oldtype

Our threshold for individual player threads should be "fee agreed" or "personal terms agreed," and I don't even think that's safe.

Man United already got Mbuemo btw

If we weren't already planning to sell I don't see how we pivot that quickly while our manager is having to run everything because we don't have an actual front office. This is just not the best time to be making decisions like selling our best player.

I did some chatgpt searching. Rooney, Ronaldo, Mbappe, Fabregas came up. It happens a lot with this class of player. They have more power.

I have to say the transfer window is somehow more relaxing and fun now that I watch zero football outside of our own matches and honestly barely know ten players who don't play for NUFC. I have no expectations and every new link is a fun little mystery box. This Sesko person looks cool.

Yeah I think one thing we should understand is that because we are dealing with a higher class of player in general now, we're also going to have to deal with more aggressive player/agent antics in situations like this. When you're a top 5 player in the world in your position, you have more leverage than even just really good players do, and your agent knows it. That's just the reality of dealing with this class of player.

For what it's worth if you look around I'm sure there are plenty of examples of world class players doing something like this and then not being sold, ultimately playing another season or two for their club and doing perfectly fine before leaving.

To be clear, it's a chance at the Ballon d'or, PL/CL titles, AND the money. None of which we are permitted to offer him under the current rules.

If Liverpool are genuinely the only club in for him, yet another reason to wait and see. Would be dumb to sell a top 5 striker in the world with no bidding war.

He would probably still want to go to the club who can double his wages?

Fully expect them to say they want another 20m on top now that we need to replace Isak

FWIW I’d hold on to him for now if only because it makes no sense to make such a monumental decision while the club’s executive team is in transition. We may not get the best deal, we may struggle to find a replacement, and it’s not the best way to start off a relationship with the incoming staff to sell our best player without their input. He seems like the type to understand this if it’s explained to him and we let him know we plan to sell him next year. It’s not like he’s going to refuse to play in the freaking champions league because we didn’t sell him to Liverpool.

He’s being offered as much money as the club is permitted to spend under the rules, he’s the one running the transfers, and he works more closely with the players than anyone else at the club so if anyone was going to be able to convince Isak to stay, it would have been him. The only way in which he can be more “backed” going forward is to appoint professional staff to steer the transfer side so we can relieve his workload and let him focus on what he’s actually good at.

Haha this sucks. I have no further comment.

The rules serve a purpose for mid-to-lower table teams whose owners are content to stay in the PL, just as it does for the cartel clubs, as it provides a built-in excuse for them to just hang out in the league with minimum investment in the squad and no effort to grow revenue. Mike Ashley would have loved this PSR regime. It's a really small subset of clubs who are both outside the top six and have the ambition and financial means to get into the top six if the rules were less stringent. That's why it's always going to be a struggle to get enough votes to change things.

The market this window is different from the last window which is different from the window before it, especially in an extremely narrow market with a small pool of buyers and sellers. There will be wild swings in "market value" between transfer windows, as we have all seen. And even within the same window, every team's situation is different. None of us know what our actual spending constraints are given that they are now dictated not by a mythical "transfer budget," but rather a series of complex rules that none of us have the ability or underlying data necessary to calculate. Far from easy IMO.

All sorts of potential contractual reasons why we could have agreed to this ages ago but couldn't announce it officially. He could have some kind of residual compensation from his prior deal that he can't claim if he officially takes another job, for example. Executive compensation deals are super weird and complex.

I frankly don't know how any one of us is capable of doing any sort of reasonable evaluation as to what fees are "too much" or "too little." We're not looking at the entire market landscape to determine what the asking price is for comparable players. We're not running the numbers on our PSR compliance to see how a 35m fee would affect us vs. a 40m fee. We're just guessing. I can only really evaluate a transfer based on how successful the player is on the pitch. The fee is largely irrelevant. If the club paid it, I will go ahead and assume we can do so without ruining our books.

Guys, phones exist.

All speculation, but may have been largely based on PIF/PCP connections. Former is less involved now and latter is gone.

One theory as to why we've stopped going after European targets: transfers are much more about relationships than they are about scouting. It's 2025 and every club knows who the good "targets" in Europe are, the ones that get to the front of the line are people who have pre-existing relationships with the selling club that can help you get in there and negotiating before anyone else. For all his footballing brilliance, I doubt Howe has extensive contacts with business-side executives at European clubs (or European agents), so it's more difficult for us to get on the phone with them or to get good deals. That's why it's important to have a well-regarded sporting director in modern football. These people all hang out in the same circles/attend the same conferences etc. The easiest way to get ahead on transfers is if you "know a guy."

Some leadership > no leadership, so I'm all for this appointment.

Yes. That’s fair

I think it’s preferable to the alternative, which is “just making shit up”

Of course he’s doing favors for agents and/or execs in exchange for inside information. That’s the only reason sports journalists get inside information in the first place. It’s fine to be unhappy about that but the entire “transfer newsbreaker” profession wouldn’t exist without insider quid pro quos, and clearly we want it to exist given that we all keep consuming their content nonstop.