Transfer Rumours Summer 2025 Transfer Thread…

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Steven Toast said:
I feel like I've addressed this multiple times and you keep referring back to it. So I'll say this all again because basing a gotcha on a false premise is just ****.

1. Owner lost all interest - Acun himself admitted he hadn't put 100% into City last season due to his responsibilities at Fenerbahce. Those are his words. Tan left, not because of some dodgy ****, but for the same reason Murat Ulker withdrew his funding pretty sharpish - they didn't think Acun was taking it seriously and didn't see a mutual way forward. Acun wanted big signings and automatic promotion with a "sod the cost" attitude, while Tan understood it would be a process and wanted the club to be frugal enough to remain sustainable (which once Ulker had gone, suddenly became very difficult with the wages we had that season we finished just outside the playoffs).

2. The club is heavily in debt. Yes, the money is owed to Acun Medya (not Acun himself, that's important for reasons I'll state in a moment) but it's still tens of millions our club owes to somebody else. Even if he was to sell (which we'll come to), he isn't getting £60-80m for the club because we don't have assets worth that much - even if you use Transfermarkt's squad valuation (which I'm loathe to do because it doesn't reflect a player's value at all), our players apparently only come to a total value of just over £51m. We don't own our ground, our training facilities are crap and we don't have any home grown youth prospects like KLP, Greaves or Bowen coming through that are going to suddenly skyrocket in value. We still owe money on several transfers which, hopefully, we're paying on time after the fiasco this Summer. 22 players left the club this Summer. That's ****ing mental. Alright some were fringe players like Amrabat and Burns, there's the whole thing with Zambrano and Puerta, but seriously, our turnover of playing staff is appallingly high. We have a monkey on our backs about not giving players enough time, but our owner is worse for it - off the top of my head, we bought Mehlem (£2m), Omur (£4m), Kamara (£4m), Sinik (£4m), Burstow (£2m), Racciopi (£2m), Giles (£4m) and Woods (£2m) and all of them ended up going out on loan instead of playing first team football for us. That's £26m we spent on giving players to other clubs for free across the last three seasons. It's not just insane, it's borderline criminal how much money we've pissed away on indecisiveness and short-termism. And don't forget, as well as those transfer fees, we also heavily subsidised their wages while they were at their clubs. With the exception of Giles, who is now back in the first team, what the hell are we playing at?!

2a. Had we gone down, yes, we almost certainly would have gone into administration. The players have relegation clauses in their contracts, sure, but even at a hypothetical 20% we would still have a chunk of players on more than £20k a week in League One, lower attendances and much lower income from things like TV and sponsorship. Acun Medya makes a decent amount of money, but it still needs to operate as a business, it's not as though every penny it makes goes to the running of our football club. They also have shareholders and the like to pay who aren't linked to our club and I imagine they see City as a drain on their potential income. I don't know what it costs to host shows like Survivor and whatever Turkiye's equivalent of The Voice is, but it can't be cheap. If push came to shove, do you think Acun would tank the company, media empire and reputation that he built up for half his adult life for a football club in East Yorkshire? No, me neither. Us going into administration would mean he would have to take a whack, but he'd be guaranteed money back as a debtor. We have this image of Acun being a smiling, happy, uncle like figure that would never shaft anybody, but nobody worth what he is gets to that point without being ruthless and savvy in business (which makes what happened all the more annoying, presumably he has people in his company that do his finances for him).

3. Fire sale - so, I don't really get what you mean by this. A lot of the players from last season are still here. If you're claiming that we're not selling off assets with value, then what do you call selling Macca, Jones, Alzate and Mehlem? Yeah ok, we've got Hughes for now, with Egan as his first choice partner. But two of our four first team centre halves are free transfers and Egan arrived for what I was told was somewhere around the £200k mark. We need the money to pay the wages of the players we have here now. As much as I dislike the EFL as an institution, they wouldn't be involved if everything was rosy and above board. They're here because we got in the ****, tried to get away with it and then gave a really crap excuse. The concern about our finances that they have is actually a separate issue from the transfer malarkey, they weren't aware of cash flow problems or financial difficulties until Villa went to the EFL and complained. So it's not so much a fire sale as a common sense sale. We need players in order to play football, obviously, but we also don't have the luxury of turning down bids for players that match our valuation.

