Hey I will have no ill feelings towards the dead. He was a good man and he did have some info. Just it was conspicuous at best.
Zabarnyi talks with PSG. Feels like Another One Bites The Dust should be the NUFC transfer theme tune.
The other way to look at this is, should the rumour be believed, we are in the same market as the European elite. Therefore, the clubs ambition is right at the top. I think we and Villa are in the difficult position of trying to break into the CL places consistently. Both teams need to be there year on year to grow global fanbases and revenues to attract the top players. If we get one wrong the drop off in quality could tank a season, and we don't have the revenues of the "big 6" to buy loads, to cover up mistakes, Brighton, Fulham etc are, currently, trying to get into Europe, so the drop off for a missed transfer is no where near as big as it is for us. They can then take the risk on the little known player from Ukraine knowing that if bad, it won't be terrible, if good then they possibly get Europe, if they are great then the above applies and a European giant may come in and give them a bumper pay day. Let's face it, we would all have been happy with Khusanov which i think would have counted as a good bit of scouting before Man City sniped the deal...
There is a suspicion of a lack of urgency but no knowledge. I reckon that we were in contact with Mbeumo's team and his wage demands put us off. No way are we paying upwards of £200k a week. As for scouting nous, there have been so many links, most of these to players I've not heard of. Some of these will be agents stirring, others will be that we've approached a players agent to assess the lie of the land and the commercial deal that would be required. Whether we take it further is another matter
Unfortunately there probably isn’t any player anywhere under the radar of the top clubs. It’s all down to price and gambling regarding the cheaper prospects or you have to pay the higher prices for relatively more established players which still has its gambles. Alternatively you pay absolute top whack yet can still get it wrong. You can though have the best scouting team in the world but it doesn’t guarantee you’ll get the players you want especially if you aren’t one of the “Worldie” clubs.
I suspect that's why we seem ponderous. I suspect we try to minimise the risk with having the Management team meet players to ensure they can gel with the team. We would not want to sign up a dressing room problem for 5 years. That is likely to take more time than just looking at technical ability and stats
Another thing to jote is our £73m loss from 2022 drops off our accounts on the 1st July, so we may not spend big until we're into the new accounting year...
Again, why weren't we in there when he was £35m? He looked a great prospect at the WC - I even said so on here suggesting we should go for him, and I know nowt.
