kepa has left... We're stuck with Kepa until the last year of his contract as no club out there will touch him.

Is there any point in having two short keepers? Raya would make more sense as a replacement for Kepa (with Slonina to develop on loan and potentially come back and fight for the #1 spot in a few seasons time).

I doubt it'll be City, more like United will come for revenge if the Mount deal falls through and they'll put up a bid for Caicedo just to make the situation difficult (as they have UCL football to offer).

I just like to call it Saudi money. Abu Dhabi, Qatari, Saudi PIF....at the end of the day, they have way too much money in their pockets!

At least with Sir Alex, he didn't have the luxury of Saudi money. Pep is like a kid in a candy store, he just buys whichever player he wants/needs

The board don't need to be taught anything, too many people expecting transfers like FIFA or Football Manager. The board are just cleaning up the mess left behind by Tuchel and previous management in giving Koulibaly 300k a week and not being able to sell Ziyech/Pulisic to anyone. Romano has said that we are focusing on getting the sales done first before going for the big purchases. If Arsenal or someone else comes in with a huge bid (let's say 90+ million) for Caicedo, then we'll just have to go after other options.

@Blue Armour or maybe the players just don't have that connection with the club? I doubt Cech, Lampard, Terry, Drogba and various other players would have been eager to join Arsenal/United in their prime years. These boys want to jump ship to our rivals at the end of a pathetic season rather than fighting through it.....easy to see why we finished in the bottom half of the table. If he wasn't a money grabber, he would have signed the deal at Chelsea and shown an interest in continuing to be the academy player to follow for years to come. All this boils down to Mason not getting the same wage packet offer as Reece. Think Tammy Abraham said something similar when he was looking to sign a contract extension (mentioning that he wanted to be on par with CHO's wages) and then the following season Roma give us a solid offer.

Didn't he make it pretty clear that he was keen on a new challenge with 1 year left on his contract? Probably didn't want to go through a rebuild type season

We'd still be a top level midfielder short (even if Reece was to fill in at midfield as needed). Losing Kante/Kovacic/RLC in the same window kills our depth for next season.

How much are they expecting to get for him? Maybe 100 million, can't really expect more than that with 1 year left on his deal and Levy hesitant to let him go domestically... Bayern's bid is actually good, they are basically telling Kane, "you wanna win trophies before you retire, here's your golden ticket"