STM

Jeez. Absolutely heartbreaking.

Huijsen had been impressed by our project apparently, Real came in for him relatively late.

@southernmag Its got nowt to do with "not being allowed to have an opinion". It's talking baseless bullshit and getting called out for it. You could have said: In my opinion not all is well behind the scenes. Or I wonder if not all is well behing the scenes? Nobody would have come at you. The reality is this: We've not signed a player because we've got a limited pot of money, not an insignificant amount of money but its only going to go so far. For every deal we are doing, we need to count every penny (or million) because if we dont, towards the back end of the window when we want that back up striker, centre midfielder or full back, if we've over spent in other areas we won't be able to do it. We could sign Elanga and Trafford tommorow and still have money for a CB, for example, but is that all we want? We've all talked about needing quite a few bodies, well we cant get a those bodies if we blow our entire budget on 2/3 players. It's saving money now, so we've got wriggle room later. Let's say Forest are asking for 65m for Elanga. We could pay it... or we could try and shave 10m off the fee, via negotiation, incentives and clauses. Taking out time to do that might just be the difference in us signing a striker in late August or at least giving us the option to do so. Ive heard loads of people saying "just shop abroad for cheaper players" but that only works if they are good players (which is subjective), I'm sure we'd not waste a second if we could find someone like Huijsen, but for every Huijsen at 10m, you get an Antony/Sancho for 80m. Im persistently checking twitter and here like everyone else and sure its frustrating but cry arsing or making up negative bullshit on a football forum isn't the answer. We will sign players, its to what standard and how many which is the question but let's dissect is after?

In our CL season 2 of the 4 players we signed were immediately out for the season and one of those players turned out to be not ready. Add to the chronic injuries across the park, the comparison going into this season is ridiculous. We won't have the same level of injuries, we've got a better squad now than we did then and hopefully we will get at the very minimum 3 quality additions. Oh and also, I dont think its actually possible for us to get the draw of death, which basically gave us no wriggle room whatsoever for rotation. We need players but we've progressed massively in 2 seasons, even without senior signings. My biggest worry is the potential drop off from our CBs Schar and Burn. Schar dropped at least 10% at times last season.

I really dont think convincing Elanga to join us is a problem like.

2 years ago.

Yeah i understand the role. Problem is that we hired a manager first and hes class.

I hope its because of Bruce.

Aye what a problem hes going to have, being lumbered with class players with good attitudes. If/when Howe goes, the club can restructure how it wishes, right now Howe is than man with the power and I couldn't think of anyone better.

Even when we were shite we are attracting players ahead of Villa.

Isn't this exactly what we've done.

I really like Elanga but it is interesting how 12 months ago the idea of signing Elanga for even 40m would have had people up in arms, now we are talking 60m. Im of the opinion that 60m is absolutely top end and we shouldnt go any further... however, there comes a point where we have to do what we've got to do. This RW position has plagued us for years and I reckon we've got to bite the bullet and get it done. At the very least we can go into the season knowing we have a priority position sorted.

I know your a decent poster, so i won't get too deep. If you'd said "Given our lack of links and the amount of money we've likely got to spend, I wonder if we've shelved a CB for this window." I'd have not batted an eyelid. It's simply linking the above to Crystal Palace signing Diomande that im refuting. Im sure he is a good player but there's no real evidence of us being interested and im sure we have our reasons beyond financial. If we go all summer doing that, I'll lose my mind.

Fair enough on the last part but watching other clubs transfers and somehow linking them to our potential lack of activity is definitely a negative take. You could have said "wow we must be signing a class CB if we aren't interested in Diomande" but you didn't.

Well speculate positively.

We signed Lewis Hall on loan. We could easily do a deal like that. We can also sell players. Which im sure we will. We dont need to spend 60m on every position. Whether we were linked with Diomande in the past or not is irrelevant. We clearly didn't want him and I can't think for a second its because we dont want a CB. If you want to put stock in media reports you could lean on every local journalist saying that CB is one of our priorities, or lean into us trying to sign Guehi last year, or enquiring about Scalvini. Guehi is going to Liverpool FWIW. Id rather we didn't even entertain that one anymore. Towards the end of the window we will sign a CB.

Diomande going to Palace has nothing to do with us. Nobody knows what we can/cant spend.

Why?

Theres our CB gone. Shame we didn't have a couple of here running the commercial side of our business.

You mean during that video you weren't thinking about PIF and how slooooooow they are to do sponsorship deals and fiddle the books so we can spend money quicker to appease impatient fans? Think you need your priorities right bud.

Well, probably because Eddie knows more about this great sport than anyone else on this forum, even TCD. Na, I get your point though. Discussion is fine.

For the first part he did an interview with Ben Foster. For the last bit. I made that up.

I live in a rural community and farmers absolute bellends.

The really nice thing about this is how much the player wants the move too. After all these Chelsea cunts, its nice to have a sound lad actually understand and want to be part of the project. I love his character. Im going to call it now and say he becomes one of our greatest ever goalkeepers. 10 years here. Maybe even captain. I may have gone too far. It's been a long time.