...and don't forget Carol Kirkwood has signed up to this year's Strictly Come Dancing - your old ticker could be on overload come the autumn!
Link to Afobe, for whom we've made a supposedly "substantial offer" Hmmm, David Mcnally, would that be £2m or £2.5m? Derisory or just plain embarrassing? http://readnorwich.com/2015/08/19/norwich-interested-championship-star/ (I'm going purely on previous form here, before I get pilloried )
I believe it is. He wants both in their respective premier leagues though first. There are I'm sure lots of efficiencies to be had in his model. He's also funding a huge redevelopment of Ashton Gate. It's all rather screwing the rovers though.
You are dead right Tony. Every time I think about her in a skimpy Tango outfit my pacemaker goes into overdrive!!!
McNally has a five-tiered system of opening bids (by increasing value): (1) Insulting (2) Preposterous (3) Embarrassing (4) Derisory (5) Paltry I suspect with Wolves he'll start with preposterous and work up from there, in the hope that we will get an accord at paltry. He only goes in with (1) if it's Leeds after all.
So, on that basis, Steve Bruce was right out of order to start hurling insults around - the Brady bids started halfway up the ladder, FFS
It's on Sky Sports, so that's a fairly reliable source. For those (like me) who don't know much about him, the Wolves forums online are in horror that they might lose him, which gives you an indication of how highly rated he is. "Substantial" is interesting - Jake Humphrey says we should bid £4m... The Wolves fans keep saying £12-15m. I suspect we'd need to break our transfer record by a distance to get him.
Unless Bournemouth are going to throw mad money at us for Grabban, or we can tempt Wolves with a striker, I don't see us being capable of breaking our transfer record. Wolves paid £2.5m in January, and he's on a long contract. Certainly wouldn't be against it, but can't see it happening.
Isn't it ironic that Jake Humphrey gets to talk about football for a living because he really struggles talking about football! I would describe his knowledge of the game as 'limited'. £4m would be the most stupid bid since bidding £2m for Robbie Brady. Ok, let's not go there again! In all honesty, Benik Afobe is a potential future England centre forward who has made a massive impression in the past 12/18 months. There is no way a striker like that, playing at a club who has no need whatsoever to sell, will leave for anything less than 'silly' money. At a guess, £12m might secure him; £15m definitely would. The only way this could have any legs is if we threw about £10m AND Gary Hooper at them. I don't see us doing that. Which is a shame in one way because I think he'd be perfect for us.
Didn't you hear, we're getting £10m for Grabban. We can use all that imaginary cash to pay for Afobe.
£10m for Grabban? It'd take me a full year to stop laughing if anyone paid us that for him! Also, Rob, Sky Sports are NOT reliable. They make up false rumours to get people to bet on SkyBet. The only time they are reliable is when they announce 'DONE DEAL'. I notice the Afobe rumour comes from the Jim White who states the usual 'Sky Sources'. We might have bid for the lad, we might not.
I'm surprised you, of all posters, subscribe to the idea that Bruce's description of the bid for Brady being the full facts, but as you say let's not go there. Are you saying that you don't think we've made a bid for Afobe? Or that we simply won't get him for a price we can afford? I'm really not sure what we can afford now, because it seems from the press that we have at least some cash and are putting out enquiries, but then anything more than that would be entirely dependent on selling and getting the best price for those sales...
There is no question at all that our initial bid for Robbie Brady was 'derisory' to Hull. The player was always worth a lot more to them and to us. Nothing wrong with us doing that by the way, it's our right to bid whatever we want and bidding low gives us a better chance of getting a better deal for our club, but those first two or three offers were definitely insulting if you were the Hull manager. It should have all remained private but Steve Bruce knew all along that the lad wanted to go so had to try to drive the price up by making the bids public in the hope of starting a bidding war. I doubt we as a club were that bothered by the remarks. Do I think we've bid for Afobe? No idea! But I wouldn't trust 'Sky Sources'. And no, I don't think we can afford him.
Fair enough - it certainly managed to upset some of our fans though meaning that McNally took the brunt of our supposedly cheapskate behaviour. I don't really see why else Alex Neil would be at Hull v Wolves (a couple of sources were convinced he was) - I'd be very surprised if we'd be interested in meeting Jelavic's wage demands or have any interest in Curtis Davies (who was pretty terrible last year by many accounts) or Huddlestone (we don't need him). On the subject of what we can afford... our newfound rumour-mongering might have something to do with the new 3-year deal signed with Aviva! I imagine that will run to quite a substantial sum, and together with a couple of players leaving could make a difference to what we can afford. http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/norwich...deal_with_aviva_is_coming_to_an_end_1_4200219
I very much doubt McNally cares one jot about the childish, over-reactionary element of our support. His job is to get the best deals for the club. If he thinks the best way to get a certain player is to put in two or three ridiculously low offers in an attempt to keep the final price down then who are we to argue? He got his man didn't he? Time will tell if the price was a good one or not but I think we'd have paid a similar amount no matter where we started the bidding on this occasion. Hull were very stubborn and were always going to hold out for their target amount but McNally didn't know that when the first few approaches were made. Shame the AVIVA deal didn't end last summer. A horrible blot on an otherwise cracking home shirt.
I think the low ball offers to Hull were to pursuade Brady not to sign the new contract they offered. Giving another option, we forced their hand making him refuse the new contract was important. No doubt an agent had told us what had been offered to him and that they needed to see we were serious.
