r0cafella

FFP is a joke, let’s not forget it’s not long ago PSG had Neymar, Messi and Mbappe on the books. Neymar cost them 200m let’s not talk about the salaries.

Hope we stick with Howe, wouldn’t want Jose at all. That being said, if it were to happen it doesn’t change my support of the team.

We have to be open minded, if we secure a target which will push us forward and strengthen our weak areas this month then we should. What we shouldn’t do is panic and get someone on unfavourable terms for the sake of it. We do need to be forward thinking however, especially given certain players are getting no younger and will only decline. Getting players in with higher ceilings than what we have should be the absolute priority.

According to the athletic we are close to FFP so it’s loans and freebies.

I’m not sure how we can possibly win this. None of the factors which have led to our poor form have changed.

I mean I hate to break this but any team capable of meeting the clause will have him regardless of where we finish.

That was a very different situation and not worthy of comparison imo. We needed a striker as the threat of relegation was looming. Philips is ok as a stop gap, wouldn’t be keen on paying 40m for him though and having him amongst our highest earners.

I think for us, it’s a difficult one. It’s a bit of a short term fix which would be expensive in terms of fee and wages. Also he would lack resale value, not to mention he may lack motivation as he would be taking a step backwards. He could be our very own Casemiro

Probably, it’s going to be interesting watching it play out either way.

Chronicle saying the loan fee for Philips is 7.5m

Another big wage commitment from you lot. Fair play.

Gordon as well. Hall obviously will be once made permanent too.

Ive been thinking for sometime now and still haven’t come up with a clear answer so let’s put this out there and see where everyone thinks. Am I the only one who isn’t exactly clear where we stand? I know the public professions have been we are going to be the biggest club in the world but I’m not 100% convinced by them tbh (PS this isn’t a criticism of the owners who have undoubtedly transformed the club). The reason for my thoughts are because we’ve left of a boatload of money on the table. We don’t have a training ground sponsor, we don’t have a training kit sponsor, we could do some stadium name rights ( Everton had a sponsor for a stadium which isn’t even built ). we were looking for a plot of land for a new training complex two years ago) no updates. took us two years to start a feasibility study for stadium expansion. The Saudi pro league. Our multi club ambitions also seem to be in the long grass which is a strategic error imo. I mean the above factors are arguably in contrast to the stated public aims. And again, to repeat this isn’t a criticism of the owners, I just wanted to throw these things out there and see what others think.

The players that have seemingly pushed on and increased the value are forrins. Most of our signings have been British based though.

Also seems we have a preference for British based on players rendering a lot of that list fanciful.

Madueke would fit right in with our sick notes , sign him up

Can ya post the player names? No twitter account here and fuckhead Elon has made the site inaccessible for those without accounts.

The two are mentioned are the glaring ones to me at least. we probably over stretched ourselves with Tonali in hindsight. We probably shouldn’t be committing to such high fees at this stage of our development unless we have a FFP windfall in pocket to do so.

No, although we are indeed suffering from those issues we could still have used the budget differently by not spending so much of our budget on one player, and focusing on other areas. we could have also sold some players to raise funds to invest further. Ultimately we made a choice to go into the season with Burn as our starting left back and Miggy as our starting RW, both of these positions we could have done with improving as the gain is quite substantial imo.

Some people are upset for sure, I understand. Personally when reading this place and participating in discussions I do my best to assume people are posting in good faith, it makes it a lot easier to process and emphasise with POV which may differ from my own. People who are wuming I generally try and ignore.

Of course the club did what they thought was correct, that isn’t even in question. On a short term basis it’s been proven to be incorrect mind, especially given some of the areas weren’t strengthen which a lot of people hoped would have been. Don’t get me wrong either, this time next reason we might look back at this window as a success, hall might become a world beater, Barnes banging them in Tonali the literal new signing, such is football.

It’s true, most clubs don’t carry 3 strikers which leaves us with a hard choice. Either we become the exception or we make the extremely difficult decision and let Wilson go and get some money for him and use that for a replacement. That ship has set sail to an extent at this point though.

People are absolutely desperate to jump on to the Goldbridge/ Arsenal fan tv grift. Big money to be made sadly.

I was being flippant saying we didn’t bother. We did certainly fail to improve areas many flagged as key though. And that’s kind of the point no? The way we operate has got us into this position and we’ve been brutally punished for it. We took a chance, tried to be cute in the window and at this point it (it may change in the future).