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And add Fraser, Lewis and Vlachodimos in a swap deal for Guehi, Eze and Wharton

271 pages for a fella who's never kicked a ball for us. This place is nuts like

Footy Manager / FIFA written all over it, this. We have a bloated squad with players we want to shift and can't. PSR is fucking us over and the club is finally being run by (seemingly) professionals at every level. We're trying to build a healthy, competitive squad in a sustainable fashion. Chucking money at an ageing Milan Skriniar and/or a well overpaid Jadon Sancho might satisfy those 'we need bodies' fans but it's so brutally short term and the opposite of the sustainable model we need to create...from scratch lets not forget. On paper, Almiron/Murphy as our options on the right may look woeful but we didn't struggle to score goals last season. I don't doubt we'll improve that side of the pitch at some stage but it needs to be the right signing at the right price. It's pretty straightforward logic. The owners can absolutely afford to splash £80m and get the Guehi deal done, sure. But the club can't. The owners can afford to throw cash at a short term right winger who might improve us slightly but who has little to no re-sale value. Again, the club can't. Sure, it's a disappointing window if we don't manage to sign the kind of players we would all have liked to have seen at the end of last season, but no more disappointing than aimlessly throwing our budget away on ageing players or players with a questionable attitude/injury record. I may well feel disappointed if we don't strengthen beyond what, admittedly, little we've done so far, but I'm so far from being in the 'negligent', 'travesty' etc camp. The owners have turned us into an ambitious football club with an aim to get us where we, as fans, want to be. That isn't something that happens within a few years, especially with all the PSR/FFP bullshit.

I think it's very simple to look back on Bayern interest in January and say "We should have sold him when we had the chance", but we were in the midst of a desperate injury crisis and had we cashed in on Tripps at that point with potentially no incomings, there'd have been uproar.

Fun while it lasted

Seems like such a lot of money but it's probably because we're just not used to being that club. He's only 24 and his stock is already pretty high. The thought of him playing alongside Botman, potentially for years, is pretty delicious. I'm sure we have other targets but there's clearly a mindset within the club that this can get done and that he'll make a huge difference to the side. I'm all for it. I think he'll be class.

I recently moved to Cleethorpes so Grimsby away would be class

"The last big recruit of this summer transfer window" Haven't made our first one yet like

I don't expect that we would get anything close to that kind of money from Saudi. But he's better than £8.5m in todays market is what I'm saying. His goals and assist stats may be questionable but he has other attributes that could be more important in certain games next season than £8.5m is right now.

If we sold Almiron and the fee was confirmed as £8.5m, you're saying you'd be happy with that? Give over. It's a position of the pitch we need to improve, of course, but selling at that price would be incredibly short-sighted.

Time to move on perhaps. This crook trying to squeeze more money out of us or create a bidding war. Tit.

Absolutely in love with that ad. So good!

Imagine

*Waughle

Lovely

The thinking man's Scott Carson. Living the dream, indeed.

Four

Hoping Mamardashvili will be our Ederson/Allison

Dennis Wise incoming

I know it's the name of the publication, but "i understands" just sounds like terrible use of the English language

Totally understand the sentiment but the Glazers were selling up in full not too long ago, right? They'd allegedly set an asking price, which was met, and then moved the goalposts. They don't want to sell and regardless of Ratcliffe's role, he'll still be hamstrung to a certain extent. If this was a 100% takeover of the club and Ratcliffe was in complete control with ambitions to return Man United to their 'former glory', you could argue it's a step up for Ashworth. But there's still an element of the unknown with this deal. It's weird. There is still very much the chance that the Glazers make non-football related decisions which could impact what Ratcliffe is able to achieve in a football sense.

Money talks in football. So does reputation. That said, while he'd be joining a bigger club, he certainly wouldn't be joining a bigger, more ambitious project. Man United are still owned by unambitious, careless people who see it as a business first and foremost, rather than sporting heritage. I'd be desperately disappointed to see him leave at such an early stage of our uprising.

Cheers. Best thing you've done on this forum for years. Maybe ever.

Yeah, confirmed in the article 'The deal includes an obligation for the Magpies to make the transfer permanent next summer based on performance-related criteria'