Transfer thread for 2016-17 season

Berahino to Stoke for 12mil - ah well

 

Where's Leandro Damiao these days?

 

Their Chairman must be proud of himself now for holding out for more than our £20m offer last year.

 

Regularly playing at the Maracana

...because that's Flamengo's home stadium

...although "regularly getting sub appearances" is more accurate

 

I honestly thought he'd wait until the end of the season and stick 2 fingers up as he left the for peanuts.

 

OP updated

 

Scored on his debut to seal a win at Cambridge, who were on a decent unbeaten streak:

Bit lucky and scrappy, but he made the right run and it paid off.
Probably should've been chalked off for that rather dodgy tackle in the buildup, but you get away with them more at that level.

 

The papers are linking us to Inter centre back Andrea Ranocchia as cover for Verts, either as a loan or a £5m signing.

The papers obviously didn't check the obvious issue with their logic, namely how Ranocchia is right-footed while Verts and his understudy Wimmer are left-footed to make it easier to swap players in and out of his system, and there's the obvious issue that Ranocchia has a lot in common with Fazio - in terms of his style of play, penchant for picking up cheap yellows, and habit of some high-profile derps that cost Inter games, hence Inter are willing to let him go for £5m when he's under contract for two more years.

 

As gutting as Jan's injury is, there's no need for a new CB.

The City defensive performance may have made people think a bit irrationally but City's front four of Aguero, de Bryune, Silva and Sane cost roughly £180m, they were bound to cause our defence problems especially with such a key piece missing, plus the fact City had a point to prove.

Not many other sides possess that sort of firepower and even though he's been a bit shaky, Wimmer has more than proven that with a run of games he's a bloody good CB. We also have enough CB's to cope with one loss; Toby, Dier, Kev and CCV as proper centre halves, with Davies and Wanyama also having the capability to play there.

Spending dough on someone to be in the mix and who may not even play for the 6 weeks Jan is out doesn't make much sense.

The only position I think we could consider adding to - and I wouldn't be bothered one bit if we didn't - would be perhaps an ageing striker. Janssen can't even make the squad at the moment so it only leaves Kane as the real potent threat in the striker role, Sonny in fairness can do a very decent job there too but if there's an experienced head out there, who can help with Janssen's (and Kane's) development and maybe play the odd 10-15 mins to help chase a goal if need be then that could be beneficial.

I heard Keano and Berbatov are free agents

 

It's great when teams like WBA can blow £8m in order to prove a point to Levy!

 

From Sky's Transfer Centre:

"SPURS WANT PINAMONTI?

Tottenham are showing an interest in Inter Milan youngster Andrea Pinamonti, according to Calciomercato.com.

The 17-year-old striker is highly-rated in Italy and his current club are yet to tie him down to a long-term deal, which has opened the door for Spurs to potentially make an offer."

Any Serie A/ Italian football experts in the house?

 

At centre half, we need to bear in mind we have Toby also injured. Don't know the extent yet, but if that a hamstring strain, he'll be out for a while. This leaves only Dier and Wimmer as senior centre halves, CCV close behind. And so that leaves Davies as covering Rose and Wimmer. With a little luck we can ride it for a few weeks, but one more injury in that area and we are down to bare bones.

 

Poch will probably put him straight into the Academy and bring him through the ranks with some very careful nurturing.

I am very much in favour of our buying young in order to nurture. That has to be the way to go.

 

Apparently, Inter's his team from childhood and they are freshly minted with filthy Chinese lucre. He's supposed to be a real talent but I can't imagine the circumstances whereby we'd get him at this point. Worth a go though. I trust we're working on more possible transfers as well.

 

Yeah that's true, if Toby's hamstring is worse than feared then I can understand at looking at options, although if we're to believe reports, he was subbed off more for precaution than anything and with our next game against Wycombe, we'll have Kev and CCV play that and then Sunderland is on the following Wednesday, so hopefully by then Toby should be good.

 

Yeah agree, it's really paying dividends now when looking at Rose and Walker, plus the likes of Kane, Winks and co from the academy. We've balanced it nicely too by spending wisely on the likes of Toby, Wanyama, Dier and Wimmer in recent seasons.

 

The one problem at Inter that could work in our favour is that they seem so often to be reluctant to give young talent a chance, there's a player in their ranks I've seen briefly called Assane Gnoukouri, looks a real gem of a player yet can barely feature despite Inter being well below par in recent seasons. They signed that Gabriel Barbosa in the summer who loads of teams were watching after his impressive Olympics and season in Brazil, yet he's featured only about 4 or 5 times so far.

I looked up that Pinamonti's stats, 14 goals in 13 youth league games is definitely something to grab team's attentions. Probably won't happen but good to see the scouts are identifying what seems to be top talent.

 

Plus he's played **** all football since we were negotiating (on strike if you like ) that they've had a year's wasted salary on top of that. Peace cost WBA in excess of £10m and put the kid's career back a year or 2.

 

He's been compared with David Trezeguet in the past, although what does stand out is that his style of play is a hybrid of Harry and Janssen, to be more precise he has the finishing, positioning and link-up play of Kane combined with Janssen's strength and ability to hold up the ball even though he's on the receiving end of some Italian defending.

One thing that does have to be said about Inter is they have a reputation of a club where youngsters go to die, as that exact description can be used to describe the careers of Geoffrey Kondogbia, Marcelo Brozovic, Juan Jesus and the aforementioned Andrea Ranocchia in their current squad, and then there's the bizarre case of Xherdan Shaqiri who signed for them in the January window and was at Stoke by the time the summer window had closed, plus there's always a large churn in terms of players as well as chopping and changing of managers - and it needs pointing out that they have had ten different full-time managers since 2010, so players are constantly in and out of favour rather than being central to the team.

 

Look let's all be honest about this. Berahino was given ample of chance to play for Brom and he messed it up himself. He's tried to leave around 50 million times and was given full chance to play last year but wasn't exactly great (rondon is a far better for TP). They could have probably got more money and you were offering a good fee for him which they didn't deem good enough.

We all love it when our clubs deny prima donnas from moving on because they throw their toys at the pram a la berahino and the club "won" that battle even if they got a lower offer than original.

If you had let Bale or Modric bully their way out of leaving spurs (bale didn't but modric tried it) and then sulked and didn't perform you would be annoyed.