TRon

Well I'm with you on that. We should buy a replacement and NOT sell him until next year IMO.

Like I said, I was responding to your quote that he can kick rocks and fuck off next year. I took that to mean we don't use him and just let him rot in the reserves for a year.

I read somewhere that only 1 in 5 of his strikes are on target.

I was responding to your comment that "He's gone" and that he can "kick rocks and fuck off next year" I assumed that meant we just don't play him all season. That's what it sounds like.

He's a winger, that's not a position we need to fill.

You said basically he can kick rocks for a year. That doesn't help us or him. Would be better to sign another striker and just leave him on the bench until he's desperate to play. Which he will be pretty soon once the season starts.

Howe isn't going to teach him how to finish. The best hope would be that he actually can finish, and we just haven't seen it because he's still raw.

That would still happen if PIF weren't our owners by the way.

Depends how much responsibility they have delegated to Howe. They seemed to have backed Howe in the Mitchell stand off, and there is no DOF that I know of who would make these decisions, so it's possible they might just take instruction from Howe on which direction to take. There again, we don't know for sure if Howe has decided he's done with Isak. This is all just press speculation at this point, I'm just reading between the lines.

Yeah that has always been my reasoning. I'm just not sure that's how the club see it any more. Howe might prefer to get him out of the club and bring in someone who is 100% committed.

I wouldn't but I suspect that decision might already have been made at the club.

No one is going to pay any more than that IMO. That is already top end considering his numbers.

The problem for us is we now end up selling Isak at a distressed price to fund buying an inferior replacement. If we have accepted he's not playing for us any more...although why we would go down that route is beyond me.

I suspect they will say the same thing tbh.

I'm guessing we'd rather pay that than £50m for Wissa because of the age difference.

Maybe. But maybe it's not.

Leipzig might be understandably trying to get them closer to our offer. Play hardball with the reds just when they thought they had sealed the deal.

The only way he's done is if Howe doesn't want him here any more.

That sounds nice in theory. In reality if he blazes the ball over the bar in the 80th minute when it's 1-1 against Liverpool then they go the other end and score with a clinical finish, we'll see how that stands the test of time.

Hmmm. I don't think I believe that we got £7m for him though.

He's a massive downgrade on Isak. But he'd be a good replacement for Wilson.

We can't even have a decent conversation about him at that price. If it was £50m you could make a case.

Depends on the price I suppose. But yes, we should be picking these players up a lot earlier, but I guess Howe considers that too much of a risk.

He's not going to cost £80m man.

That's fine, it probably needed to be done. Howe needs to buy a new striker who can play instead of Isak until his head's right, that's the power move.