Cf

Bright start.

MoTD is shit so far.

Yeah great fun to watch.

Probably keeps him stuck at West Ham though.

Commentator must have missed the bit where the offside was given on field because he just blamed VAR for Kane not having a hat trick.

Eze seems a bit shit.

Yeah, get him on.

ITV1 so we're gonna lose.

No he isn't. If he was worth £70m someone would have paid that for him. If anything this window cemented the fact that he isn't.

Hell you could simplify it even more by having them being a combined cap of both purchases and wages. If you want to offer silly wages you can do but it would limit your ability to spend.

Here's how I'd fix it: Yearly spending cap. The amount you can spend on player transfers/sign on fees/agent fees/whatever else they do these days. Set it quite high - high enough the bottom teams probably can't reach it, but lower than the very top teams might want to spend. Player sales do not offset this. Doesn't roll over if you don't reach the cap. Wage cap. Total amount of wages including bonuses etc across the whole squad. Require some sort of proof of funds that you can afford all of the above but otherwise leave teams to get on with it. Rules stop you buying the league and provide some sort of level playing field. Obviously that's not what PSR was ever designed for but given how it's eating itself we can dream.

The wife is from Blackpool. She's not happy

It's pretty much the only time in the season you'll get anything against Man City though they've started this season strong which is ominous.

I get what you're trying to say but we still have our £70m. We haven't "lost" anything unless you see that as not signing another CB but by all accounts Guehi was the target, and Howe wanted him or no-one at this point in time.

Seems like we did for him what we did for Pardew. Both terrible here. Both got one more gig, but that was the end of them ever being in contention for a top job.

I was thinking myself does Joelinton make the team if everyone is fit and firing on all cylinders? And somehow I think the answer is no he doesn't. Willock will never be fit for long enough to really call it into question though.

So people scoring it 2/10 are actually saying it's an above average window?

And I do agree that in a sense due to how injury ravished we were last season that even no signings will feel like an upgrade to a point.

6/10 We kept our best players despite not being in Europe, though we'll need to qualify this season I fear to keep them further. Lack of spending means we have a bit more PSR breathing room and lowers the chance we need to sell any of them out of necessity. Avoided the trap of spending money for the sake of it on risks or substandard players. We are in the position of wanting to be a top top club without actually yet being a top top club. Lack of Europe this season makes us a bit less attractive. Limits the pool of potential signings. I think RW is a bit of an obvious weakness. Disappointed not to have done something there. Worried that lack of signings show a lack of intent and affect the overall mood. I think there are just about justifiable reasons but it's a hard sell. Overall meh.

I understand the idea of if we don't get Guehi then don't get anyone else at CB. He's both a short and long term improvement with not much risk. Whereas in our current squad we have Botman coming back, Schar should be good for another season or two, and we've got some reasonable cover. I get not spending some of a limited budget on just anyone. I don't understand the RW situation though. The only thing I can think of is we plan to play Gordon there. Otherwise I can't believe we're about to go into a new season with Almiron and Murphy fighting for a start between them. Just how has this happened? After missing on Europe last season I think we needed a statement signing just for morale. Silver lining is we kept Isak, Bruno, etc. But we need one hell of a season to keep them for much longer I fear.

Bit of an indictment of the game if you value selling a player to have a few million extra in the bank over finishing higher in the league.

I think the league is going to be really hard this year. Not to downplay our 4th place finish but that year there were quite a few of the usual CL suspects who were having a bit of an off season. This year we expect Man City and Arsenal to be a lock, and probably Liverpool too. That leaves Spurs, Chelsea, Man Utd, Villa, and Us fighting over the last place - it will be the goal for all 5 teams and 4 of them will fail. On top of that I think the midfield is stronger than it has been in a while too. There's some good players and managers in there. It's gonna be a tough season for a lot of teams.

There probably are other bids going on. We just aren't talking about them in public.

I don't really get the arguments about it's dragged on too much or that Palace are somehow showing us up. We've submitted some bids, and they've decided they don't match their valuation. Fair enough. We don't think he's worth what they're asking so haven't submitted a higher bid. Also fair enough. By the end of the transfer window someone might blink, but in the meantime it's not really dragging on in the sense that very little will actually be happening. Once the bids were rejected it was always going to be a case of it something happens it'll probably be at the end of the window. In the meantime maybe we'd have signed someone else. Maybe they'd have found someone willing to bid more. If not, there'll be a decision to be made. The only way we'd have him here already is if we offered more, and a lot of us on here don't think we should. Maybe we end up paying it on deadline day anyway? Perhaps, but with FPP being what it is I think we had to at least try not having to pay full whack. As for the Palace showing us up bit I don't really care if SP acts like a bell end in public about it. I'd rather our transfer dealings were dealt with in private but we can only control our side. In terms of the actual negotiations it all seems standard enough to me.