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Highly, highly doubt Frimpong, Cherki's wages match our highest earners, even Reijnders i'd be surprised if it started at much more than 160-180. Our scouting system does not appear to be good enough based on last summer, hoping to Christ we can find some value, because competing in the league paying premiums for Elanga's etc thats hard enough. Europe we are so far behind the quality its staggering. Executive level has been shocking for a while, what the hell was the point of Ashworth and Mitchell, our scouting seems to be the exact same or worse.

Showing interest eh. How?

Nusa is dynamite.

Xavi Simons would be pure filth, but wouldn’t he cost a billion quid?

I think Eddie Howe believes he does though. We came close to signing him before we bought Isak. IMO the drop off from Isak to Osula is far greater than the drop.off from our midfield to Miley, Longstaff or Willock

Agreed - any credible links?

Isak will start 90% of the games, it’ll be hard to get a forward with a good goalscoring record to be a bit part player. Pedro would be able to play with Isak, or fill in up front if required.

Xavi simons would be a Game changer! Real classy player and adds that "Magic" to the attacking play

Pedro does look miles ahead, totally agree. How many non-penalty goals did Pedro score last season? Will a forward with that kind of record be an effective stand in for Isak? Just saying I'm not sure he would be. And for the money it would probably take to prize him out of Brighton.....

Osula? The guy who has never scored goals anywhere up to this point? Pedro is miles ahead of Osula currently and probably always will be.

Think an additional 5 + another 5 in add ons on each of those three deals gets them done.

I think that's my point though, I'm not sure Pedro does offer cover for Isak. He's goal scoring record (non penalties) was what? 4 or 5? I reckon Osula could that many, at least.

Ever dawn on you that you hate this forum and most of the people on it?

And that painting on the wall in the Big Joe picture is quite canny.

Juventus well and truly shat on there

I don't think they have a limit they will spend on any one player. I think we refuse to go above what we value a player at, still trying to train clubs that we won't be held to ransom for a Saudi tax. I think that 50/55m figure is more down to us knowing we need a few players and still having a limited budget

This window for me is all about raising the floor of the squad. Let's say for the sake of simple maths (cause I'm a simple man) we have a budget of 200million. Option A: Buy 1-3 purples and spend the rest on cheap punts who'll either develop into serviceable squad players or be PSR flips. + The purples will be instant upgrades on positions of need + If one of the cheap punts turns into a decent player we've won a watch - We likely won't address all positions of need - If one or more of the purples flop, it'll be a disaster - Most of the punts won't be of any use in the short term and many won't ever play a minute for us Option B: Buy 5/6 good players at a similar quality to what we already have. + Most will be dependable, proven PL quality + They'll allow us to give our starters a breather so we don't run them into the groud a la Isak & Joelinton + Eddie is one of the best in the business for unlocking a players potential - If we're mainly buying from the PL, we'll be charged a premium - There likely won't be any 'marquee' signings as such - It's debatable as to whether the new signings are a clear improvement on what we already have Option B IMO is the way forward. Our starting 11 is very good, but once you start scratching beneath the surface of that you soon realise that the drop off is stark. We just about scraped into CL this year and that was without any European distractions, last time we were in Europe our squad got decimated. Be under no illusions, it'll serve us better this season to have 6 good players than 3 very good players.

Does look that way, that seemed to be our cut off on Guehi despite noise of higher bids. I think we’d potentially go higher for a player like Guler but whether we could get a player like that is probably unlikely

Which we won’t. Around 50-55 million is the limit we seem to be bidding on players.

Even if we bring in 3 decent signings, our squad is still too shallow to handle what's coming next season. We need to keep Willock and Longstaff as 3rd choices and for early round domestic cups. Otherwise it only takes 4-5 injuries and we're back to a bench of keepers and kids.

We can cover the costs with the inflated fees we stick on Willock & Gordon for their sell-on clauses to Arsenal and Everton so we're good.

Have we bid for Simons like?

But he has a sell on fee, something you were taking issue with. He also has one more goal involvement than Elanga last season. Fwiw I am a big fan of Simons but you can’t pick and choose your arguments.

Hello Chelsea my old friend