Andy

The two situations are basically identical like, you have to do some serious mental gymnastics to come to the conclusion of "Isak bad/Wissa okay".

I'd be happier if we spent £120m on Wissa than if we wasted £20m on Hojland.

£60m is too much. £50m is probably about right in the current market, to be honest, circumstances taken into account.

It seems like we're doing a Liverpool here, except we're in a more desperate position than they are. You don't want to be held to ransom by clubs, but at some point you're going to have to actually pay what they want if you want to land a player. £50m-60m sounds a lot for a 28 year old, but isn't exactly completely unreasonable for a striker who scored 19 premier league goals last season and is the only capable striker in Brentford's squad, especially in the position we're in where a proven striker could be the difference between midtable and top 6. If he scores 19 goals again this season it's almost certainly money well spent.

Ok Neesy enjoy your IP ban.

They'll obviously keep ramping the price up. Anyone watching the match on Friday can see exactly what we're desperate for, this was always going to be the issue when we started the season with no Wilson replacement. A competent striker is potentially the difference between 5th and 10th for us as things stand, clubs know this.

Convinced he's the biggest myth in English football at the moment. I've never seen him have a good game.

We have no idea what Liverpool said or didn't say, but I find it very hard to believe that they signed a player for vast amounts of money purely to spite us.

Nah he was definitely bad today and a lot of people said it earlier in the thread. If you played the video of the game back at 3x speed it would look like he was running at a normal pace.

Thought he came across okay in his interview after the game yesterday tbh.

It's difficult to see how anyone can give him the benefit of the doubt considering what has happened this summer. He has shown that he is astonishingly unprofessional.

Along the lines of the rest of the group are tight-knit and the togetherness is never going to go "regardless of individuals"

Looked to me like he was half arsing it at the end of last season, don't see why he wouldn't now. Seemed to me from Gordon's comments today that there's no desire from the group to have him come back into the squad, regardless of how Isak chooses to play it. For all people are saying it sends the wrong message to players "giving him what he wants", it sends a much worse message allowing him to strike then just throwing him straight back into the starting 11 if he doesn't get a move, only for him to do it all again in January or next summer.

He was trying to make things happen, but the more involved in a game he is, the less effective he seems to be as he seems to increasingly try to force the issue. It doesn't help when you have no focal point up front either obviously, their defenders knew that crossing the ball was his worst option today, so they just congested his route cutting-in.

Let's see how the club choose to play it then I guess. PIF and Howe are both pretty stubborn, so it'll be interesting to see which side of the argument they sit on. I suspect he won't be a Newcastle player by September 1st.

West Ham are shite, but to be fair to Sunderland they looked robust enough and showed they can score goals. If you're hard to beat in this league it's half the battle, most of the teams that have come up in recent years have been wide open and constantly caused themselves problems of their own making. They have a chance of staying up.

It absolutely is cutting off our nose if he refuses to play, half arses it, or spends his days stinking up the dressing room; at worst it's a complete wasted squad space, at best it's a player going through the motions who we can't trust and who his teammates can't trust. We'd potentially be writing off the league season and a champions league campaign purely to show him who's boss. We need players at the club who want to play for us first and foremost, there's absolutely no point having any player here if they don't want to be, it doesn't matter how good they are. I seriously doubt Eddie wants him here at this stage, regardless of what he says in his press conferences.

We shouldn't be aiming to replace him, it's basically impossible as you say. We should however be aiming to bring in a competent pair of strikers and to improve the squad as a whole with whatever money is brought in. There's no way back for him and I'm surprised people want to keep him at this point to be honest. It's cutting off our nose to spite our face, he simply doesn't want to play for us, he didn't at the end of last season either and in hindsight it was incredibly evident in his half arsed performances. That is the Isak we'd get if we forced him to stay.

Isak missed easier one on ones quite a few times last season tbh, he should have scored but it happens.

Apart from in the opposition box, anyway

On the fence. He's rapid but his end product was so poor, that pass to Gordon aside. I think it'll take until after Christmas to see the best of him.

I don't think saying it's two points dropped is harsh tbh, the game was there for the taking; Villa are poor compared to last season and had ten men for 20 minutes, we just didn't have the resources to go and punish them. Literally any premier league level striker on the pitch and we would've won this game - the Isak situation aside, we knew Wilson needed replacing in May 2024 and still haven't done it.

People will say this is a good point if it ends like this, but it's two points dropped IMO. They were there for the taking with 11 men never mind 10. A more decisive transfer window and we win this game comfortably.

Give Park and Osula a go man, we need something a bit different

This has that feeling of inevitablity that became familiar in second halves last season. Changes asap please.