oldtype

Seems like we recognize that we need to get one rotation CM in and have a deep target list in the 20m-30m bracket for that position. Don’t know enough about these various options to have specific preferences about who we end up with as long as we end up with someone.

Hwang technically still plays for Wolves

How is this happening bro was a bit player in the Korean second division as recently as two months ago.

That’s a significant escalation on his part. Leaking info directly to the press + threatening to boycott actual games that matter. Lighting any plausible deniability be may have enjoyed if he chose to reintegrate on fire.

If there’s no bid that matches our valuation (whatever that happens to be), then he will play.

I'm sorry, but we can't be in the business of lighting 150 million in PSR headroom on fire and letting 150k in wages sit on the bench for a whole season just so we can show that we're hard motherfuckers. It's not as if the ritual beheading of Aleksander Isak will stop other clubs from tapping up our good players, or stop those players from sometimes wanting to go to bigger clubs. That's just a fact of life we need to deal with.

A year of service from a twenty-goal Premier League striker.

If we get a bid that meets our valuation, we should accept. If we don't, he needs to be reintegrated and play. Letting him "rot in the reserves" or whatever out of spite is crazy talk. We don't have that luxury, financially or on the pitch.

21 year old attacking midfielder who's not a star or anything but is good enough to play in the Premier League and has room to grow. Seems ideal.

If he decides to stay that's good for us and I hope he's re-integrated quickly on a timeline that Howe finds appropriate. Benefits both parties if he slides back into the team and plays well. We get goals, he'll have more options next summer.

Beginning to wonder if part of the delay is that the price on some of the “Isak replacements” we were looking at has come down a bit to the point where we’re at least considering signing them instead of Wissa. Mainly thinking about Jackson here.

Might impact Liverpool’s ability to pay for him if they do end up going for Guehi a year early this summer.

This is just Palace taking a last shot at extorting Liverpool for a fee. We would have no chance of getting him anyway. We’ve got our CB now so time to relax and see where the chips fall.

Eddie will have to excuse himself for a moment to go print Thiaw’s new shirt.

The next James Perch perhaps. I wouldn’t mind that.

As an example of how methodical we are with this stuff, according to local media reports we started tracking Park Sung Soo when he was sixteen years old. We took a year and a half to watch him develop, vet his personality, and build connections with his camp so that he’d choose us over teams like Bayern and Spurs. If that’s the amount of due diligence we go through for a U-21 team signing from Korea, I can only imagine how much work is put into first team players who are playing in Europe.

It’s the exact opposite of wild haymakers though. We already started vetting our targets for this window at least a year ago, or more. That’s how we know they are “work in progress” gems in the first place. And there’s been no indication that our shortlist has run out despite having been forced to move on to second, third, (or in the case of the striker position) our fifth or sixth choices. What we don’t appear willing to do is buy players solely based on reputation and opportunity when we’re not comfortable that they’ve been sufficiently vetted. And while that makes for frustrating transfer windows from a fan’s perspective, it’s a prudent way to run things given how little margin for error we have.

We should just play Osula imo. They’re all going to be similarly ineffective in that slot and I’d rather not expend one of our better players in that case.

Genuinely have no idea why people think signing players we’ve been looking at for a long time is a bad thing.

Wow, has no idea Michael Ray Richardson’s son was now a professional footballer in Italy lol

13th 12th 18th Championship 12th 5th 16th 10th 15th 18th Championship These were our finishes for the five seasons before and after we finished fifth. If people are taking offense because they genuinely believe they felt no fondness for the manager in the one season where we almost made the champions league in the midst of all of this bullshit, then congratulations on being a far more disciplined fan than I am I guess. (Shrug)

This post is literally just the point I was trying to make, so who’s straw manning? Most people liked Pardew when he finished fifth. And then we turned on him quickly when he turned out to be a fraud. If everyone agrees, great.

Either way, both cost very little money by today’s standards. We haven’t had a single big money flop in the Howe era, which is basically a miracle. We clearly have a very methodical approach to scouting and do a ton of due diligence before pulling the trigger. So I’m willing to give them a little benefit of the doubt when they decide to spend 30m+ on a player. They’ve earned it.

I have no way of verifying but you have to assume that Cisse for that half season has to be somewhere near the top of the all time individual xG over performance list.