TRon

You're right in that they don't need to sell him, so obviously we are going to have to pay over the odds to make it happen.

So do I, and I would happily have sold him for half of the asking price.

I'm sure he'd consider leaving if the right club came in for him. Problem is there are very few clubs who will want to pay either his wages or the transfer fee we would need to make it worthwhile.

Then it looks a very good alternative deal to Guehi.

Can only imagine his wage demands must be pretty hefty as well, otherwise that price looks reasonable compared to where we are going with Guehi.

One of the reasons I said I would rather pay stupid money for Guehi than £45m for Joe Gomez. He'd be worthless by the time it came to shift him.

That will just give him more experience at his club while Liverpool keep top gun Allison happy at the same time. They win on all fronts.

Do you really think we are going to be knocking the price down the way negotiations have gone so far?

If they've bought in Chiesa and allegedly Mamardashvili then I'd say the gap is growing pretty conclusively.

I don't think many teams in the PL would be content with those as their CBs tbh, so I doubt Howe will be.

They'll still have them for this season, I'm not really looking beyond that.

I don't think we have the funds needed to outgun our rivals going forward anyway. We can just about put together a first 11 which can give the cartel clubs a good scrap, but once we get down to the subs it starts to go downhill quite fast.

Given how disjointed our football has looked since the halcyon days of CL qualification, I can understand the need to shore up the defence. We might be able to work out our problems getting the ball from back to front, but at least if we aren't conceding that still gives us a good shot of winning games despite not performing particularly well.

Their squad was miles ahead of ours last season, and the gap is only growing.

At this point any fee of more than £65m is going to feel like he's had his pants pulled down. Feels like we've put all our eggs in one basket and doesn't seem any other option but to bend down and lube up at this stage.

Well whatever the reasons, they do care about their image. The point being if they want a sports advert for their country, they'll want success on the pitch to achieve that.

I think they do care, but there's not a lot they can do about it since we will most likely get hammered if we invest more than allowed by PSR. Money isn't an object to them, why would they prefer to make small profits rather than huge ones by winning stuff via massive investment?

I don't think Gordon will mind doing the odd shift at RW, but I imagine he prefers the left and wants to play for England there as well at some point. I doubt he'd be happy being switched to the right for long periods of a season.

He's not going to be a squad player though, there were many on here who seemed to think that a RW is not crucial because between him and Miggy we have good options. Of the bench maybe, but if they are our go to starting RWs then I expect to see more patchy football.

He's like Longstaff, can do the hard work bit and for that you can never fault him. Wasn't surprised at all that his pre-season heroics weren't repeated once the serious games came around. He can whip in the odd great cross or hit the odd decent shot, but ultimately he's not very good in possession.

Might be right in theory but it's just papering over the cracks. The football is poor quality and we saw too much of the same last season.

Yeah. If our players don't want to move there, you can't blame the Saudis for giving their millions to other clubs whose players agree to it. If our players aren't obliged to move their families to Saudi, the Saudis don't owe us any special favours either.

Shit football two games in a row. At the end of the day it will come down to the players aren't good enough - which with some of them it's been clear for some time - or our training/game plan isn't working. We need to recognise that we can't keep coasting with "good squad players" if they end up playing too many first team games. We also need to understand that we aren't just fighting the cartel clubs, there are other teams like Brighton and Villa who aren't standing still, and they are in the same market as us. Don't want to overreact as it's early days, but our football in general seems to have gone backwards for some time since we first qualified for the CL. Been very patchy for a long time now.

Exactly. There's just no need to be that specific, he could just have said it was an honour to wear the armband and left it somewhat generic.

Just the wording of it doesn't sit right with me. Looking forward to the season ahead for Palace etc, just don't think that screams he's bothered about moving.