timeEd32

Well that would be fun.

I agree it probably is. The end of June just has me a little spooked to be honest.

Yeah, I think they are wrong pending outgoings / new, meaningful sponsorships. But hopefully not.

I don't think there's any reason to think there's some big problem behind the scenes. Some things may have been delayed or re-evaluated with Mitchell coming in, but the main issue is that we likely just don't have a lot of money to spend and we really need outgoings.

The Gordon / Gomez swap would have genuinely been one of the worst deals the club has ever done, so I really hope that's nonsense. But I think if Liverpool put £90m+ on the table I'd want us to take it. I'd hate it and I don't want it to happen, but I think the end result is we'd end up with a more balanced and better overall squad.

Couple comments from the Sheffield United side: "Will Osula to Newcastle is rumoured to be £10,000,000 + £5,000,000 in add-ons, and we usually get a cheeky sell on clause in there. It is an absolute no-brainer for United at this amount as it's no secret we're cutting it fine financially. Osula’s a very good prospect, but he's not a regular starter. He's been sensational in the U21s, but he hasn't been able to hit a barn door in the first team, and he's not had consistent opportunities to do that." "Osula's looked very good in pre-season as well coming in off the left-hand side, but, and it's a big but, we can't turn down that sort of money, particularly if we want some more starters to come in. There are rumours that we’re in for the likes of Michael Cooper, these permanent additions need to be funded from somewhere and I think you can't reject that sort of offer personally." Sounds intriguing, though annoying that he specifically mentions coming in from the left.

This may not be so funny in 30 days time.

Yeah, not saying it was a solution in June. But would seem an obvious move in January or for July 1. Only difference from what you said is once extended the five years are spread across the remainder of the fee, so there’s £2-3m more in amortization savings depending on when it was done.

If he’s really only on a 3.5 year deal we could give him an extension that massively increases his wages and still save a few million per year overall. It seems unlikely to me that wouldn’t have been one of our first cost saving measures.

Ha yeah, it’s over £2m a year so not nothing. There’s also zero reporting on what his sign on bonus might be. It’d be nice to have some good reporting on this, but Edwards would rather make cryptic tweets, Waugh is recycling lists, and Caulkin is working on his SELA Stack piece where he’s going to say it evokes the same feeling as ambling into the Gallowgate bogs with his grandad.

Maybe, if you want to go against just about every report out there.

Multiple reports that he tripled his wages, which seem to be consistently reported as £30-35k at Bournemouth. Capology has him "verified" at £150k/wk. Verification means it's either been reported by multiple media sources or confirmed directly by the club / agent / player. I can't find any media reports of him on £150k. Despite him being a free agent I'd be surprised if we quintupled his wages and put him immediately above Isak/Tonali, but I think we can safely assume he's in the £105-150k range.

Agreed. It almost doesn't matter if people think he's good or not. He clearly cared and I'm not sure you can say that about a lot of their squad.

Much of it feels like a discussion with Chat GPT.

I can live with it if he's our #2 and reasonably decent. If we can shift Dubravka it's kind of whatever. The noises about us wanting another GK would make this truly desperate.

I agree Villa have been more creative, though they have the academy advantage and had to sell a meaningful player. They were (are?) in an even worse position than us though, so I can't get behind holding them on some sort of PSR pedestal.

You said "in the calculations," which I assume was referencing the linked post, which I will reiterate is a estimated guess based on the numbers we do have. I've bowed out of the June / Minteh discussion as there's no end.

You seem to consistently want others to provide all the evidence to the point that I can't tell if you're trolling. But I'd be happy to discuss the significant gaps if you'd be kind enough to point them out instead of waiting for some future `I told you so` moment.

It’s how we’re going to afford a RW. Thank you for your continued donations.

Seems safe to say this is our biggest coup since the takeover in terms of youth signings.

I've been thinking a CB loan would make a lot of sense if we don't think there's a too-good-to-pass-up player available. We obviously need a Schar replacement at some point, but not necessarily this season. If Botman and Lascelles didn't suffer long term injuries then I'm guessing it wouldn't be so high up the priority list. Loan a CB > spend our whole budget on a versatile RW

My interpretation of this, assuming he's not full of shit, is that he has a source somewhere in the transfer pipeline (private jet, hotel, real estate, club driver, etc.). It'd be hilarious if it was Finneran.

Finneran was named the Republic of Ireland’s under-15 player of the year in 2023. He became the youngest-ever debutant for Blackburn Rovers at the age of 15 when Blackburn faced Cambridge in the third round of the FA Cup.

Annual cost (wages + amortised fee)

There's been a number of discussions on here in the past about how the last couple years contained the easiest revenue increases, so this shouldn't be all that surprising. The rules continually changing are obviously not helping us. There's probably another £10-15m of increases coming from price rises, season ticket freezes ending, and a few more sponsorships. After that the next £100m is by far the hardest to gain if we need to play by the rules. It requires greatly increasing match day revenue, consistently successful player development and trading, and regular European football (which means continually overachieving until the revenue catches up).