Chris_R

Why not?! If I was sat on a train heading to sign for a new club I'd probably be tempted to look on the fans forum of the club I was going to. It's not like forums are top secret.

He's overpriced and uninspiring. But: - Scores 1 in 3 in the PL - Is great in the air - Can put his foot through a ball and hit it cleanly - Seems surprisingly fast for a big lad - Wilson is still our main striker and will be back soon, this guy is just cover / a stopgap Hopefully we'll create more than Burnley too, meaning he gets more chances. I'm not unhappy. It fills a problem position for the next few games and he knows the league too.

Summer (if we can survive!) moves the needle a little, but not enough to change our entire strategy. It's just the next window. But if you think we cannot spend £200m this window, that just doubles down on the fact that we cannot buy this kid for £40m and send him back home for the rest of the year. Whatever we can spend now, we need for now. Sure, if we get in an SC, DC (*2?), DMC, AMC and RW in the next couple of weeks then maybe we can start to look at these kind of deals if there's enough money left. But that feels optimistic right now.

I mean I literally said we could spend more than £200m. I'm aware of how it works. But I also said why we should not. Sure, there's maths out there that says we can twist our way to £5-600m spend but then we'll end up like Everton, stuck in the middle and unable to improve until we offload some players. Sure, sponsorship could push it all up a bit further but it only adds a bit more, it doesn't completely rewrite the rules and anyway the other clubs are looking at ways to clamp down on that. Point remains, we do NOT have unlimited money - not in this transfer window or any others. If we had the full weight of PIF to just spend £800bn on whatever we wanted with no consequences then play on, but that's not the case here by a long way. There is no scope in the maths to spend £40m on a player who won't play for us for the rest of the season.

We are, as it happens. We're being quoted £40m+ for anyone we look at, including this kid. We can maybe spend £200m this window. We need lots of players. Sure, we could spread costs over many years by amortising the cost or spreading the payments, but it still doesn't change that FFP will affect what we can spend and that if we DO blow everything now then we'll have sod-all to push on with in the summer. We have money, but we have to be a bit careful and get good deals for players who can make a difference now.

There's nothing wrong with loan back clauses, but now would be suicide. Move on and work on other deals, maybe come back to this in the summer or whatever if we're still keen. Pointless now.

Oh come on.

Of infinitely more concern is our total lack of a striker.

I should add that for these complex bids, both sides must agree on every single line item. The paperwork will go back and forward several times with each side taking turns to proof read it and point out things they don't like - "You said £10m after 50 appearances, but you're including cup appearances there and we said only league appearances count", so back the whole document goes and you have to review the whole thing again. It can be a massive ballache but both sides are trying to guard against lawsuits further down the line because this document is legally binding. You fuck up on this, writing "50 league appearances, £10m per appearance" instead of "£10m after 50 league appearances" and you've potentially screwed the entire company out of £490m, and the other side WILL hold you to it. Extreme example I know, but just trying to make a point that both sides will crawl over the proposal with a fine tooth comb, with people on both sides (Normal people like you or I, not billionaires) knowing their job is likely on the line if they drop a massive bollock over it, so nobody is going to rush anything just because a few nerds on the internet are getting their pants in a knot that the guy might not play at the weekend.

I'm currently stood in Tesco preparing a bid for this loaf of bread. That said, I work for a company where we do bid for things which can cost several million £, I can tell you first hand that it can be a long process because although it's not my primary role, I get involved in a lot of the bid work. Our bids can take several days to put together, sometimes more than a week, involving many different people. I imagine that like what we do, for football everything has to be legally watertight for both sides - terms of payment, dates of payment, who to pay, any intermediaries to pay such as agents and how much, any clauses, when the clauses trigger and under what conditions and so on. If there's an appearance bonus, is that just league games? What about sub appearances? Making sure all that is fine and legally sound will necessarily take time. I imagine its very rarely as simple as saying "We'll give you £30m", there's just too much involved. I get that it's very frustrating from the outside though.

Tbf most players goal compilations look good, because by definition that's the times they did things right and the ball ended up in the back of the net. That said, peak Shola would probably be very welcome in our team right now, sad though that is to say.

Looks talented from what I saw on YouTube. Absolute skin and bone though, looks about 8 stone with his twig legs. Might need to bulk out a bit. (Can probably still shoot a lot harder than Joelinton though!)

It's 2022. It isn't like we need to post a letter to Saudi Arabia. I don't have permission to do everything at work, but I have the phone number of my MD and can get his attention if I need to.

Surely we can find a half-decent defender somewhere in world football for under £30m?

Because he believes he can. If he's correct, why wouldn't he double it?

If £17m "easily" gets you someone better than Wood, why would we buy Wood for £17m?

This, and we're only trying to finish 17th.

ASM is not the problem with this team. He's the least of our worries. Problems with him as I see it are: - He doesn't trust the other players because he thinks they're dogshit so tired to do it alone, but it's kinda hard to argue against him there even if it's frustrating as fuck - The opposition know that he's our only that because the rest of our players are dogshit so they stick 2 or 3 round him, marking or crowding him out of the game Get a couple of other decent forward players in the team who the opposition actually have to worry about and he'll look a different player. Be absolutely mad to even think about losing him from the squad, he does things few other players can.

We need to get a recognised striker in before Watford because this lot could play until next summer and not score.

Just glad we got L1 Cambridge and not L1 Sunderland in the draw.

We probably played a strong side thinking it'd be a nice little morale booster if we stuck 3 or 4 past a L1 club. Might backfire quite spectacularly.

Can anyone link to that rule? I've honestly never heard, of it but the commentators mentioned it too.

We really need to replace about 9 players. We're so shit.

Are we, though? I've been thinking about this. Sure, we're stinking rich and in danger of relegation. But being second bottom of the league, there are LOTS of players who can improve us. We have options. It's early in the window too, and many clubs are in the shit because of Covid hitting attendances and want/need to sell. Also, FFP means we can't blow £2bn on transfers even if we wanted to so we do actually have to be careful with our money and this is something that can be explained to other clubs fairly easily. I think we're actually in a good position to get some decent deals done and not be bent over by anyone.

Ashley wanted a team he could just keep in the PL for the minimum possible expenditure. For us, that was horrific because it was a massive step back. For Derby, it would be fantastic. Ashley's ambition has a ceiling. If he takes every club to that ceiling, it's not necessarily bad for all of them. Still an absolute cunt and a parasitic arsehole though, and he was obviously horrific for us.