Stottie

Transfermarkt has him playing every position from center forward to defensive midfielder. Some players are Swiss Army Knives, but this guy is the one with 30 blades! https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/christantus-uche/leistungsdatendetails/spieler/1124005

To wind up the Scousers and their entitlement, EDDIE! BEST MANAGER IN THE LEAGUE might be a nice banner. (On trophies, it's Pep, but he will not feature in Scouser calculations)

I wrote it, but on my phone at a bus stop in the Heed. I won't do that again! Blanco has nailed what I wanted to say. fwiw, I think Liverpool will put a higher bid in and get Guehi. Isak is likely a different and much more complex story. Since we play them tomorrow, I'm trying to say nowt about Liverpool to avoid jinxing it.

No,no, my reading is that we are operating openly as a club who want to and will probably buy Wissa. We have underbid twice, but we are engaging the selling club and are not far off a winning bid. Ergo Wissa not in team means "sell" Had Liverpool bid again much higher than the last time in the last few days, I would conclude that their interest was genuine.As things stand, the lack of engagement from them suggests they're not going to get him off us. Ergo Isak not in team doesn't necessarily mean "sell" My main point is that these two situations are no automatically the same

The fee shouldn't matter. We're not hard up, even in PSR terms which would only kick in in June 26. The Isak situation is similar, but Liverpool are way further off the asking price. Id expect Isak to go too if Liverpool had bid 130M last week.

Him not in the squad says "sell" to me.

We can easily match and are likely to beat them in midfield. While the circumstances mean we have fire in our bellies, it is cool heads that will help us prevail. We do not need to overperform to beat them. I have every faith in Eddie, a superior manager to Slot, having a winning game plan, and it's important for the lads to stick to it and not get sucked into personal battles.

We should only sell at a discount if Isak hands in a transfer request. Which means Liverpool or whoever paying his bonus. We cannot pay him to force a move away, which gets done at a compromised price due to him forcing a move away. Since PSR is irrelevant till June 30, we might as well keep him. The only "win" in selling is from getting a good price, which 130M is not, and certainly not in a summer where every fucker else has been overpriced.

The tl:dr is they are cunts whose entitlement is off the scale. I bet Anfield Wrap does not have an adequate answer to us mullering them in the Carabao final or Villa creating a fuckton more chances against the same PSG side. Or why half the country was cheering Villa on in that tie despite wanting Liverpool to lose in theirs.

Maybe Paul Mitchell wasn't so bad after all....

It's taking its time but I guess we'll get there. I suspect its bad manners to hoy another bid in for an important player when the selling club is a couple of days before a competitive game. Hence nothing since Wednesday.

Had Twitter and Romano been around in Rooney's time, he'd have used them to suit his needs, just as his wife and Vardy's wife manipulate the media available to them. The Rooney situation would have been as messy if not messier than Isak, because there is even more hatred between Man U and Man C. Ex-pros like Butt and Shearer like to boss it like they are know-it-alls but they don't understand how the situation has changed. Isak's folk, and likely Liverpool have been able to use new media to orchestrate a huge psyop while remaining in the dark with plausible deniability. Even the Isak statement on Insta can be blamed on his agent. He just has to say that other folk do his socials and that it was not his idea. If Liverpool struggle up front against us on Monday, I wonder if they will hit the panic button (or it'll be the straw breaking the donkey's back) and will come in with a realistic big bid for Isak. If they walk Monday's match, with big roles for Wirtz and Ekitike, the media will 100% knee jerk to the conclusion that Isak is not needed. If LFC are on the fence about Isak given the high fee, it may stop a bid coming in, again partly due to pundits and their kneejerk amplification of what will only be one performance. The other remaining 36 fixtures plus the Champions League may be different.

We managed Salah brilliantly last year with Hall until Trent came on and overloaded that side (with quality). This led to three goals. Even last week, a random punt forward was raced onto by Salah and some weak defending let him score, like something out of lower league football. It is especially vexing to see this because we all know this will be fawned over at full time by the usual pundits rimming Liverpool for everything they do. Liverpool struggled to create much against Palace in the Community Shield and we should have the tools to do something similar. Limiting Villa to three shots on their own park suggests our defence is on form.