4. Club being sold - some of us were made aware around Easter time that Acun was considering selling up. Parties had approached him, but that's as much as we know. Names were tossed about as they usually are, but there wouldn't be people approaching him if it wasn't for sale. There's a tiny chance you might get one group asking about interest, but not several all in the space of a few weeks. The universe isn't that lazy, pal. Now, that might have changed when Acun left Fenerbahce and as we've seen, we haven't been sold. Nobody ever claimed (at least as far as I've seen on here) that we had been sold or that the process of selling had even started.

5.Relegation nailed on - just pissing in the wind. Nobody can know how the season will go - last year we bought three potentially too-good-for-the-Championship players and they ALL got ACL injuries. You can't prepare for events like that happening, nor can you predict how a manager's style will impact the squad (in our case, very badly). Last season was a cocktail of **** ups that culminated in a poor season. At the start of Summer, people could have been forgiven for not assuming this season would be any different and given how the season has started behind the scenes, I think you can park any "holier than thou" stances when we're three games in and you're trying to use hindsight as a means to prove your point.

I get it. We've been **** on badly by previous owners and as nice as it is to have somebody with good intentions and what comes across as ambition, you can't abandon common sense and reason in the face of evidence. Okay, if you want to ignore the ITK folks that's up to you, nobody who posts insider information or stuff they get told demands to be believed or cares if they aren't. But given everything I've just said, how the hell can you not blame people for being realistic? Most of the media were putting us in the bottom three - I don't think you'll find anybody who genuinely wants that to be the case, nor will you find anybody who wouldn't want to prove those pundits wrong. You keep rehashing the same points as if it's a stick to beat people with, but who or what exactly are you addressing? It's almost like you want people to say the things you've said because that's what you think happened. Except it didn't. Some people were aware of the issues a while back, said it at the time and it's turned out to be true. You seem to struggle with accepting that. Which is fine, I guess, but it doesn't change the reality of the situation, which is that we are walking on very thin ice and there's a world of **** waiting underneath if it breaks.
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Just on this, how was Ulker funding the club when he was here? Through sponsorship. This was a massive own goal from Acun, losing a guy like that. And Tan as well I didn’t dislike Tan at all, thought he was very good for the club.
 
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Top_Tiger said:
Just on this, how was Ulker funding the club when he was here? Through sponsorship. This was a massive own goal from Acun, losing a guy like that. And Tan as well I didn’t dislike Tan at all, thought he was very good for the club.
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Had a shocker managing the transfer window last summer though.
 
Reading between the lines I think we'll sell Pandur and I also think we might lose Palmer or Slater to free up space for a different midfielder.

Is that Bistrovic still available, does anyone know? Kalman, Toast?
 
i was talking to a turkish guy yesterday and he didnt speak highly of Tan, he also said he'd heard from home that the efl were investigating all the transfers we had made to and from turkey
 
IPredictAFryatt said:
Reading between the lines I think we'll sell Pandur and I also think we might lose Palmer or Slater to free up space for a different midfielder.

Is that Bistrovic still available, does anyone know? Kalman, Toast?
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Bistrovic is still available, but we've got Hadziahmetovic coming in and he's had a full pre season. Bistrovic is an upgrade on Slater if he was fully fit, but he's not had much of a pre season and would need a few weeks to hit the ground running. We don't have time for that now. We've had all Summer to sign him and we haven't, so unless Slater does leave, it's unlikely.

Palmer might go, which is a shame because when he comes off the bench he looks decent. He just doesn't seem to fit the system when he starts. We'll see, Acun loves deadline day so assuming Pandur and Hughes stay while Hadziahmetovic comes in, it wouldn't be a surprise if we let one of Slater or Palmer go so we can get another body in. Furlong going out might allow for a PL loan of a youngster like Kaide Gordon or Alex Murphy, but we'd need Liverpool or Newcastle to do us a favour. PL sides will be keen to get their youngsters out on deadline day and there's still some quality youngsters that haven't gone out, so if we have a space expect it to be filled.

Kaide Gordon/Trent Kone-Doherty at Liverpool
Alex Murphy at Newcastle
Omar Khedr at Villa
Jes Rak Sakyi at Palace (again)
Luke Mbete and Mamadou Susoho at Man City
Victor Musa at Man U

There's plenty, it just comes down to whether they are willing to waive any fee in favour of their player getting game time. And of course, there's Millar and Matazo to come back too.
 
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IPredictAFryatt said:
Reading between the lines I think we'll sell Pandur and I also think we might lose Palmer or Slater to free up space for a different midfielder.

Is that Bistrovic still available, does anyone know? Kalman, Toast?
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He is but like Toast said, he hasn’t had a pre-season with a club so would be rusty, similar to Alzate when we signed him last season. In terms of his player profile, I think he’s similar to Torp at Coventry i.e. a powerful box-to-box midfielder who likes to shoot from distance.

