Transfer Rumours transfer thread fact and fiction

Long Overdue Watch
The Chronicle report that Newcastle are negotiating for the permanent transfer of Danny Rose, a mere two years and an estimated 1600 Mars bars after he realistically should've been given his marching orders for slagging off the club off the pitch and being ****ing useless on it - although Steve Bruce referring to him as an "established international" opens the door for a West Scam bid...

Wishful Thinking Watch
FootMercato report that we're making a move to bring in Sergej Milinkovic-Savic this summer, with Lucas Moura heading the other way as part of the deal

Normally I'd assume this was never going to happen as Lazio would be holding all the cards and this would set us back £lotsandlots, but considering the pandemic has left any Serie A club not named Juventus or Internazionale realising how razor thin their margins are that does start to tilt the odds in our favour, and adding Lucas to the deal certainly means there is a remote possibility of getting things moving without hurting the team too much as we have Bergwijn and Lamela in that position anyway

One thing conspicuous by its absence is any links between this story and Ndombele not being long for the club, even though in any combination be it 4231 or 433 it's patently clear that Ndombele would be the player missing out in favour of one or both of Lo Celso and Milinkovic-Savic

Similar was said last year about exploiting Bolton's woes to snap up Luca Connell, only for him to join Celtic for £350k

Hopefully he doesn't wind up being spoken of in similar tones that James Maddison is...

 

Back up striker anyone:

Croatia forward Mario Mandzukic, 34, has become a free agent after terminating his contract with Qatari side

 

Any of your lot heard much on getting Hojbjerg from us?

Not involved in the match day squad for us again so looks to be off - apparently to either you or Everton.

 

Yeah the rumours have been pretty consistent of him supposedly being a player we want.

What’s your view on him as a player? Think he’d be a good fit should he join us? We’re likely looking to go 433 next season and he - or any new DM - will be placed to sit deep to allow Lo Celso and Ndombele licence to roam.

 

Take him all day long. We were actually linked to him over a decade ago when he was still at Zagreb.

I think we’ll look at Dzyuba too. His deal with Zenit expires end of this month.

Both him and Mandzukic fit the Jose target man type to a tee.

 

Was listening to Alisdair Gold’ podcast and he was talking about how he asked Jose the question about getting experienced players because we have long been accused of having no real experience.

Mourinho's reply was something along the lines of that we do have experienced players, seasoned internationals, World Cup winner etc. He said his focus is to get hungry players who want to win things, certain personality traits of which age isn’t a factor.

I can see what he means...he’s quickly identified no real backbone in our squad...can’t expect him to fix it in half a season when the very man that made our players house hold names couldn’t fix it after 5 years

 

I hope that Walker-Peters isn't included in any deal for Hojbjerg, if one actually happens.
He had a very good game for Southampton against City and I can't see us getting good value for him at the moment.
We're already short on club and homegrown players and it's a position we're really weak in.

 

Keep KWP, sell Aurier and get in another right back.

 

I'd even be happy if we extended his contract and loaned him out to get more experience.
Leave him at Southampton for a full season, as I'm sure they'd be happy to save a few quid, given the current situation.

 

Steptonho does like a target man...

 

He also likes a forward who will play as a winger and work his arse off defensively.

 

So that's Mandzukic and Josh King, now for the DM...

 

He has been good for us, but no more than that. Not worth £35m with 3 years left on his contract let alone 1. Although that is just a rumoured figure - I'd be shocked if anyone paid that

Personally I think he had 1 good season and even then wasn't our best performer so it is strange you guys are interested. Would much rather keep Ward-Prowse than Hojbjerg and 99% of Saints fans would agree.

 

Hojbjerg does strike me as a Scott Parker-type signing, where he sits to allow our other CMs to play their game - something which hasn't been the case since Dembele and Wanyama started slowly disassembling themselves since the 2017-18 season

The one thing that puts the puzzle together more than anything else is realising that Pini Zahavi is his agent, as we had Zahavi on commission last summer to get the deals for Ndombele (another Zahavi client) and Lo Celso across the line, so suddenly the connection makes a lot more sense

 

Ligue 1 Rando Watch
La Semaine are linking us with Metz's Senegalese striker Habib Diallo, presumably because at this point any striker of West African extraction who is good in the air is getting linked with us - and in this case it does have the whiff of the agent about it, considering Diallo's meagre goal haul of 12 this/last/whatever season is almost half of the 27 goals Metz scored in Ligue 1 this/last/whatever season

Eze Watch
At the risk of triggering that most maligned set of fans in English football, Man Utd fans who spend more time on other teams' boards than anyone else's, the odds on us signing Eberechi Eze have dropped to 2/1, which is certainly notable if a large bet was made in the Holloway area

Of course, if we were to sign Eze, this would shore up our HG numbers - because as anyone who has visited our board in the past couple of years should be well aware, in the summer of 2018 our inability to shift the non-HG players, be it the rapidly diminishing Dembele and Wanyama or the outright deadwood Janssen and Nkoudou, meant we were unable to sign any non-HG players which in turn grossly affected our squad balance to the point we had to sell Dembele in January just to get Foyth into our Champions League squad

You get the feeling that last part is aimed at somebody...[/colour]

 

That would be good news because we are very concerned about our home grown quota - of course the fact that he looks a decent prospect from the limited viewings I have had of him pale into insignificance against his HG credentials

 

Yeah I really like the look of Eze, think he'll be a top player, Stokey actually mentioned him a couple years ago as he'd played for Wycombe on loan for a season. Him and Watkins are two players I'd love to see at Spurs next season. That front three of Brentford "BMW" - Benrahma, Mbuemo and Watkins - could all probably play for European chasing Prem sides, think Benrahma has actually been linked with Chelsea lately. I like the look of Jayden Bogle at Derby too, think he's a better prospect than Ferguson for the RB position.

Loads of talent in the Championship though, can see a lot of Prem/ European sides looking to raid it this summer.

 

The financial situation all round could put a stop to that, though. Some clubs will be in deep, deep ****.

 

Yeah that's true.

Though equally won't there be Championship clubs likely needing to sell to keep finances sweet, thus resulting in fees not being at such a premium which could/ should be affordable to Prem/ European clubs?

The clubs who'll miss out on promotion that made pushes for it over the summer, or those relegated could be in real danger I'd imagine, though admittedly I know jack about the financial situations of most clubs in the division, nor anywhere for the matter lol.

 

Hojbjerg Watch
Not a good sign, as this guy's usually spot on with Ajax news