TRon

How come he is available?

If £15m for Longstaff is true then that would go a long way towards paying for a quality replacement long term as well as giving us some cover up front in the short term.

Precisely. Iheanacho might not be the ideal replacement, but if he's fit for the season, that means you have a striker who can come in and do a job if Isak is out, and for rotation purposes. Wilson is obviously better but he might only be available for 10 fixtures. Oh and £15m for Longstaff.

It's weird how all of it barely raised a few grumbles prior to our takeover. It would have been a lot easier to stop the spending if the PL hadn't decided it was a bad thing retrospectively once clubs outside of the cartel hadn't come knocking.

Yes thanks if it means we get £15m for Longstaff.

I'd rather sell Almiron for £10m instead of the alleged £20-30m he's worth and get Saudi to give him that extra £10m as a cash bonus just to agree to the move.

Not that I believe the story, but tells you everything that Liverpool are supposedly bidding for Minteh and not Almiron. Obviously age is also going to be a factor, but it does show you which players we really need to get out of the door.

I'll be amazed if this story isn't just complete bullshit.

That's my take on it. It is a bit risky spending that much on a keeper who's seemingly not developed fully yet, but I can only assume the scouting team like what they see,. It's the sort of deal which will get done as we won't be fighting off cartel clubs for his signature. Not sure what that means particularly but it's not like we have many other options.

Really? I couldn't get past the first episode, looked like typical glossy American fodder which was more about looking at the glamorous leads than any serious court drama. If the law side of it was actually decent might give it another go.

Liverpool FFS. Even with Klopp gone they can't help going into cunt overdrive.

We are only trying to break the shackles because of clubs like Chelsea in the first place though.

If he called himself Wallsend Mag, how come he parked his flash cars in Parklands and not in Wallsend?

That's what I like to see, clubs with less pulling power coming in for our targets.

I know he's a cunt, but that was the period when the international super rich moved into English football and blew the locals out of the water. Not that Ashley was ever interested in spending his way to success, but he couldn't compete with the Mansours or the Abramoviches even if he wanted to.

Shearer also got a lot of goals from dead ball situations where you can still be very effective in your later years when the pace starts to fade a bit. He was a lot more effective in the air and that got him a good few goals later on in life.

It probably already has, maybe they've signed up with new alter egos after the drama of the last one.

Love it. This is the sort of interview I want to read in the slow slow months of summer.

Nah, this one always seemed the one which would attract less attention from a cartel club, maybe because he's considered a hybrid defender rather than an out and out CB. Plus his injury record probably has a few clubs second guessing whereas I assume Howe has some inside knowledge which gives him more confidence in the player.

Tbh, I'm quite surprised we've left it to City, if they weren't going to take on the authorities then we would need to do it at some point if the talk about our ambitions were true. Maybe given City's legal situation we thought we could bide our time, which is fair enough, but it's set us back a couple of years.

That's how I would see it, he'll cover for Burn at CB if for any reason he's out injured.

I don't really check the realistic rumours thread although maybe I should considering the crazy expectations we get in this one. I always consider any transfer target where a cartel club isn't sniffing around to be a realistic one. So the talk about the 21 year old keeper Trafford, that sounds pretty realistic. Sesko with Arsenal/Chelsea and fuck knows who else - not so much.

I guess the answer to that would be at least Jack Walker was a Blackburn local who lived and died for his club. But you are right, the principle is the same, just gone global now, and as far as I'm concerned you are either on the inside or the outside.

I've never been a fan of City's methods, but I've maintained before and after our takeover, that it's too late to take the moral high ground now. It needed to be stopped when City and Chelsea were buying up every title in sight. There's absolutely no point in shutting the door now, all it's done is locked in the advantage which was gained by flouting these same FFP principles.

I don't really see how it can be any other way seeing as FFP means we are prevented from going for the players who are coveted by the cartel clubs. Even relatively low budget options like Tosin get them hovering because they just aren't going to leave a good deal for someone else to take up.