KaKa

Oh my God Anderson

Tosin is very very funny man Would have included such a clause in a heartbeat. No disrespect to the guy, but those are never coming in for him

Yeah, it wouldn't be good. Be interesting to see how it plays out. If agreements can't be made over targets, it might ultimately mean a change in manager.

If we went back in for them, it would be more likely Howe was being appeased I imagine. From what I've been seeing regarding fees, we'd be looking at around £90 million for the pair, which is pretty alarming.

A fair chunk of that should certainly be on the RW. Think we can upgrade that spot with around £35 to £40 million and use the rest on other areas. Think January will be really tough too. Anything that we can pull off then will be a nice surprise tbh.

I think Mitchell can really help improve things considerably. Hopefully Howe is open to it.

If we have £70 million I think we really need to be spreading that across a number of positions.

So here's the thing ... what does Mitchell do if Howe isn't keen on his alternative recommendations, and insists on those two? Does he then bring in the players he rates anyway, that he believes can make a difference? What then if he does, and Howe doesn't use them?

This is true. Honestly, all I want at the minute is for whatever transfer budget we have to be used more wisely to better balance out the first team and squad. We seem to be waiting for the perfect player before making a move at the minute, and are also looking to spend quite big on them too. Think we'd have been better off looking at players with a bit of room for growth for less money across different areas of the team, and would have been much stronger for it by now. We also need to start looking more outside the Premier League - this includes the Championship. And also keep more of an eye on any young players that become available at Man City, Chelsea and Arsenal due to a lack of opportunities as their academies are so strong. We've all seen how well Delap, who came through at Man City, has performed for Ipswich. He cost £5 million more than what we spent on Osula, who we refuse to put in games despite having no striker available.

Yes, you are both correct. However, we did appear to be strong favourites early on though, and perhaps could have tied things up sooner. Chelsea came in later on and gazumped us.

After Shelvey left, I don't understand why we never just got someone else to sit in that deeper role.

The situation sucks. It's not impossible, but I think we'll be very fortunate to find some solutions to help in January.

Would be nice if we showed a bit more tactical flexibility at times in the meantime. Bruno is our most likely player to open up teams that are sitting deeper. He got more goals and assists earlier on with us when Shelvey sat in that deeper midfield position. I'm not sure why we don't put him in one of the number 8 positions at times to change things up. It's just the same thing over and over again.

Wilson probably comes through for us in both those situations, as an alternative option. But he's injured yet again. Towards the back end of last season, it cost us Europe under similar circumstances where we needed more firepower. Yet here we are again, already. No one to blame but ourselves.

January window can be so tricky because clubs always want to keep their better players until the summer at least, when they are more willing to sell. We are also having to be so careful now due to the PSR situation, that we can't take too many risks, because we are in desperation mode trying to make something of the season. Feels like we've already made a mess of things and might be better off waiting until the summer and having a more extensive rebuild.

It is laughable, but unfortunately that was our approach. We've continuously heard Howe strangely say that there's only a small pool of players that will improve us, and so it shouldn't be a surprise that not landing Tosin led to the ridiculous situation we found ourselves in. It is with this context of Howe feeling only a few players could improve us that I think we then probably should have been a bit more flexible, if Tosin was supposedly one of those that fit the criteria. Ultimately, the whole approach to getting players in was not good. In fact it was unacceptable really.

Downie says we didn't want to get into the habit of including release clauses. In this instance, for a player on a free, which would have significantly impacted what we could do elsewhere, I don't think it was the right call.

It was a release clause that a free agent defender from Fulham requested. My gut instinct is that it was hardly something groundbreaking.

A report came out saying we refused to add a release clause while Chelsea didn't. I said if that was the case it was a poor decision. Don't understand why all this fuss about that. And bringing all this other stuff into it that has nothing to do with what was reported.

But you don't know the terms either. What kind of release clause could he realistically have been requesting that would be a non starter? Concessions have to be made with free transfers to some extent. The risk would have been worth it for the impact it would have had on our ability to spend elsewhere.

Whatever they were, Chelsea agreed and we didn't, and we missed out on what was supposedly a key target to allow us to spend on other areas of the team. He was coming in on a free. I don't see the downside in agreeing to the clause.

Just going off the latest reports that we refused the clause while Chelsea didn't, which seems pretty simple and straightforward a decision.

Think there's a balance that can be struck. The midfielders I mentioned are established enough at a decent level to make a difference without a massive outlay. They all went to top clubs and are playing. A few of those types, some young talent like you say, and some promising Championship players with potential, and we would have been in much better shape I think.

If we missed out because we refused to add a release clause that was a really poor decision. He was coming in on a free. Like you say it would be a clause of at least £40 million. If he did well enough for someone to come in and meet that and he opted to leave, that would have been pure profit I believe, and would have had us in a strong position to go and spend.

With each passing week our squad looks more and more inadequate, and our previous transfer business more and more questionable. I'm sure there'll be more to come from Tonali, but that £60 million fee makes me increasingly uncomfortable. Not sure it will ever be justified. There were a number of midfielders we were linked with previously that I think would have given us somewhat similar for significantly less in fee and wages, and allowed us to strengthen elsewhere. Thuram joined Juve for £20 million, Fofana joined AC Milan for £20 million and Kone joined Roma for £15 million all this past summer in the last year of their deals. Even adding another £10 million to each of those if we go for them a year earlier and it is still a big difference. I think we missed our chances to kick on with better use of the money we have spent and will now need a big sale of one of our key players or two for a bit of a rebuild.