TRon

He's probably quoting last year's deal we had lined up before it fell through for PSR reasons.

Joelinton was out for a prolonged period, that isn't likely to happen again. He's the only CM who is difficult to swap out, Joe Willock is the best fit replacement. You could argue he didn't shine last season, but he's done well previously in that role. In any case, he could be sold and we could use that money to buy a midfielder.

Is it more of a priority than buying a right sided forward, CB and ball playing goalkeeper?

Called it last summer.

€25m seems pretty budget friendly. I can only assume we never really were that keen.

It's about priorities. We don't have a big enough budget to sign for every position.

Pretty much.

This is my take as well. Howe is very particular in the players he wants for his set up, and I tend to trust his judgement on this. He's not got much wrong when he pursues a player long term. Gordon, Livramento, Isak, Botman all spring to mind. Even Ekitike come to think of it, he never came off but now loads of top teams are trying to sign him. If we've been chasing Elanga's signature for over a year there's probably a lot of thought been put into it.

I think most people would rather have had him here as part of our squad, especially considering we got fuck all for him in return in £15m. But we had to sell him because of PSR so I'm not really sure what we are discussing. Is it because posters think we should bring him back?

That's my point. I keep hearing we should move on to other options, and obviously at some point we do. But who are the better/cheaper options?

We can't buy Rodrygo. I'm sure we would like to have bought Cherki as well for £35m but he's gone to City who will probably double the wages he would get here. Not that we would pay £70m for Elanga or Semanyo anyway.

Not sure this argument holds tbh. If he wasn't much good they would want to sell him. Maybe not for £70m but they'd probably snap your hands off at £50m surely?

Against that, the Forest fans seem to love him. But then they are a counter attacking side so pace is more important than technique I guess.

How good is he actually becoming though? It's not like he's scored loads of goals or got loads of assists for Forest has he? He seems pretty much the same player he was for us, good all action type of contributions but not quite there yet as an attacking force. Disclaimer: I don't take that much notice of other teams but if I'm wrong about this please feel free to correct.

We do seem to be running into this issue with players we are chasing. Burnley also have a sell on fee which is inflating the fee they are asking. I guess it just comes down to which player still ends up being better value. Even with the inflated fee Elanga might not cost any more than Semenyo.

We could pay him his current wage for another 3 years if we wanted to. I wonder if they are aware of this?

It's kind of funny that every single PL forward we've been linked to has been quoted at £60-70m. Even the goalie is apparently £40m now.

I don't know how the PSR cycle works but I guess if we got all of our top targets we could maybe overspend this summer and then not spend the following?

Might revisit the thread in 12 months time to see how he's getting on at whichever league he's been farmed out to.

I already said Elanga carries the ball better as well. Whatever metric Murphy is on a par with probably isn't that much of a factor as long as Elanga is improving us.

Elanga is faster and more explosive. I reckon he'll be better technically as well as it turns out, I know Murphy can strike the ball nicely, but his first touch is often bad, and he doesn't carry the ball well.

He just has to have a higher technical ability than Murphy tbh.

I always assumed we wanted both.

That's where I'm at. I get that he isn't Lamine Yamal, but given we can't buy that type of player yet, Howe would probably like to go for explosive pace and an eye for a goal as an alternative.

He's clearly not rated that highly by our scouts. Can't say I thought much of him in the two games up here either.