Hughesy

People will decide at some point that it's not worth paying for? Hardly inconceivable that subscription prices will continue to rise (which they have to for it to be viable as a commercial product) and people will decide they can't be arsed paying £1000s to watch an increasingly unfair competition where it becomes the Top 6 and the rest. Of course, the bubble can burst. Anecdotally I know of lots of football fans (not part timers) who have given up Sky and viewing figures are down. People might decide that watching Stoke and West Brom play boring football in a desperate attempt to stay on the gravy train is only worth a certain amount.

Has there ever been an enjoyable Ashley transfer window? The whole thing just becomes so tiresome. I'd love to be able to just ignore it completely, but given the precariousness of Rafa's position, I can't.

Having done some Youtube scouting, quite like the look of Florin Andone at Deportivo and Gerardo Moreno at Espanyol.

Agree - it really isn't difficult - they have a guaranteed income stream. This can easily be offered as security (if it isn't already) against borrowing more money. The idea that we need money in our account before doing business is ridiculous.

We NEED to sell because we've got far too many players...far more than you can register. No club in the country would continue buying players without shifting their deadwood. We are no different in that respect. We are very different in other respects like, but shifting players on before we bloat the squad even more is massively important. so naive man. How many players do Chelsea have, about 40 thousand or something int it? Loan s**** like Haidara out and pay half of their wages if we have to. How is that naïve? It's absolutely right, and probably the reason Rafa isn't kicking off. He knows the squad needs to be trimmed. It's easy enough to say we should be doing these deals as favours to other clubs, but if there's interest there for a permanent deal, then why not explore that option? The squad needs to be trimmed, it also desperately needs another 4 or 5 players of Premiership quality. I'll let you decide which is more important. Totally agree with this - find it amazing that all of Ashley's gambles with NUFC take the form of not spending any money and just hoping for the best. Obviously no-one is sure of the exact financials (although I fail to see how there can't be any money available - whether it's actual cash or borrowing against guaranteed future income), but the long term benefit of spending an extra £20-35m now and bringing in 2-3 good players could make a huge difference. It's just too risky not to spend and potentially become a yo-yo club.

Was widely reported as a 4 year deal at the time, but we did announce it as a 'long term deal' - which could mean .com are right. Surely we didn't give the f***er 6 years. I thought a 5 year contract was the longest you could give a player anyway?

Blow for the Guardian but I guess there's no need for them to be under anyone's umbrella when they could be making money off it directly. Still prefer the Football Ramble. True - I can't imagine the Guardian pays them brilliantly so they might as well go out and make a bit more money from it. I assume it will essentially be the same show, just without the Guardian journalists (who didn't always make up that much of the podcast anyway). I do however refuse to accept that there could be a better football podcast out there than Football Weekly. It had James Richardson and is therefore automatically the best football podcast.

Bit of a disaster for the Guardian - http://www.football365.com/news/exclusive-james-richardson-to-leave-guardian-football-weekly but at least Richardson is going to keep doing podcasts.

Signing of Perez always seemed a bit strange - 17m for a 27/28 year old with one decent season never made a huge amount of sense. What did you make of him?

Think Josh King would be a huge risk - one decent season in his career to date and, statistically at least, slightly unusual in terms of his stats - http://statsbomb.com/2017/07/joshua-king-and-the-hot-foot/

Wouldn't go for King - has all the hallmarks of a one season wonder. Not convinced by Gray either to be honest.

Spot on.

Can't say I've ever been impressed by McCarthy. Not sure if I'm missing something, but wouldn't go near him for anything north of £15m.

Was just looking to see if he'd done a radar on him but couldn't see one. Must show up well on stats..

Interesting article on Hagi here - https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/jul/21/gheorghe-hagi-viitorul-constanta-champions-league-johan-cruyff Apparently Keegan tried to buy him in 96.

Still trying to work out how attractive a club we are - you'd think having Rafa, our relative 'success' in the 90s and early 2000s and size of crowds (if this ever factors into a player's decision) would mean that we are a decent option for most players. Allied with the wages on offer here generally, I'm still surprised that we haven't been linked with a better calibre of player. Maybe the complete lack of ambition that the club has demonstrated over the last 10 years has caught up with us and we are an unattractive proposition, regardless of Rafa etc.

I think they are potentially 4 terrible signings personally.

There probably is a bit of room for error on the transfer fees, but the market value thing is a different concept. The Murphy page refers to his value as being 850k, but his fee being 9.5m. Most of those fees I've listed are in line with what has been reported. I think..

Thing is - I think there is value to be had. Had a look at https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/statistik/saisontransfers and there are some decent value transfers that have gone through (admittedly for a few of these, I'm going off reputation rather than having watched them extensively and some would be unobtainable due to the club they moved to being more attractive than us or work permit issues): Driussi - 12.5m Karsdorp - 11.9m Semedo - 11.9m Enes Unal - 11.9m Konoplyanka - 10.6m Dahoud - 10.2m Ounas - 8.5m Bertrand Traore - 8.5m Riedewald - 7.65m Robertson 7.65m Germain - 6.8m Gnabry - 6.8m Lozano - 6.8m Haller - 5.95m Chalobah - 4.85m Gonalons - 4.25m Willems - 4.25m Most of those guys would improve us and they aren't extortionate fees in today's market. And there are a fair few I've missed off the list.

Samba, Terry, Whelan, Jedinak. Quite the pacey quartet there.

Totally agree with the view that prices are ridiculous, but aren't the prices roughly the same percentage of turnover as they have been for the last 15-20 years? Turnover has increased hugely and so fees have increased proportionately. Just a shame some of the extra cash hasn't gone towards lower ticket prices or stadium/academy spend.

Cool - was just reading a few articles that indicated that he wasn't a 9, but haven't seen him play so will defer to those that have!

Has anyone seen Rolan play? I got the impression he wasn't an out and out striker but played as a support striker or as a wide forward/right winger, so I don't think his goal record is that important.

Doesn't seem like an unreasonable deal to be honest if Caulkin is right for a promising English winger. Let's get a few more in now and use the momentum.

Don't really get why Darlow and Krul appear to be being sold - they're both better than Elliot. And Elliot is older than both. Unless we are definitely bringing in a better keeper, it seems an odd decision.