I have no idea if we were even in for him to begin with. If we were, it would’ve made sense to sign him when we were out in Turkey for pre-season. He’s miles better than Slater though and I don’t think he’d struggle with the physicality of English football. He’s played in Eredivisie before and the physical aspect isn’t too dissimilar to English football.
 
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Steven Toast said:
Bistrovic is still available, but we've got Hadziahmetovic coming in and he's had a full pre season. Bistrovic is an upgrade on Slater if he was fully fit, but he's not had much of a pre season and would need a few weeks to hit the ground running. We don't have time for that now. We've had all Summer to sign him and we haven't, so unless Slater does leave, it's unlikely.

Palmer might go, which is a shame because when he comes off the bench he looks decent. He just doesn't seem to fit the system when he starts. We'll see, Acun loves deadline day so assuming Pandur and Hughes stay while Hadziahmetovic comes in, it wouldn't be a surprise if we let one of Slater or Palmer go so we can get another body in. Furlong going out might allow for a PL loan of a youngster like Kaide Gordon or Alex Murphy, but we'd need Liverpool or Newcastle to do us a favour. PL sides will be keen to get their youngsters out on deadline day and there's still some quality youngsters that haven't gone out, so if we have a space expect it to be filled.

Kaide Gordon/Trent Kone-Doherty at Liverpool
Alex Murphy at Newcastle
Omar Khedr at Villa
Jes Rak Sakyi at Palace (again)
Luke Mbete and Mamadou Susoho at Man City
Victor Musa at Man U

There's plenty, it just comes down to whether they are willing to waive any fee in favour of their player getting game time. And of course, there's Millar and Matazo to come back too.
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Darko Gyabi midfielder from L**ds, on loan at Plymouth last season has been linked with us. We managed to get Gelhardt from them without paying a loan fee so guess he's a possibility.
 
Thanks Toast and Kalman.

I mainly suggested him with him being a free transfer and fitting the potential profile of someone the gaffer would want. I also remember Toast saying he'd heard we were close to a Croatian midfielder ages ago, so wondered if he'd been on the back burner.

Only issue with loans is we're close to five for the match day squad aren't we? Once Amir is in that leaves one slot which will presumably be Laalaoui? So decent quality frees seem to be the best option.

I suppose we don't need to register a free before the end of the window, so might give us more time to review who is suitable were we to let Palmer go?
 
Red top reader said:
Forced or free will… lol
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Probably convenience lol. He’s due to sign with a team called Akron.

Now you mention it though, I do wonder if players playing in Russia have some sort of stigma attached to their name in global football. When Russia’s national team and their league were suspended by FIFA and UEFA in 2022, FIFA said any player under contract with a Russian club could unilaterally terminate their contract and sign for a non-Russian club. Wouldn’t surprise me if players who continued to play in Russia were seen as ‘collaborators’ by other European clubs and agents and that’s hindered their prospects.
 
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Wonder if it’s worth keeping a loan spot free for January? That’ll be a real test as you’d assume any decent free agent would already be at a club so loans would be our only option.
 
TigerGaz said:
Wonder if it’s worth keeping a loan spot free for January? That’ll be a real test as you’d assume any decent free agent would already be at a club so loans would be our only option.
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Basically rules out getting anyone else this window though, which might be impossible if we sell Pandur or Palmer etc.

I wonder if we try and get Zambrano on loan in Jan with a view to a perm next summer.

Will get messy with matchday squads though like when Marco Silva came in and had to keep leaving one out!
 
IPredictAFryatt said:
Basically rules out getting anyone else this window though, which might be impossible if we sell Pandur or Palmer etc.

I wonder if we try and get Zambrano on loan in Jan with a view to a perm next summer.

Will get messy with matchday squads though like when Marco Silva came in and had to keep leaving one out!
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Letting go of Simons was complete madness. It constant churn just doesn't make sense any more, we're getting nowhere and leaving ourselves short.
 
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Shark Sports said:
Letting go of Simons was complete madness. It constant churn just doesn't make sense any more, we're getting nowhere and leaving ourselves short.
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In order to finish mid table, you have to lose some games. Some people claim to be happy witth mid table but then react like the world is ending when we lose a couple of games.
Ipswich are a parachute club, nailed on automatic promotion candidates by most experts yet they are below us on the table and only got a point today due to a soft penalty. Simons was not the answer unless the answer was that we wanted to be a league one team.
 
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