Gordon has had em on toast before down the left, so I hope we switch it up if he starts centrally and it isn't working. I don't see why we wouldn't be very competitive in midfield in this game and it will be decided by what happens at each end. In midfield, the risk for Liverpool is that Wirtz takes away more than he adds. Our three should really overpower their two and cut off the supply to their new door opener/string puller. There are lots of good players on the pitch, so we could win this tactically and still lose the game due to individual brilliance or chance conversion. I trust they have worked on defending corners since the Carabao final. As ever we need to watch out for the ol' hoof it to Salah. It really is a cheat code.

Liverpool "going elsewhere" opens the door for that elsewhere to bid on Isak. If they went for Barcola at PSG, for example. Barcola money plus Ramos gets Isak.

I follow TransferChecker, after some links a while back from Statsbomb Kev. He, I assume its he, absolutely nailed Eze to Arsenal. Said it would happen weeks ago and that Eze would only go to Spurs if Arsenal didn't commit. He has also said all along that Isak is not for sale for a discounted price. That's a rare call for non NUFC pundits. It is not a scattergun site posting different rumours every day for engagement. We have a clear run at Wissa and should really get this done.

Get Wissa in, it sounds close, and Isak will have to put in 100% just to get picked.

C'mon Jim, don't you remember Liverpool being turbocharged by loads of money from the Moores family who did the football pools, a very powerful cash machine at the time? You're spreading their myth if you say it was all amazing Mr. Shankley. Fwiw, Brian Clough was always well supported and spent loads on players, including the first million pound one in Trevor Francis. Yes, him and Taylor were all-time greats, but they wouldn't have managed it with PSR. They had owners with deep pockets.

Is that assessment of "probably around 8th" based on us allowing a full strength Aston Villa three shots on their own park? Where they are unbeaten for 18 games? Five months after absolutely twatting LIverpool in the Carabao Cup final?

It is speculation to say we could have placated Isak with a new contract, because he's probably too greedy as demonstrated by his recent actions. I doubt our PSR would have let us pay enough. After two years with us, Isak was good, but not "OMG so amazing, we must give him 200k plus and that release clause he wants" good. He's only reached that level in the season just gone. The massive cockup was perhaps not Isak's contract but not replacing Wilson quickly and handing huge leverage to Isak.

This may be a Wissa smokescreen to stop Brentford upping the price.

Nkunku has good numbers for the few opportunities he's had. He is not an ex-Bundesliga flop, like Sancho.

No but his agent's job is to get it as high as possible within Liverpool's wage structure. When we were the best option at the table, the wage was as high as possible within our wage structure. Only an incompetent agent would settle for less. The reality is that Liverpool can and do pay way higher wages than us. It's not a simple 10k or 20k more It is likely 50% more, as suggested by their wage costs in their accounts. We do not hear more about this because too many people benefit from the myth of football being a remotely fair competition.

Wissa has been linked with other clubs. His agent will have some "get BS out there" power thanks to Romano etc., and it is possible for the transfer team of one club (here NUFC) to be slow on the uptake or a bit incompetent, but the more teams that are said to be interested in a player, the more likely it is such player is actually for sale for a non-ridiculous fee. The ol' "no smoke without fire". Brentford's business model is to use data to analyze upcoming talent and offer them a chance to play in the PL as a starter who only needs to come out with midtable level performances. We cannot buy the same players as them because we need instant CL qualification level performances. We saw this with Elliot Anderson. Our needs/expectations were too high to give him the chance he needed to develop. If Brentford get good money for Wissa, they'll already know lots of suitable younger replacements, because that's what they do. They are not shopping in the same market as CL qualification clubs and Chelsea will not be hoovering up their targets.

What matters here is whether Isak believes Ekitike is on 250k a week, as reported by German sources used by Sky Sports. Liverpool's wage bill is nearly 400M quid off a near 700M turnover. It takes a lot of very high salaries to reach 400M. They can afford and probably pay multiple players very high salaries, otherwise 400M would not be the total. They probably also slip Romano and Orstein 10 grand to report BS lower salaries to fans to keep them onside and buying shirts and tickets. https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/liverpool-wage-bill-rise-explained-31274636 Our wage bill is about 220M. If you assume Liverpool has a far larger organization with loads more low salaries for loads more admin staff, it likely means their first team will be on at least 50% more than our lads, with bigger spikes for their superstars. https://web.archive.org/web/20250503130606/https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6176973/2025/03/06/newcastle-accounts-analysis/