Emotic

Jeez at this rate we could get both Sorloth and Alvarez based on these rumours? Fucking trade Isak to Simeone then!

Nah, they've drafted it (bar a few tweaks depending on circumstances) and had it ready to go. Prior to this, it was a "proxy war" Romano/Ornstein claiming who said what. But neither Isak nor the club openly commented on their situation. Which is why Eddie kept it as vague as possible. "Don't trouble Trouble until Trouble troubles you". Isak blinked first in issuing, for the first time in this saga, his personal statement. That's when the response was triggered. The club was prepared for weeks already and that's why it came out almost immediately. It also immediately calmed the situation and communicated the club's stance, and firmly put Isak back in the box. It's a media and comms case study, this. Really fascinating.

I mean the statement doesn't say "Isak will not be allowed to leave this summer under any circumstances". It's just that conditions must be met. As far as we know, those conditions are likely to be "meet our valuation and allow us to replace him before we let him go.". Neither of which are likely at this point (in fact the latter more unlikely than the former - Newcastle gets to decide who is appropriate as Isak's replacement, and all the appropriate ones have been snapped up, one by Liverpool). Therefore, unless two very unlikely events happen in the next two weeks, Isak stays. Adam Crafton's tweet is, again, just engagement farming for idiotic Liverpool fans.

Liverpool's next move will be interesting TBF. They still need a striker. If they buy one now, it reduces the chance that they'd be in for him next season.

If Emanuel Emegha has a blinder for Strasbourg this season, he'll go to Chelsea in 2026, meaning that we can try again for Delap, or try for the third time for Pedro lol.

Then in the midddle out pops a smiling Yoane Wissa pulling up his jersey to reveal a t-shirt of Isak with a text saying. "OUR ALEX IS A FRIEND TO ALL SNAKES!"

Love the bit in Isak's statement where he says "the silence has allowed people to push their version of events". Mate, the only people pushing their version of events is you, through your paid shills.

Sorloth and Jackson will bag us a hatful of goals, tbf. Jackson makes tons of xGs and Sorloth can at least fucking twat a ball the good old-fashioned way.

Burkardt just signed for Frankfurt last month.

Fuck it, trade Isak for Wissa and call it a day

Thing with Hojlund is - our current Technical Director is literally the man who scouted him for Atalanta, and signed him, and subsequently was around when he was sold to ManU. If there's a chance to sign Hojlund now, Suds is the man who literally knows (on paper at least), what his attributes are and what he can or cannot do. If we're not interested, it is with Suds' input.

And the struggles are directly related to Isak and his camp airing his dirty linen in public. Brentford are asking 60 mil for a 29 year old on the last year of his contract, precisely because they know we're desperate.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/alexander-isak-agent-liverpool-transfer-35716584?int_source=amp_continue_reading&int_medium=amp&int_campaign=continue_reading_button#amp-readmore-target Fill yer boots. Valdo Lemic is not even a FIFA-registered players agent. His proxy is his brother, who is registered. Gangland ties or not, his tactics have been so terrible that he has been banned from dealing with several clubs, not least amongst them AIK, which is Isak's foundational club in Sweden.

He said that on Saturday, in a BeIn banter session while hosting a session with Masters "110 now, or 80 this year, 60 next, take your pick. And Real Madrid is interested." It's that sort of shite where if anyone asked for his sources, his defence would be "I was asking the audience what they'd rather have, as a hypothetical question.". Bollocks.

See, when we’re talking about business transactions, the ingredients for success are typically simple and straightforward. 1) Time. Time for the other party to consider a bid, time for a succession plan etc. And 2) Professionalism. We’re talking about multimillion pound assets here, negotiated by multibillion pound concerns. In this saga, Isak, Isak’s agent, Liverpool and their client media have adhered to precisely none of these two ingredients. They left it late, and it is much later at this point in time as it ever was, for us to do proper succession planning. We have a right, as the contract owner and managers of our larger asset (the club on the whole) to decide who is an appropriate replacement for Isak, for example. In acting unprofessionally, they have robbed us of this opportunity, as everyone else now know we are in crisis. But we should not act in haste, sign any old striker at hand - because a wrong move then affects the greater asset in the long term. In order to act unprofessionally, one must be aware of who you are dealing with. We’re not owned by, say, a noxious cheapskate businessman any longer. We’re owned by literally the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, of a nation with a lot of pride. I actually appreciated Nottingham Forest’s stance and outcome of the Morgan Gibbs-White fiasco. As contract owner, control your situation, make your decision, but stand fast by it. It set a precedent and although I no longer like or trust that Isak can perform for us anymore, I would appreciate if the owners of our club make and communicate a stand - even if the final decision is “we won’t sell him, because the way they have gone about it is wrong and bad business. And if we can’t make him work for us, so be it.”

