timeEd32

That would be a tremendous failure.

Signings from the continent (leaving out Trippier as he was more of a known quantity): Bruno Isak Botman Minteh Tonali Thiaw Woltemade Only one question mark in that group (which is as much about fit as it is ability). When we go to the continent we don't really miss.

I really don't think this is a big deal. And if we're putting it out there it's plausible that our reputation took a hit in this regard (maybe due to Isak or something else) and we might think it's impacting our recruitment.

And the thread title is wrong because we're actually getting £69m minus £5m sell on fee minus £45m originally paid to Everton minus the cost of a replacement, so ultimately we are at negative £15m.

This is actually a very funny and useful workaround to the financial rules.

Of course it has (though it's also a problem for almost every team, which no one likes to talk about -- that's not to completely excuse us to be clear). That's not what you said though, you said Eddie was figured out on NYE 2022. I was simply pointing out that we scored buckets of goals the next two seasons, including one of the best returns in the league in 2023/24. That's not counting the fact that after your critical date we had games where we scored 5, 6, 4, 3, and 4 in the 2022/23 season. Now for some reason you're talking about how we've started leaking goals, which is also a problem but also entirely unrelated to breaking down low blocks.

I think that's what the majority of the forum wants at this point and there's nothing wrong with it. In theory we can attract a higher calibre of young players than the likes of Brighton/Bournemouth and, realistically, we may never get to a point where we're not going to be a stepping stone to Barcelona, RM, Bayern Munich, or PSG. A stepping stone to other PL clubs is harder to take, but will occasionally be necessary.

We scored 158 league goals in the two following seasons.

I think every club's forum/social media skews negative. And it's all terrible.

Barcelona fans got to watch the greatest team of all time and nearly two decades of the greatest player of all time, and they are still largely unhappy (at least online).

For those upset about the price just know that the average Barcelona supporter is absolutely raging at how much they are spending on him.

The best version of Gordon at Barca probably involves him having a fluid role across the front and being a key part of their press. He'll wreak havoc in some games, but even in the best case scenario his inconsistent finishing will probably drive their supporters mad.

People complaining about the thread title Just blatantly trying to make everything as negative as possible.

You can discuss whatever you want obviously. But inventing narratives about how we're idiots for taking the first offer is going to get called out.

Ah, my favorite transfer window game -- assuming we are getting all the information. This could be the 5th offer. This might be an offer from three days ago. We might have gotten Bayern's best and final. We could be talking to Liverpool right now.

You can't want us to move quickly on incomings and hold out for months on outgoings. We're also dealing with a player who clearly doesn't want to be here anymore. I agree the fee surprised me at first but I think we're all a bit anchored to the Isak money and some other transfers that happened years ago. If Barcola is in the £60-70m range and Diomande around £85m then we're probably in fair value territory.

Even in your upside version you're ignoring the downside of potentially missing out on our targets.

Not exactly going to be upset if Tino is our RB come August. He's not on huge wages either so I'd hope we're very passive sellers.

So basically when he packed it in.

He could also sit on the bench or get injured while we're missing out on players we wanted to sign.

I find it very hard to believe they are going to pay enough.

I just assume everyone is having a pop at Eddie now.

It does seem like we're going to start to see some pressure on the top end of the market due to the rules catching up with many, but £70m has to be the bare minimum (and even that feels low). It's tricky though with us needing money and knowing an unhappy Gordon would be a completely useless player.

Except one inherited a top team and the other is primarily responsible for multiple years of success.