Don Fabio is back....well, after we've ****ed up this window, he is. I can appreciate him not wanting his dabs anywhere near this **** show.
With the news that apparently Kobbe Mainoo wants out of United, I’d be all over that. Quality young player, can play a few different roles in midfield, helps with HG numbers and minimal need to adapt.
Agreed, although I have heard that his wage demands are astronomical. Breakthrough season and Euro 2024 went to his head, perhaps?
Well happy the Don is back. Didn’t always have a 100% success rate (Emerson, Gil) but he always got **** done quickly and worked on multiple ones too. Lange and Levy seemingly spend weeks targeting one player and haven’t even always been able to get that over line.
He's good at running with the ball and has a decent workrate. Seems quite versatile in that he could probably play all three midfield roles for us. A lot of it's potential at the moment, though. As you say, lot's of hype. As it's Utd, hard to tell.
For the fee required to sign him, I’d leave it for now. Surely someone cheaper and more experienced is out there
It's probably now or never, unfortunately. Any interest could depend on other transfers. Let's see how he does at Grimsby tomorrow.
He has been working with the club on a consultancy basis for the past few months. So anything Lange/Levy are failing on, falls on the Don too!
I really don't get where this "Works on one target at a time" Narrative has come from, especially given how it really blew up at the exact same time we were working on both Savinho and Eze Paratici was reportedly in Italy last week trying to convince Bologna to sign either Gil or Solomon
I don’t think he could get involved in negotiations though, the difference after he got banned and Lange/ Levy took charge of them was so noticeable. The Don had 3-4 deals on the go and would trigger one or two of them within a few days. Lange/ Levy seem to work on one player only and keep their eggs in said basket
The Savinho deal has been on hold for about 2 weeks ever since City more or less said they won’t sell unless they get Rodrygo. Paratici would’ve probably had 2-3 more similar profile players to Savinho being lined up. He was notorious for it. I think we’ll see a huge difference to negotiations once he’s fully back on board.
Also has to be said early in the window we were juggling Kudus, Xavi Simons and Akliouche at the same time Simons fell through as the Chavs came calling (though he's still at Monster Energy Dusseldorf, so apparently didn't call loudly enough) but Kudus moved ahead and was wrapped up in a reasonably timely manner Honestly wondering if some of our planning was hobbled by other teams noticing the Scandi leagues exist, given Rooney Bardghji and Victor Froholdt were linked with us but wound up at Barca and Porto respectively early in the window and Copenhagen suddenly found themselves €22.5m richer than they usually are
He has been fully involved during the whole transfer window. His ban ended on 1 July so I imagine so has had no restrictions on negotiating with the usual caveats as per his responsibilities. So does this mean Lange will be out or demoted?
Problem with Mainoo is his main role is in the exact place we're already stacked, as Sarr and Bergvall play similar roles If they wanted to be serious in this market, Palace should have paid his release clause on the opening day of the window Parrish Out!!!!
Lange definitely had a hand in Kudus' signing, as he's very much a data-based target The odd thing is most of the moves which fell through weren't Lange targets: Gibbs-White and Savinho were identified by Frank and sank/stalled due to outside factors (pissbaby chairmen and pissbaby board members, basically) while Eze is a tough one to work out who made the call to make the bid, given there's never been any talk of Frank being a fan like there was for Gibbs-White or Savinho, and TBH Eze doesn't fit the data-driven approach for Lange targets, so it genuinely feels like Levy, Frank and Lange sat around a table and somebody shrugged and said "I don't know, try for Eze?" after Maddison's injury