It has popped up every so often in this megathread (also often on Reddit). Evidence has been furnished that this is all a manufactured lie by Ornstein. Quite strong evidence too. I shall repeat them here. 1) Ornstein’s most oft-repeated claim is that Isak told the club two weeks before the season ended, that he was going to leave. And Isak apparently repeated it to Eddie Howe on the last day of the season. Problem is, Ornstein himself has a video from that very last day of the season confidently stating that “Isak will stay at Newcastle after they got UCL”. If Isak had told the club he wanted out two weeks before the end of the video (there is yet another claim he told the club last year, but I forgot who reported it), would Ornstein be so confident to announce he was staying? Do you not think that Ornstein and Romano wouldn’t have known about this wantaway request two weeks before the end of the season? And reported on this bombshell? 2) Given Isak’s agent’s nuclear behaviour when he wants out, and that Isak has been linked with Arsenal the entire time he’s been here - wouldn’t Arsenal or Liverpool tapped him up seriously; made moves to sign him from the very start of the window if he wanted out much earlier? Why wait until so late in the window? Prior to mid-July, and the Ekitike fiasco, there was no noise at all about Isak leaving, from a media which is rapacious about reporting every single aspect of his apparent desperation to do so. 3) Isak featured in our 25/26 kit launch. Media, content, adverts. The works. When Bruno was linked away last season because of that secret “release clause” business, he featured in none of the summer’s kit launch. Because the club rightly wouldn’t waste advertising with a player who might no longer be our player come the end of the window. If Isak were clear and unequivocal about his wish to leave, and communicated it to the club two weeks before the end of the season- why use him in promo material and a kit launch? 4) Before and during the point in time when we signed Elanga, Isak was twerking for him to come to us on his Instagram, leaving clues to the fanbase that we were close to Elanga, liking Elangas Instagram posts etc. Like the behaviour of someone excited for an international teammate to join him at club level. Not a sign of someone desperate to exit. 5) I haven’t yet found a credible source for this- but when we were apparently in for Liam Delap, his reason for not joining us (very poor in hindsight) was that he wanted to start, and not be cover for Isak. If we had known Isak was adamant on leaving, we would’ve convinced Delap to sign for us. There are other clues here and there. But for me, the turning point when it all happened was mid-July - Ekitike bid, Liverpool’s “sell us Isak or we buy Eki” threat. It all suddenly kicked off from there. It points to opportunistic, yet naive and stupid counsel from a terrible agent who didn’t draft an exit clause in Isak’s contract, and resorted to gangster tactics only after that to force a move. No way Isak communicated any strong desire to leave much earlier on IMHO. This would’ve been leaked to the ghouls in the media immediately and we’d have heard no end of it as soon as the season ended and the window opened. Personally I was shocked by the outright lies that the media was happy to put out to drive home a narrative. There is no more truth and objectivity in reporting anymore, even from these so-called “Tier 1” journalists.

Bryan Mbeumo will be at AFCON when we meet the Mancs in December lol. Good.

Fair play

Brentford were linked with Kalimuendo too, whom Forest have just signed.

Like a creative Big Joe really. He'd have been great with Isak.

In the context of what we were talking about, Ronaldo doesn't count. He scored 3 in 25 in Sporting before ManU bought him. He's a Manc product as much as anything. We were discussing which was the last shit-hot striker in Portugal who was then brought to England and also scored plenty. Aren't many.

Was a discussion the other day in the Transfer Rumours thread. Consensus was that in England, the most "successful" one was Mario Jardel

Gyokeres is yet another piece of evidence that scoring a hatful in Portugal doesn't necessarily translate to success in the PL. Looking at all those saying "We must sign Samu" proponents.

It's imperative we get Wissa in by early next week. If he stays at Brentford, that's us totally fucked. Need a striker in just to ease the tension that we might be going into a large part of the campaign with Gordon and Osula upfront.