Unbelievable

Kelly’s fitness record is not great and he hasn’t even played a single game for us yet, so I don’t think it’s as clear cut as you made out that Hall will be deputising for Kelly at all. It certainly wouldn’t be fair; Howe has always made sure new players have to earn their place and displace existing first XI players. Also a player doing well, which Hall was backend of last season, normally keeps his place. i just found it funny though that you flip flopped from very surprised if Hall starts to almost certain Hall starts from one week to the next based on hardly anything at all. Kelly’s situation hasn’t changed, and neither has Hall’s.

Mate, this was you last week: “It would be very surprising if Hall starts IMO. I may be wrong though, and so we'll see.The way I see it, Hall is very young and inexperienced. His time will come and he'll still get opportunities to play”

Absolutely, which is why I said >150m, which I think is fair today is more than market value by most objective measures.

How about these then..? Player trading is definitely part of the plan, and we can’t rely on there being a Minteh to save our bacon every season. Our star players are not exempt, quite the contrary I’d say. We’re operating a buy low sell high model here to eventually be able to compete properly under these wretched FFP rules.

If that’s what you took from the discussion about Eales’ January quotes you may be in urgent need of some reading comprehension lessons.

I agree. He’s a player that is better than we are as a club as it stands right now, an overperformer. Which is exactly why we may need to cash in if we get an offer that is too good to refuse. It is clear we are not going to be able to continue to attract more players like him by selling our deadwood that nobody wants even if we give them away for free.

You tell me.. I have left the full quote on the previous page, but here is the most pertinent bit again for your convenience: “It's difficult to say specifically on certain players, but I can say that, if we're going to get to where we want to get to, at times it is necessary to trade your players.”

We could offer first team football in a club going place and competing for CL though, so we’d be an attractive proposition for young players on the verge of breaking through. You want some names? How about the likes of Evan Ferguson, Sesko, Mokouko, etc. I’m sure our scouts could find a suitable replacement if money was hardly an object. it’s just an example though. I’m not even advocating selling an Isak or a Bruno, just pointing out that Eales said that is what we plan to do, so you’d better brace yourself if you think these players are irreplaceable for us.

How does it not? You want me to give you some names? You don’t think 300m allows us to strengthen our team..?

I love Isak. He is world class on his day. But he is also quite injury prone, and there are absolutely no guarantees we will see the best of him over the next couple of years, or if we do that he will want to stay if we don’t strengthen to bring in more players of his level. To be able to do that we have to sell players in their prime and at the top of their value for the foreseeable future, until we can compete with the likes of Man U and Man City in commercial revenue. That is the sad reality of our situation, and why we sometimes will have to sell a crown jewel for the greater good. Besides, as good as Isak is, I think with 300m to spend he can be replaced in such a way that it strengthens us, yes. I trust our scouting setup to identify the players that enable us to do that, as they have proven they can over the past 3 years since the takeover.

Fantastic post timeEd32 and essential reading for all those who think we can easily drop 100-200m this window on two or three star players.

The full picture is that as a club constrained by PSR and low commercial revenue we have to both buy well and SELL well. Buying Minmteh for 8m and selling him a year later for 35m is obviously a prime example of both. I doubt our plan going into last season however was to gamble on a 18 year old from the Norwegian league quadrupling his value and attracting concrete interest from clubs of a similar stature as ourselves with money burning in their back pocket. Like it or hate it though, but it is much more likely that the plan was, and will be going forward, that we may need to sell one of the crown jewels when their stock is high, i.e. a 26, running on 27 year old Bruno at >100m, or a 24, running on 25 year old Isak for let's say >150m. The PSR headroom such a sale would create would allow the owners to double or triple that income to allow for reinvestment into a number similar level players. Darren Eales referred to this plan specifically in January: It's quite conceivable that we didn't get the offers we expected for our more saleable assets and had to do some last minute panic selling as a result (which we did well in fairness, but surely can't be considered a viable way forward for future PSR deadline days).

POIDH

Buying young players in the hope they develop and make the first team, or else improve in value and be flogged on for a profit, is nothing new though, is it? And certainly not PSR related per se, as it existed long before that nonsense was introduced.

Can't remember people saying such things about the likes of Anderson and Miley when they were eased in from lower league/next to no significant experience, so I think Minteh would have been given a fair crack just like everybody else coming in. On a general note, Brighton, Dortmund, Lyon and the likes were happy to spend >30m on him, so perhaps we should stop pretending he'd be nowhere near ready for some first team action in a top league yeah..?

Ten Hag continues the reunion of his Ajax side then

I assume people meant specifically our PSR isues late June that forced us to sell Anderson and Minteh, as opposed to PSR in general.

That purple patch arguably got us into CL last year mind. Agree he's ultimately not good enough and it's time to part ways.

Going off the first page skimming I did this seems fabricated. People realised he wasn't going to be ready for first team football at PL level, hence one for the future, but it certainly wasn't a case of people assuming he was bought with the specific intention to be flipped for a profit. As with any young player you can never really be certain how they will develop, so chances are they will never see the first team and be sold or let go. I'm with TCD on that it can never have been a pre-set plan to flip such a young, unproven player for 4 times their initial fee inside a year. That's just not how football works or everybody would be doing it if it was that simple. The reality of the situation, whether we like it or not, is we spotted an exceptional young player who developed really well on loan and who attracted interest from rival PL clubs as well as renowned clubs from abroad with an eye for talent, like Dortmund and Lyon. He could have been blooded into our team this pre-season and if continued to develop well, become a mainstay in our team in a position where we've not had an undisputed starter for over a decade. Sadly however, we had to let him go because we had got ourselves into a PSR mess. An understandable decision all things considered, but certainly not a pre-meditated one.

Bugger, kind of signing we should have been doing for RCB

Signed as an investment is not true though, is it? Turned out that way, but definitely not communicated as such and I think fair to say the club wouldn’t have sold him if they didn’t have their back against the PSR wall. A young, extremely promising right winger Brighton just dropped 35m on, I think it’s fair to rue the fact we had to sell him and suggest we are a weaker proposition now as it stands than we were before the sale when we could potentially bleed him in during pre-season. Whether we will rue it after the window closes depends on what we do to bring in another player for his position, but as of right now we are absolutely weaker in that position than we were in June. Edit: to add, I’m pretty sure RW has been highlighted as a priority position on here every single transfer window since the takeover. Minteh is the only player that has come in (other than 15-16 year olds for the academy) and we’ve had to sell them just as they seem ready for the big stage. Unless we can shift Almiron or Murphy I’m not at all convinced we’ll go big on RW when we haven’t in earlier windows. So yes, the prospect of a Minteh coming in and developing as a long term first XI solution for RW is definitely a loss as it stands.

Stavely and Mitchell were not transfers. Isak was known a few days before the confirmation, as are most transfers. We may have our own house in order, but with transfers you also have the selling party, the agent, the player and their entourage, so much more chance of a leak.

Put Hojlund up against Martial in a poll and I reckon Hojlund wins on account of potential

No

Kid has skills on the ball like. Looks more a midfielder than a defender to me.