The College Dropout

Bayern Munich underachieve considering their monopoly in Germany and financial might. Real, PSG, City - they wouldn’t be buying Luis Diaz

We can’t. There’s no release clause. We can keep him and not do a Marinakis.

Etikite is a striker. He’s not playing on the left. I don’t see them spending £200m on strikers either. In the same window. To bench one. Maybe. If they sell Nunez I guess they would need another striker.

Wissa would do well to have 5 years left at the highest level. And I doubt he has 8 figure net worth or in the bank. Wissa’s next contract is going to release care of his children. It’s massive for him on all levels.

Eddie isn’t an idiot. He was happy to gamble on developing young talent at Bournemouth because he knew they couldn’t attract proven players and he had some leeway on results to bring them on. It’s fucked up but another Lewis Hall or Tonali situation could end up losing him his job.

No I don’t blame him. I think his job remit is now too wide and the ambitions too high for what he is provided. Howe can’t survive another Hall situation. A player that needs development to be ready. He can’t even afford another Tonali - no time to adjust and close enough that we can talk to people in the town about his personal life. We should be taking gambles on elite talent 1-2 years before most of the big clubs will go for them. They might require those 1-2 years to develop and in the mean time we may slip a position or two.

I’ve been saying this for about a year now. Our transfer approach suggests we need results immediately. That’s why Howe wants prem proven players. The season we finished 7th was seen as a failure by PIF and Howe was closer to the sack than he should’ve been. PIF are demanding owners but are not providing the necessary infrastructure and finances to justify it. it’s not a surprise it aligns with what Eales has communicated. The aim was Europe. But our finances don’t dictate Europe every season. The strategy from the club top to bottom hasn’t made sense for a long time. Positively - it’s another reason why I don’t think we’ll sell Isak this summer.

Brentford don’t sell all that much in recent years. Since promotion they’ve only sold Toney prior to this summer. Brentford’s model is a longer tail of development since being in the PL.

Should add in the title he’s gone on strike.

Most of us knew this from the start. Should’ve been processes in place to go a different route when it became clear the PL route wasn’t going to be successful

Eddie is doing Eddie - professional and diplomatic. ‘hurtling towards the end of the window’ - he knows we’ve got to get a lot of business done in a short manner of time. That’s the most I’ve taken from the interview. Everyone knows that mind.

As a whole - the windows a shitshow

Makes sense. They’ve lost their manager, captain and top scorer. Lose Wissa and they suddenly look candidates for the drop. That’s worth how much? Wissa’s worth £50m to them.

This is why we can’t sell Isak. The money would be useless. We don’t know what we are doing in the market.

I can’t think so. Our position and circumstances are pretty unique though.

We have no such agreement with Isak yet people think we have no option but to sell. Wissa in particular actually needs the money. I doubt he’ll be set for life at this point In his career.

To leverage PIF the CEO will need to run things past them. The CEO needs a direct line to people that can act.

That is true and is also truly the minimum any owners with claims as ambitious as ours could do. Again I look at Villa, their owners are doing everything they can to make Villa’s ambitions a reality. Ours are not.

I meant this summer. They’ve sold Luiz and Duran as far as first teamers. Both good decisions imo. They got good youth in return for Luiz snd replaced him with Onana, a younger player. They actually replaced him with Tielemans, a better player.

I don’t. We need PIF to succeed. The game is rigged and requires a fortune and tremendous effort to overcome. IMO Villa have done pretty much everything right over the last few years. And they will be weaker this season than last. At least they’ve kept all their players. it’s also clear PIF have aggressive timelines to me. Based on how Howe has treated the market. Levy is the first to run to the PL. Ratcliffe is asking for help from the UK government. Boehly is using inventing new PSR hacks every year. How are we meant to catchup to these by ‘letting football people get on with the rests.

If we were public - the price would’ve dipped last June. our highest position would be after qualifying for CL this season and back on the way down now. As an investor - at this moment - I would think we’ve made all the major gains we’ll make against the market. But obviously as we aren’t public we get far less information from the owners. If we were public we would get more comms about the stadium and training ground.

We’ve abandoned that approach and half the personnel driving that approach have left.

Why do people think we’ll suddenly become savvy and efficient in the transfer market with 4 weeks to go?

PIF buy Nunez. Liverpool by Isak this window. The project as has been sold is dead. Let’s enjoy the CL campaign. Enjoy the season. All the world class elements will be gone within 12 months.

Football isn’t a slow and measured business. PIF bought Newcastle. The next week ATP laws were tightened. Daniel Levy isn’t going to sit around and watch Saudi’s eat his dinner