oldtype

His 23-24 was poor and stop start due to injury. His 24-25 was initially promising but his form completely went when the team started going into the shitter.

Big strong fast two footed, good passer. Honestly on paper everything sounds amazing which makes you wonder how bad his fuckups must be for Milan fans to have completely turned on him.

If you look at the edited videos with only highlights, he honestly looks like the best CB in the world

He's just stating the truth imo. Even if he's "in charge" of transfers for the moment, there's no way this magnitude of sale could go through without ownership authorization.

Someone try and ask for an Isak shirt at the club shop and see if Eddie Howe emerges from the back room to slap in you in the face.

Club feels like a shambles on and off the pitch due to all the distractions, and the long Asia tour was clearly not ideal for match fitness or tactical cohesion. So, comfortable 2-0 win then.

Okay let me do the math for you. Joelinton's transfer fee is already fully amortized so his only PSR hit is his wages, which I will guess are about 100k/week, or 5.2 m/year. Let's say we sell him for 40m and bring in an MGW-equivalent at 65m, and amortize the latter fee so it hits our books over five years at 13m/year. I'm assuming this MGW-equivalent would demand significantly higher wages. For argument's sake let's say it's 150k/week, or 7.8m/year. The first year of this transaction the incoming fee hits the books all at once while the outgoing fee is amortized, so we have 40-17-2.6 = 20.4m in additional PSR headroom. But in the second year, the incoming fee is gone so we actually have 15.6m less PSR headroom. And that continues for the remainder of the new midfielder's contract, so an additional three years after that. Let's assume that Joelinton realistically only has three years left as our first choice CM before we have to replace him anyway, so anything after that is irrelevant. Even under that assumption, you are talking about 10.8m less psr headroom over that three-year period if we replace Joelinton now. So by "recycling the money" we actually end up with less money than we'd have by just riding out his contract. Obviously there's some upside in that you've also bought that MGW-equivalent who may or may not be able to continue to play for us after that three-year period, and could presumably be sold again for more money himself. Still, the club could very rationally make the decision that this upside is not worth the risk of moving out a good player who is an influential part of the group, especially when it will actually cost you money in the short run.

Agent leaks first with the largest possible fee to improve perception of the player, because he knows that a lot of people will only read the first tweet. After that journos with club sources will reach out and hear back that no, that’s not what the actual deal is.

His market value would be low enough that I think the club is content to have him stick around as resident good lad and emergency cover.

can you please read my post before you quote it

From a smart PSR management perspective, I don’t think it makes any sense to sell a 28 year old with basically no accounting hit to our books who is performing at a very high level in our first team. Even if we got 40m for him, it would cost double that to get a younger replacement of similar ability, and that player would no doubt require higher wages. PSR isn’t just about maximizing incoming transfer fees. When you have a good player who’s already fully amortized and playing on a below market contract, it’s okay to ride it out.

This is exactly where I was during the 3-4 years I walked away because of Ashley. Every piece of news about the club felt like bad news because I knew the powers to be were hellbent on actively making us worse. So what’s even the point anymore. Disappointing summer transfer window and (hopefully temporary) executive turmoil notwithstanding, I don’t think we’re anywhere near comparable to that right now. We won a fucking trophy just a couple months ago, for crying out loud.

yes, really not worth the cultural disruption to move him out just so we can recoup some money. He’s the sort of player that could stay forever and have a testimonial.

that’s more or less exactly what we are at the moment.

Four is still a lot though

I don’t claim to be a PSR expert but I assume Big Joe’s transfer fee is long gone from our books so his only impact on PSR are his wages, which probably aren’t too high. That’s exactly the sort of player the club might be content to keep around and age out gracefully, even if we end up not getting an outbound fee for him.

But you could also do this in the reverse direction and sign young backups who are have the potential to improve beyond your current first choice, which is essentially what Thiaw and Ramsdale are. We’ve already done this with Livramento, for example. (Also I think it rarely works the way you say in reality because players who have been starting for years are rarely willing to accept full-time backup roles. If Joelinton was put in the Longstaff role this season, he would rightfully want to leave).

Exactly. Improvements to the squad are still significant improvements, especially when we actually like most of the players in the first choice XI and our primary concern was depth in a CL year. We also upgraded materially on the right wing, the one genuine problem area in the first team. Thiaw and Ramsdale are players who don’t improve the first team on day one, but may do so in the future. We did have a go at some players that may have been day-one ceiling raisers, but we didn’t get them. That’s what prevents it from being a great summer.

We got an “only wanted”

B plus or B minus, whatever. It would be B-range. Good not great.

This is Eddie Howe we’re talking about. He’ll persevere with Gordon or Osula up top for at least a month before he lets a new signing walk into the starting XI.

Assuming Thiaw and Wissa get done (knocks furiously on wood), we just need to sort out the Isak situation and grab a backup CM and that’s pretty much us set for the window. Not the huge step forward we all wanted but good enough for us to compete for a CL place again and leaving us with money to spend next year in what is hopefully a less saturated market. If we do sell Isak that possibly gives us the funds to get a striker replacement AND splurge on one more player who improves the first choice XI. Either way, the process will have been incredibly messy but it ends up being a solid B+ summer.

It should be noted that none of those were players that we scouted for an extended period of time and decided to spend big money on. Kelly was an opportunistic free transfer, others were holdovers from previous regime, and nobody can reasonably call Gordon a failure over what is hopefully a temporary dip in form.

It should be seen as a huge sign of confidence that he’s had a couple of bad seasons since we’ve started tracking him and we’ve still decided “nah, we trust our assessment. We’ll take him.”

If he was a clear cut elite player with no flaws at 24 years old we wouldn’t have a chance of signing him. This is someone who we know extremely well as we have been scouting him for years. We like his fundamentals and Eddie thinks he can fix him. That’s good enough for me.