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In a marketplace where your moves are being scrutinised and learned from by your competitors, it's exactly how business (sometimes) works. Happens in politics all the time - want something to not be spoken about, give the press something else to chew on or they'll get hungry. Not saying that's definitely the case here, but I think we're much happier letting some pursuits be known about than others.

We've really got a thing for left sided centre backs right now.

My mind went there too but the tweet is from April, so false alarm.

Fuck's sake.

Well, we're not going to be playing more than one game a week for almost all of next season, so just on that basis he'd be quite suitable...

Assuming there wasn't some sort of trick involved like them buying Longstaff for £50m, would anyone here defend buying him for over £30m? I truly don't think that'll happen, but want to see who'll put themselves above the parapet.

If he misses most of next season then he's probably cooked, yes, but we're not there yet. He's had a long summer off, hopefully he's put work in and is raring to go next month.

Doesn't seem to be confirmed Anderson is the player being offered? Maybe someone's heard it's a Geordie midfielder and made assumptions... I'd be disappointed if it was him, but if it was, it'll be Howe's judgement so I'll go with it. I would expect most people on here to be highly pleased with it judging by his thread. Can't really comment on Kilman. From what I've seen I've liked him and he seems well respected in the game. Could easily picture him being a good signing for us therefore. Superficially it might be like Pope - not an obvious move for our summer but one that looks very important in retrospect. We don't know how dark things are for Botman currently. I'm surprised at people flying off the handle so quickly after today, and I say that as someone who's made queasy by the idea of signing Calvert - I'm firmly against him. All the same, I recommend waiting until we sign them before we actually start griping, and ideally waiting until the whole window is concluded to see what the masterplan is.

Swapping Dominic Calvert for Yankubu Minteh. Looking forward to waking up from this dream.

I don't know, ask Omar Berrada.

It's a bit simplistic seeing it this way, but I think Hall is more of the natural successor to Trippier in the team, albeit that implies mirroring over the structure of the team from right to left.

What you like and what you get are two different things, mister.

Every splinter he gets in his arse at this tournament puts another million on his value.

Bring Richie in on a dayrate to make a phonecall and keep his head straight...

He's been shown up as a dickhead a few times lately, so not too concerned.

Will begin his slow metamorphosis into Steve Bruce.

Genuinely shocked people seem to be surprised.

Broken nose. Must be getting old, first head injury that's actually cracked something.

Yes, he was pretty humble about it on his overlap interview, saying he's not very vocal in the dressing room, but he's clearly growing in stature all the time and helps to lead by example.

I think us not getting Europe will have totally transformed our thought process for Minteh next season, unfortunately.

By November 3rd we'll have a much clearer idea of how high we should be gunning this year. Tough final month, but altogether that's about as good as you can ask for. It's set up really nicely for us.

As someone said earlier, it read like AI to me. Probably a lot more of that to come in the future...

Superficially, sounds like a good hire. Guess it's Jack Ross making that call?

Seems like this conversation is mainly happening in the FFP thread mate

This doesn't feel like a plausible prediction. Unless the board has an epic poker face. I could believe a gap - which is one reason I won't feel totally comfortable about Bruno's situation until July - but not that much.