Have just seen the piece on the official website about all the players that have now left the club.... I then went onto the first team squad list and all of these players have been removed plus Enoh but Manolev and Emmanuelson are still on the list as is Diarra. Wonder if the club is telling us something???
Strange- we have an option on Manolev but I've not read anything to suggest we would be taking it up. Both supposed to be with us until the end of the season- I'm guess yesterday was the official end of the season but not sure (can't find an article which specifies a return date).
Good spot Cookie. Hard to see us paying the £4m or so AC Milan are said to want for Urby. I suppose we could be trying to negotiate a loan (again) for him and Manolev. That's a horrible thought Bandit.
Agreed. Manolev looked OK but I wouldn't want him as anything more than a back-up. I was so excited for Urby's arrival and even though he improved towards the end of the season after a tough first few games, I found him underwhelming and would rather we took our chances with Frei.
Frei is currently in negotiations with Galatasaray and I've heard nothing from the club or Jol stating Riether is not for sale. When a team is interested in one of our players, there's usually a statement from the club, usually Jol, stating that the player is not for sale ala Berbatov. No such statement and the fact that Riether's signing hasn't even been officially announced by the club speaks volumes.
The Galatasaray Chairman has confirmed Frei is in talks with them after 'promising' talks with FFC. The Berbatov story came a few weeks ago when a Russian team were interested in taking him off our hands. Both Berbatov's agent and Jol came out and said he was happy and would see out his contract, all this Riether 'rumour' needs is a statement from either him, his agent or Jol stating he's not for sale and going nowhere and our fears would be quashed.
Fair enough, so still speculation, then. Time will tell, they should both stay and I'm sure Jol wants them both.
This might be slightly off topic, but it relates to the updated club website so I thought I'd stick it here rather than start another thread. Am I remembering this wrongly, or did the club say that Omri Altman was being moved to the first team squad this season? The updated squad profiles has Berba, Ruiz, Hugo and Trotta as the strikers, with Altman still listed among the under 21 squad.
To be fair, during the close season there's plenty of scope for the club website to be out of date; once they update it - as they just have - it's reasonable to expect the updates to mean something. As they've added the new signings and taken off the departing players, anyone still on is probably still on for a reason.
I think Altman is going out on loan to Maccabi Tel Aviv, Captain. I posted something about this under the "Fulham Players Out On Loan" thread.
And what we're getting is a lot of unsettling noise from the Shalke Sporting Director, Horst Heldt. The guy is worse than Rogers and Redknapp put together. His latest communique sounds very much like "tapping" to me - "In the coming days we will be trying to streamline the squad." Heldt told a press conference via his Club's feed. "The interest in Sascha Riether is still there." Source: http://www.insidefutbol.com/2013/07/02/galatasaray-want-jefferson-farfan-we-want-sascha-riether-schalke-sporting-director-horst-heldt/90952/ Hopefully MAF will get the lawyers out as per Dempsey.
Apart from our own website most others, Telegraph, Guardian, BBC etc, show Riether as a confirmed signing with a £1.27m price tag.
