ponsaelius

5 ft 9 CB in the PL. Don't think I've ever seen that. Will be interesting one.

The one thing about that model at the time though is we needed to get promotion, so there was an element of pragmatism to it. Vital we had basically two XIs in that division. And Hanley and Murphy both moved on after 1 season for only small losses. In the PL I genuinely don't think Rafa ever was given the funds in the current market to actually go out and sign genuine improvements. Agree though - I don't think we should be buying any players to function as backups unless they're young players who we see massive potential for growth in.

Still would be hopeful you could get a couple of million each for Manquillo and Darlow which might be useful.

I mean here's another example. Spurs cashing in on a 23 year old academy CB that's not ever really made the grade there but has clear pedigree at national youth level and played enough games to show he is PL level. Will probably bring in £10 million or so at a minimum. Our equivalent is Kelland Watts. 22 years old and played over 100 games in the FL. How much will we get for him if we sold him? 500k? The academy is such a big thing. Our geography is both a weakness and an advantage. London is a hothouse probably second only to Paris for young talent globally. The North East doesn't seem to be that any more - but we are the only PL club for miles. If we can build the pathways and infrastructure it could be a huge benefit. Even regularly producing lower PL and Championship level players would be significant.

City have raised 40 million this summer through selling Bazunu, Pedro Porro, CJ Egan-Riley, Ko Kitaru, Dark Gyabi and Romeo Lavia. I had genuinely never heard of any of them. They're also probably getting small loan fees every time they loan out their kids for a year. Or they loan them out to other clubs they own for exposure. It's basically a massive racket but is a way around FFP.

We're basically starting from ground zero, like. No saleable assets in terms of existing squad/deadwood, no academy of note producing players that can generate additional funds. Look at the outgoings of the likes of Chelsea, Liverpool and Man City. They make millions selling players you've never even heard of. The fact we can't even bring in even a little bit of additional money through sales is a pain right now. Even a few million each for deadwood would have built up to getting another first team player. It's going to be such a long process catching up.

One thing this discussion does is remind me that COVID era crowdless football should genuinely be deleted from history.

Broja joining up with Chelsea’s tour in the US

Fatigued by the transfer window now like, quite looking forward to having some friendlies to distract from the insanity.

Delete this bruv

Very skillful, can come deep and carry the ball, link up play, fast and a physical presence. One of those players who plays like he has absolutely everything I'm terms of ability - just not quite prolific in front of goal. Only 22 though.

If we could get Diaby and Isak for 40 million each do people not think we'd sign them both? I'm convinced we would tbh.

Yeah overall I'd rather that than sign a couple of players who are minor improvements on what we've got (ala Pope tbh). But I don't see why we can't get a winger too personally.

Honestly a great player and even better person - but I think Napoli would be selling at just about the right time. And I think Chelsea's transfer policy seems very chaotic at the moment.

Unless they're confident that Isak can effectively play wide right as well I think it would mean we've fallen short in terms of recruitment personally. Although he would be a very exciting signing in isolation. I'm pretty sure the budget would stretch to another winger if need be though. There's going to be opportunities which present late in the window - even on loan.

Can Isak play wide by the way? I've always thought he could, because of his style of play, and when I've seen him play he seems to spend so much of the game drifting deep and wide. But Transfermarkt seems to suggest he's played 199 games as CF, 3 on the right and 1 wide left.

Would honestly love us to go mental and spend another hundred million, not even because I'd be happy with the signings, but purely because it would mean Luke was wrong

The market has collapsed at that level. Nobody in the Championship has that kind of money to spend. Those that do will be generated by sales of players and they will reinvest in younger signings. There simply isn't the market in the Championship to spend any money on a 33 year old who has barely played a game of football in 2 years. Our only chance is getting him out on loan - teams will gamble on him for that if they can get a favourable agreement on wage contribution. But his wages are making that unviable even for a lot of clubs. Boro have seemingly stepped aside as they can't afford it.

That was pre-Covid so we might have got a decent fee from a desperate promotion chaser considering he would have been 29 and had just proven he was a 20+ goal a season player at that level. Now the market in Championship is completely fucked and he's 3 years older. Even his wages will be prohibitive to moving him on. If we get him out on loan with most of his wages covered that would be a success.

£10-12 million for Gayle is absolute fantasy stuff. He is 33 in October and has barely played any football in the last two years. No Championship club will be paying money for him. Best we can hope for is a subsided loan. We would have possibly got 10 million if we'd sold him in 2019 after his season at WBA.

I thought that too - he was seen on a flight to Madrid last week according to twitter. But the message from the journos is that he has an injury.

If we suddenly had 10 million offer on the table for Lascelles and he was happy to go, which would give us the funds to secure a better forward/wide signing, we would probably then consider keeping Fede as 4th choice for a year. Same goes if we suddenly had a decent offer for Lewis and he hadn't been really impressing Howe in pre-season. Take it and keep Ritchie/Manquillo as backup instead. I think other than a handful of players that nothing is off the table and is clearly market dependent on interest.

I think we had some players who were clearly never making the squad whatever happened and were told as such early on (Clark, Gayle, Hayden, Hendrick and Woodman). These players have obviously been left out altogether and told probably end of last season to look for a move. We then have some who are younger players who we are probably still looking at or will be looking to loan out again with the hope of getting a transfer fee long term (Anderson, Watts, Longstaff). It obviously makes sense for their development to let them experience the pre-season. Then there is probably a number who are on the edge of making the 25 or not but can change either way depending on interest for certain players in the market, the kind of signings we end up with (positional versatility of a signing might change priorities for example) or god forbid any long term injuries we get in pre-season. You could probably include all of Ritchie, Fede, Manquillo, Lewis, Darlow, Murphy, Almiron and Dubravka in that lot. Possibly even the likes of Lascelles and Wood if serious interest came in that would generate decent fees.

I think most of the kit makers can do a decent job as long as they make a bespoke design for the club. Some of the smaller ones are particularly good for this tbh. The only one I don't like at the moment is Puma who seem to knock up ugly template shite.

I have hundreds of stubs from hundreds of games all over the world. It's probably the only thing I actually collect. They will go eventually as will physical matchday programmes, and I'll whinge but get over it. I get that it's a minor gripe overall but it does feel like the traditional rituals of football being gradually lost. I think there's another issue with limiting tickets entirely to digital in that it is quite exclusionary for those who don't have a smartphone. The same is probably true of the fact season tickets and tickets at the moment are being sold entirely online. There are a lot of people out there who wouldn't have the first clue where to start in going about getting a ticket through such a system.