Manxst

No stressing here. I’m loving the ride right now. But we’re just not in a place yet where we can throw unlimited money around and out pay any other team - people have to be realistic for the current time.

Yeah…but we can’t just currently outbid every other team on the planet. If we buy Messi for his transfer fee and pay him a higher wage than he currently gets as people suggest, that’s practically our entire FFP leeway gone.

But if we throw cash at signings and pay them over and above anyone else will do, as you suggest, that leeway we currently have won’t last very long. Until we sort out further income anyway.

Not if it fucks up our FFP we can’t, which I think comes under the current rules. We still have to live within our means. Barca are head and shoulders above us at the current time with income and sponsorship.

Sky reckons Coutinho wants to sign for an “ambitious Premier League club” before the weekend….

Medical can be done in another country other than the UK…

Or get told by the player that he’ll refuse to join the team offering the higher amount, so forces his club to eventually accept one of the lower offers. The players hold the power- you can’t throw money at clubs and expect the higher offer to be the winning bid these days.

But in those years, our targets will have changed, be employed elsewhere, got tied into contracts or projects, like Rafa. Re: sack/employ people- we’re no worse than most clubs, and are actually better than a lot - as has been previously pointed out, Spurs took months in the summer to employ Nuno (after speaking to Conte and numerous others)- and they had a well run club with people in key positions at the time. Staveley and the like have literally walked into an empty shell of a club that needs EVERYTHING changing or updating. This takes time….longer than you’ve given it.

Was a Drogba-lite wonderkid when he first hit the leagues as a young teenager but never managed to reached the predicated heights. Could do an efficient but unspectacular job imo.

Debuchy?

£160k pw has been mentioned.

Azpilicueta seems a shoe in unless the Barca rumours are true.

21, although 22 on Jan 12th. I’d presume he still counts as under 21 for the season?

U21 (the likes of Botman) don’t have to be registered though, do they?

Worked for Batistuta (Batigol)….and Shearer apparently?

Yes please. The next Aguero. Unlikely to be us that wins his signature, being that he wants to move to a ‘top’ (CL) team to develop, and given the other teams interested, but you never know…

Excitement levels would depend on if they’re either Vlahovic or Idalgo standard though, rather than the unexpectedness? But yes, there will undoubtedly be names being discussed which we haven’t read about yet- as journos have already stated iirc.

As Simeone said, if the player wants to go, the club can’t do much about it. Lille wouldn’t keep him if he wants to come.

Botman would only be signed by Milan to cover for the currently injured Kjaer, so he wouldn’t be going there as a first choice. Might give us an advantage?

Fuck me, pot and kettle here, having the nerve to call anyone out about the takeover!

Winks, Barkley, Grillitsch, Kamara, Elneny, Paqueta, Loftus-Cheek, Alli, van der Beek have all been linked in the last few weeks. That’s off the top of my head- I’m sure I’ve missed loads off. edit- plus Ramsey, Faivre, Witsel, Rabiot, Guendouzi, Zakaria, Berge, Arthur, Tolisso

Because his contract is up in 18 months, he’s 31 years old, and he wants a last good money maker to retire on. If he manages a move back to friends and family in the UK at the same time, then all the better.

Conte cares (allegedly) : UEFA are expected to make a decision by the end of the week on the outcome of the Tottenham’s game versus Rennes after confirming the match couldn’t be rearranged in time for the December 31 deadline. If the governing body rules that Tottenham must forfeit the game, they will be eliminated from European competition this season. But Conte insists such a scenario would be unfair on his players, saying: ‘We want to play the game. Tottenham deserves to play the game, to play the last game of this group. It’s a really strange situation because we didn’t play through no fault of our own but because of a big problem and because the Government decided to close our training ground, to stop our training session for three days. For this reason we didn’t play. Not for another reason. I think we don't have fault for what happened. We deserve to play this game and to try to have a chance to go to the next round” Conte wanted Spurs to postpone their game against Leicester so they could face Rennes He went on: 'We don't find a good solution between UEFA and the Premier League, why does Tottenham has to pay for this? 'It's not fair we have to pay for a situation that isn't our fault. I understand if we did something wrong but in this way, for the club, the players, the staff, it's very difficult to understand what is happening.”

To be fair, we’ve been linked for a while by various sources, and this week has seen Italian journalists go with us having bid 85m for him.

Aye…it’s 0.018% of a Will Grigg…