Cf

Jesus Christ. Should start handing out bans for linking to this AI garbage.

Did we put any sort of buy back clause when we sold him? Assuming not. Not that i'm losing any sleep over this one. He's essentially going through the "send him out on loan" phase - just a shame it had to be via a sale.

Still can't see how we sanction selling him to Liverpool for £130m without coming across as really weak. I'd like to think your Tonali's and Livramento's of the world wouldn't pull these kind of stunts but to sell to Liverpool without really taking them to the cleaners is just to tell players that this approach works.

Bonus points if we put this in front of him on deadline day and say "sign it or don't - up to you - it you want to take time to challenge it through PFA/lawyers be our guest".

It really isn't. Maybe in 20 years time but for now 0% chance Howe takes the England job.

Be funny if we do agree to sell but then it gets clogged up at the paperwork stage when it turns out we aren't paying any loyalty bonuses and state we interpret his actions (especially his statement saying the relationship can't continue) as a transfer request.

Fuck selling Isak to Liverpool for any amount of money. Let him watch our CL campaign from the reserves.

No order within the brackets A Emery Guardiola Howe B Arteta Iraola Glasner Slot C Hurzeler Maresca Moyes Silva Nuno Frank (close B) Potter Pereira D Andrews Parker Farke Amorim Sunderland guy I've never heard of

Penny dropped for Sesko yet?

Feels like for either JSL or Wissa we are going to have to overpay. In an ideal world we shouldn't have found ourselves in this position and there's lessons to learn but here we are. Once we have overpaid though it makes getting the other one (if we still want to) easier as we are negotiating from a better position.

What the hell is that font?

We should sign two more strikers and keep Isak imo we have a gruelling season ahead of us. Obviously anyone we sign won't be as good as him - he's one of the best in the world right now. I don't know our PSR position and I switch off completely when people start mentioning amortisation but for me we've not really signed anyone in the previous two years and we have the new CL format coming up. Making sure we are mainstays in that has to be the priority.

We might be crossed wires here. I'm not suggesting to buy £150m players. I'm saying if we end up with £150m players we should not be selling them. And we should be paying them as close as we can within the bullshit constraints to the going rate. I read it as you were suggesting the way to grow was to sell the £150m players and replace with other players who might one day themselves become £150m players. I'm just saying there's a risk in this, and if you do it really well your ceiling is probably fighting it out for the Europa spots every now and then. Obviously something has gone wrong at the board/negotiation level in this case. And fuck him because of how he's gone about it but in an ideal world Isak would be on a new contract getting paid what he should be going into this season.

So we should be paying our £150m players more. If we are in a position where we have multiple of them then we are fighting for titles and CLs and then PSR starts to sort itself out. If our best players want to play with other best players how does selling our best players help with that?

I don't really get why PSR matters here, apart from it being utter bullshit. Selling your best player for let's say £150m and replacing with two players who aren't as good for the same amount leaves you in a worse position PSR or no PSR.

Sure. But I think this notion of selling your best players and reinvesting that money in other players and somehow being better for it is overall a bit of a myth. There'll be the odd occasion where it's the right move, but that would usually be because someone is overpaying for whatever reason. And even then there's no guarantees.

And sometimes they take the money and spend it on garbage and are in a much worse position than they started.

Nah fuck it. We've more than had our £60m out of him. Letting our players and the world know you can't act like this is worth way more than whatever we'd get for him.

Put a 200% sell on clause if he ever signs for Liverpool in his career.

Good job they gave all this stuff to plucky little Liverpool as they only just managed to get the win over the line.

If he needs time to recover then let him recover. No short term sticking plasters that cause longer term damage. We've still got a short while before the fixtures really start coming in. Tonali needs to be fit for them when they do.

Liverpool will be fighting for the last CL spot this season. Not a chance they'll be fighting for the title. I wonder if Isak has twigged.

Overall I'm encouraged with our start. Suckerpunch at the end but it won't define our season. We made Villa and Liverpool look ordinary. Nice that we finally have a bench too. Think we'll be absolutely fine, and as for Liverpool that was a very papering over the cracks result.

There's probably a half way where he just goes "I'm going to answer this one question on Isak, and no more" and use that one question to get his/the clubs message out.

Now?