Probably he did, but that avenue seems to be closed off now. He’ll have to stay here, clear his head and knuckle down.
We won't see the same player now and in the end they'll lose him for less. I would expect we'll see most of our best players looking for the exit in the winter and next summer. The **** is going to hit the fan and I guess we have to just accept it and be pleased we actually won something just before the door was closed completely.
Yay - joy, happiness and hope We have literally just had our best season since like, forever, won our first domestic trophy in 70 years and are in the Champions League. But yes - bleak depression and despair everywhere..... obviously
APT/ PSR is the killer. By next summer that landscape will change. Trafford - buy back clause was always going to be the issue. Burnley knew that. We should have paid the £40 million and signed him early. Ekitike - turns out that we were never really interested. Guehi £35 million will secure him. Scalvini - Still heavily linked. Wissa - £35 milliion but apparently favours a move to Spurs due to Frank. Longstaff - Personally think that we should have kept and sold Willock. Still a month left of the window. Things can happen very quickly.
It’s your last line that baffles me mate. We took a month to get Elanga sorted. Hes the first genuine first team buy in three years. Quickly has been removed from the clubs vocabulary. We are woeful. Howe has basically said we probably won’t get anyone else and will go with what we’ve got. PSR shouldn’t be an issue now, why is that can being kicked another year down the road? Unless there’s massive change off the field this inactivity will be our identity.
Is this a copy and paste from the previous 3 windows? Something really isn't right and we're in denial at this point. Like balding men with whip overs
PSR remains an issue due to wages. But that should have been addressed. A lack of stadium/ training sponsor is simply not acceptable 4 years down the line. Mitchell seems to have been the underlying issue in terms of transfers. Staveley and Mehrdad got things done quickly when they weren't undermined by Eales.
Munson is on quite the roll here - a complete mess, a disaster story and now the Saudi's are gonna sell up and leave All makes perfect sense after our best season in 70 odd years. The future is obviously too horrible and bleak to comprehend, let's all just kill ourselves now
Football is decided by wages and the only incoming change is the pending introduction of 'squad cost ratio' Essentially football is going to focus on wages and of course % based allowances in favour of the big 6, which will ensure the sport we watch is nothing more than a charade. You can basically determine who will finish simply by looking at wages... There will be a few deviations once I a while, but nothing more. Squad cost ratio ends the 3 years loss aspect and allows for instant sanctions, so clubs can't even front load and wait it out. Football will be no different to wwe.. a fake competition. It's madness I don't understand how they're getting away with it.
Romano reporting that Liverpool's overall fee package for Ekitike is up to €95m (approx £82m). Could we really have afforded that, having already bought Elanga and chasing at least a GK and CB? If so, it can't be that much doom & gloom. I totally agree with the point about the club moving way too slowly though. We must be either horribly understaffed in that area, or lacking any real competence, or have way too much internal red tape for obtainjng PIF approvals. Or all of the above.
Is it slow? I just don't think whoevers been in charge of recruitment since Staveley left isn't doing very well. Newcastle are making offers and failing to convince the players. I see Mitchell is still the issue? He left because he wasn't happy here for some reason?
Ok I agree with this comment.....the reason is cos it just says we're moving too slowly, and it doesn't go all the way down the garden path of the Isak sale already being apparently done, no chance of any other signings, a disaster story, imminent asset stripping, the Saudi's selling up and whatever else.....one thing can happen in isolation without some butterfly effect of the whole club exploding. It's been frustrating, but it's not like we haven't been doing anything, we've missed out on a few, but made the offers, their are other targets, the process needs to be speeded up though.
The targets have been exciting and I wasn't necessarily expecting to see us go for 2 from the likes of Elanga, Mbeumo, Pedro, Ekitike in the same window (as well as supposedly being in for a GK & CB). If we'd gone for Elanga plus a bargain basement forward as Isak's back up, I'd have been OK with that. So the fact we've since gone in for Pedro / Ekitike is a great sign of the club's ambition. Just not the execution of the deals. Or - more importantly - competing with clubs who can offer twice the wages we can. The Isak thing yesterday could have multiple factors as to why he didn't go, so we just need to see how that plays out. Everything is just speculation and the press and other fans (and one or two of ours) love it.
It's going to look very different this season if they don't suddenly land 4 top players, which looks unlikely to say the very least. Perhaps they will? Not ruling it out. The off the pitch situation is being seriously questioned now and I think for good reason. It takes a little time before the water overflows onto the top deck of a sinking ship and I'm sensing trouble below, that's all.
It's got to be to do with the Saudi's. From my dealings with them over the years in an unrelated business capacity, they are ponderously slow, often needing multiple physical documents and signatures on even the most straightforward of things. I actually now think that Staveley, as this was very much her area of expertise, could manage them and their 'ways' much better than we maybe realized and Eales has come in with absolutely zero history of dealing with the region - coupled with his incredibly unfortunate personal situation - and we are suddenly mired in inactivity. They also won't just 'let go' of the control. Then there's 3 day weekends to contend with and the fact our direct chairman is also involved in LIV Golf and Saudi Pro League. I imagine it takes for ****ing ever to get answers such as "can we bid for Pedro", rather than the club having complete control and the ability to pivot really fast. It's a real shame, but at some point the Saudi's either need to step into the modern ways, let the club be self-governed or if they can't do either then they need to sell the club.
