PRL

What did the bookies say this time last year? Pretty sure City were odds on

I’m a realist and understand it’s likely Ekitike will go there now, but it’s a huge risk on their part, they’ve only been loosely linked with him, all their fans and the rest of the world is seeing he was used as a pawn, he will know that too. If he doesn’t hit the ground running the pressure will grow on him fairly rapidly

Oh I’ve no idea, don’t spend that much time on X, just popped up when I was perusing. Apologies if so. It’s the time stamp of that at 10.30am this morning that got me, way before anything officially broke

this lad on X called this pretty accurately hours before it broke via Romano and Ornstein. He’s not been active for 6 weeks but is putting out a fair bit about Ekitike too, saying he still favours move to us. All with a massive pinch of salt, more for twitter nonsense thread most likely, but unnervingly accurate (matching Ornstein (120m) and Hardy (+10m) reports.

But, with us bidding for Ekitike, it's flushed out their interest and now they have to move fast on him, which will rule out their ability to sign Isak. Had we not, Liverpool could have leisurely prodded around at Isak for the rest of the window and then moved for Ekitike if they hadn't managed to disrupt him over a couple of months, towards the end of the window, and potentially pushed the price down if no other competition had come through.

If we aren’t going to get Ekitike, let’s make sure the number is as high as possible that Liverpool are paying

Sky - Liverpool told isak not for sale, now scousers going for Ekitike

Apparently Downie has new breaking news but the line just broke on SSN… feels a bit old school!

I would say he uses past tense for ‘made’ and says they ‘can’ enter Ekitike race not ‘will’ but I’m massively grasping there

Romano saying Liverpool will bid unless we sell them isak. We’ve been used

I’m guessing those other clubs were Saudi clubs, and he’s not willing to move to Saudi, so it’s a moot point

hopefully yesterday it was the bigwigs coming over, they got things agreed and now they're sending the plane back to bring Ekitike in for the medical...

The idea of isak not looking completely gassed for a lot of the second half of the season has great appeal to me

Agree on this. In 22-23 we had Wilson in good form and at that point hovering around back-up to Kane for England. While he wasn't at Isak's level now, it's easy to forget just how good he was, and we brought in Isak and still had Chris Wood, albeit Newcastle era Chris Wood. While Isak / Ekitike (and Osula) is a clear upgrade in quality, it's a similar number of squad members.

i really hope this is true but there’s so much noise around it, like there was with Tosin and others from the same twitter dickheads, I’m almost programmed to believe it’s designed to get other clubs to show their hands and act like they gazumped us, which will be fun to hear all about again.

£740m? That can’t be right?! Surely £140m? Which is still ridiculous

Romano has retweeted him linking Ekitike to us as well, if someone hasn’t already mentioned

Possibly brinksmanship - towards the end of the window palace basically know that it’s either what we put on the table or nothing in 12 months time. With Liverpool seemingly betting they will be pole position if he waits the 12 months so not offering a similar amount. Then it’s down to player whether he wants Liverpool in 12 months more than us now, but with some risk attached to Liverpool in 12 months - they change their mind, Konate signs a new deal, he suffers significant injury etc

Could have said the same about Isak before we signed him

Spurs have spent a lot of tricky attacking players in last couple of years. Kulu, Maddison, Tel, Odobert, Johnson plus still having Son knocking about, now adding Kudus to the mix. A lot of names for 2 places if Frank lines up similar to Brentford.

He’ll be rattling towards 37 years old when the season starts. He did have a decent run when Pope was out, but there’s no way I’d want to be relying on him as number 1 at the start of a PL and UCL season. It would also create immense pressure on Trafford as if he didn’t perform then we wouldn’t have a genuine number 1 to take the reins. I’d be very happy with Pope and Trafford starting as 1 and 2 next season

I’ve got to say I’m massively underwhelmed by Arsenal’s business, Zubimendi excluded. A 27 year old with no top European league experience, a couple of Chelsea rejects and a mid-table midfielder in his 30s. None of them are bad buys standalone, but if that’s the totality of their business then I don’t see it moving them closer to the scousers and if we make 3+ good signings, I see us having a chance to move closer / past them. Saying all that, they’ll probably win the league now.

Good read. Even a poster saying they would have much rather sell MGW without anyone saying they were crazy. Got to be positive