Mags linked with Solanke. Could affect us chasing Moore? Bournemouth unlikely to allow both forwards to leave…
Well, you wouldn’t have thought so… I suppose we’ll soon find out. They were close to their FFP limit, last I’d seen.
Wouldn't mind seeing / hearing about some concrete interest from us mind. Days are ticking over and there are deals to be done. Clarke interest seems to be ramping up to with half of London wanting him.
Yeah I would believe that TBH. He is a bit more mature these days so maybe more prepared for the bright lights of the smoke. Be an interesting one as I can see WHU/Palace and Brentford all going hard for him.
Might sound daft but I wouldn’t have a massive problem letting him go for good money, as long as we have a replacement lined up. Hard to replace I know.
Jan is always the hardest time like and would be like a dagger to the heart to this Sunderland team. Seems to be our only play who can consistently turn a 1 point performance into 3. Anything 20m and I think it will be hard to keep him. Stock is high. Only takes one bad tackle and that's conversation is over.
Also we all know his bell end of an agent has been publicly pushing hard for a big money transfer for some time.
We do always seem to be slow to sign anyone in January. This isn't a criticism as I'm sure there are underlying reasons. Last year we signed 4 players in January, but they were on the 23rd, 26th, 27th and 31st of the month.
I honestly think that we'll see nobody going this month. Pritchard would be daft going somewhere now, dack is injured and out of contract in the summer and I think the players that have been mentioned with clubs being interested will hopefully want to see if they can go up with us. Will be different in the summer though as we could lose a few
Only one I can see is Matete back out on loan (or permanent). And maybe another loan for players like Johnson, or even Diamond (feels unlikely). The other possibility is a loan for one of Mayenda or Hemir, especially if we are keeping Burstow. And personally I think it feels more likely than not that Clarke goes. As @Prehab26 said, any high bids are going to be hard to turn down. Especially considering there's no guarantee we get bids like that in the summer (if he gets injured for example - like Stewart)
If we sell Clarke, I’d be happy to plod on around mid-table until the end of the season, as long as the club were going to spend every penny on quality players in the summer and then give it a right good go, next season.
FWIW Clarke leaving would be a blow, but it would also be an exciting test for this recruitment team to have some real money to spend. Him leaving would pretty much rule out promotion this year. But for my money we have no better than a 1/10 chance of promotion this season anyway. So if we get an inflated bid for him now, one that might not be repeated in the summer, I'd be very tempted to cash in and would wish the lad well.
For example a £25m bid for Clarke comes in. Do we turn that down in the hope that the 1 in 10 shot of promotion comes off? It would be naive to assume we will get similar sized bids in the summer. (on the flip we may get even bigger ones in the summer - but look at Stewart, there's no guarantees with anything) Personally, whilst I obviously would not turn down promotion (I was devastated after the Luton semi final last year), I don't think the club is ready for promotion to the PL yet anyway. Obviously you dont turn it down if it comes because the parachute payments alone are transformational. I'd much rather we took a high fee now, accepted that our chances of promotion slips from 1 in 10 to 1 in 15, and use the money to sign 2-3 quality promotion ready ideally already British-based players in the summer.
