I won't get too carried away as I'm not confident we will land either let alone both, but the prospect of those 2 in our midfield is exciting. It would give me hope for the first time that we might actually put up a good fight this season. I didn't realise quite how well Carvalho did at Hull after we missed out on him last season. He averaged a goal every other game. Especially impressive considering he joined midseason and wasnt in one of the top sides in the league.
Not sure who will pay what we want for Alcaraz, but he seems the most obvious saleable asset, if we think Dibling can do a better job and we can get someone in on loan for this season to take that creative lead after losing Stuart Armstrong too then it makes a lot of sense.
Jonny Rowe at Norwich is a winger I would like Saints to look at, allegedly available for £10m as going into the last year of his deal, has looked good when I’ve seen him play
Brighton mate of mine said this re Buonanotte - so, similar to DTLW’s mate - Flashes of brilliance, like real brilliance. still young and makes the wrong choice a bit much, but probs would make you better for sure
Apparently Leeds are making an opening bid of £7m. So yeah, after a bit of negotiation, a fee of about £10m is probably what Norwich would sell for. And in that case, I would be very interested. Is he quite ready for the PL yet? I don't know. But I'd suggest his potential is such that in the future he'll be worth significantly more than £10m. That's a steal.
Yeah seems a bit more long term option, but I’d suggest so is Raj-Sakyi who we seemed keen on I think Rowe is more a right winger though which may mean we aren’t interested
We won't sell for half of that. Even if he doesn't suit Russball he is extremely talented with a long contract. Not going to sell cheaply.
Yeah I don't think we would sell for half that, but I don't think anyone is going to offer much more than half. Best we could get for him is £25m IMO and I think that is unlikely.
Depends how much we need the money from selling him to fund other areas. If we aren’t going to use him much (I read between the lines from Blackmore interview and came to that conclusion) then we might think getting £20m is worth it if we can use it on players who Martin will actually trust and use
I love Alcarez, but if we were to get an offer in the region of £40m, I would definitely sell. However, I struggle to see such a high offer being made. I appreciate the argument that even a £20m offer could be attractive for someone who Martin doesn't consider a regular starter. But I would always be cautious about allowing any manager to have too much control over a club's transfer activity. I don't think it's overly unrealistic to imagine a scenario where he's scoring the winning goal for us in, say, February 2025, with a different manager in the dugout who is starting him every week.
I agree with your thinking about not letting a manager have too much control, but if the options right now are keep Alcaraz and don’t add sufficient quality because we can’t afford it or sell and back Martin with additional players he actually wants then I think you sell. If we have the money to keep Alcaraz unless a mental bid comes in, and get the additions Martin wants then happy days
There is a lot of potential there yeah, but he looked way off the pace during the run in. He was coming back from an injury so that can be forgiven, but it looked as well like he didn't know what to do at times - which is more worrying. What is good is that he has played across the front line for Norwich at times, has a real eye for goal (even if he does sometimes shoot when others are better placed) but, he has only really done it for half a season so far. So is he really that good? Or did he just have a purple patch. It was noticeable that Norwich looked toothless while he and Sargent were injured though. For £10m, I think he is worth a punt. Not sure about £20m+ that Norwich fans are calling for though.
Norwich fans aren’t setting the price. I think Leeds fans were calling for 40 for Summerville and they got 25. Incidentally that first number looks like our request for Alcaraz (albeit from the club and not the fans). Key difference is likely that Summerville definitely wanted out
