It's now being said that Eze doesn't have a £60m release clause, and instead there is a gentleman's agreement Hang on: gentleman's agreement? please log in to view this image
Just sketched out our ‘depth chart’ (excuse the Americanism) to get a sense of how the squad is shaping up. I included some of the more prominent youth players (some of whom may go on loan again, like Phillips and Devine) but excluded the likes of GLC, Reggie, and Spence who we can assume are leaving in some capacity. For me, the immediate needs of the shopping list are - another CB for cover - fullback depth especially if they’re left sided - another striker, as at the moment the only dedicated 9s with any senior experience are Richy and Veliz Outside of that the RW slot is a little bare, but with the market looking pricey this year a lot depends on what the club think of Solomon. Johnson is first choice out there at the moment for me and deserves the chance to show more improvement after a decent, if at times frustrating, first season. If they decide to flip Solomon for easy profit then we’ll need to go big on an elite winger IMO.
Dorrington remains the big question mark for our CB depth this season: Do we arrange a season-long loan to get him some experience, or do we loan Phillips to keep developing him while retaining Dorrington as an option to call upon in a pinch? I guess how the pairing fare against Cambridge on Saturday might nudge us along to some kind of answer
Dorrington is also currently still recovering from his injury so likely won’t be involved for a good while yet, which complicates things.
Might have been someone else. Ali Gold said the other day that he’s still recovering from the hamstring issue and likely won’t be training until August.
TBH it might have been Jamie Donley, as they do look pretty similar to one another and it was for a fraction of a second in the vid of players returning
Dorrington won’t be back training until August/ September. Imagine the starting CB duo for the match against Cambridge will be Davies and Phillips. 4th choice CB for the coming season I’d probably give to one of Phillips or Dorrington as the other heads on loan. As we saw with Ange last season he’s not going to rotate the CB partnership much if van de Ven and Romero remain fit but with Europa I’d imagine he’ll make one change with Dragusin coming in and starting alongside one of the other two. Then the 4th choice can be utilised in the second half if things go our way. That role in the squad is best suited to a youngster or a “Jonny Evans” type, you’ll rarely find someone in their sort of prime willing to join on that kind of basis, albeit money can talk I guess.
Skyte Sports are determined to make cash + Lo Celso for Ramsey a thing this morning Then again, they're also linking us with Lois Openda - and Alasdair Gold said we didn't have interest in him due to a lengthy contract weeks ago
BILGE are once again linking us with Hertha Berlin youngster (and captain of the German U16s) Boris Lum, claiming he's met with us three times They also mention he has a €5m release clause in his contract, which is until 2026
The Turks are again linking us with Fener’s Sebastian Szymanski, the Polish winger. 25 years old and won the Dutch league with Feyenoord under Slot on loan there a couple of years back. Seems like a weird link unless he’s right sided as we’re stacked with LW options. I hope this doesn’t mean we plan on mainly using Sonny through the middle. Then again, it’s the Turkish press who are reporting this so not always reliable and it could be agent talk.
With a release clause that low, I doubt we were ever interested. Don't know too much about him but his stats make him look like a one season wonder who only started scoring regularly a year ago, which for a 28 year old is not a good look.
Szymanski's mainly an attacking midfielder. He spent most of last season playing in a 4-2-3-1 as the central player in the 3. Thankfully there were a number of ex-Premier League players around him for reference. Edin Dzeko and Michy Batshuayi competed for the 9 role with the Bosnian narrowly coming out ahead, 25 goals to 24. Dusan Tadic played on the left wing and got 16 goals and 16 assists. He was probably right to leave Ajax. Cengiz Under and Irfan Kahveci shared the right wing. I think Under had injury problems. Ex-Man Utd midfielder Fred played alongside Ismail Yuksek in the 2-man midfield behind them. They set the early running and scored plenty of goals, but narrowly missed out on the title by 3 points to Galatasaray. Scored 99 league goals to their rival's 92 and only lost one game, which was in early November to Trabzonspor. Galatasaray lost twice, including the penultimate game which was against Fenerbahce, but that ended a run of 18 straight wins. Davinson Sanchez, Carlos Vinicius, Tanguy Ndombele and Serge Aurier all presumably got medals...
Alasdair Gold said we weren't looking at him 2-3 weeks ago, though his name did keep getting linked to us throughout last season Would have been a decent shout as a backup striker a couple of seasons ago as he was pretty decent at Rennes between 2020-22 (and on loan at Stuttgart the following season) but those were 10 goal seasons, not 28-goal seasons
Nizaar Kinsella now says it's unlikely we'll be offloading Djed Spence to Genoa, as they don't have the £8.5m to make his loan permanent ...which is, of course, bollocks: they're €12m in the black after last season's transfer business (in no small part due to us signing Dragu), and apparently had enough money to currently be €13.5m in the red so far this summer, the majority of that being the €15m they paid Marseille for Vitinha last week
There’s talk that the Emerson fee between us and Milan has a €5m difference. Come on, Milan. Just pay that bit more for Cafu’s heir, ffs. Was also talk the other day from Ben Jacobs that Wolves value Neto at £60m, we currently value him at £45m. Just give them Lo Celso as well and Bob’s your uncle I say.
