Shadow Puppets

Again this from the same agent… we’re in a peculiar position whereby we’re now expectant to be challenging for CL football every year, the players and coaches are expectant of it too, but the financial position of the club doesn’t even remotely come close to levelling with those ambitions, so each purchase HAS to work. There’s zero room for error. Smaller clubs can take more chances, generally because their ambition and expectation levels are significantly different, and more in line with their financials.

According to one of the agents I speak to, the reason the list appears to lean heavily to PL experience is because we can’t really afford a “miss”. PSR means we pretty much have to buy guaranteed hits if we can.

🤣 Mate… you are the most negative poster / person I have ever come across. Take a breath, take a step back. We’ve just won a cup and qualified for the champions league. We’ve signed a very good RW, and are clearly trying to buy good players in multiple positions (something that I agree has been frustrating so far, but I truly believe at least 3 more players will arrive). It’s not remotely close to a disaster. It’s not remotely close to “beyond a joke”. It’s frustrating, but there’s plenty of time for a good outcome. Think positively.

Possibly. My point is, it does none of us any good to overreact to every tweet, when there’s every chance a deal is agreed on this one, just maybe not as quickly as we’d like.

I’m going to put my neck on the line and say we will sign Wissa… I’m very very confident on this one. They’re asking for £50m, but have a very unhappy player on their hands who won’t play for them again. We have “walked away / moved on” as a bargaining tactic, and in about a week a deal will all of a sudden be agreed for around £35m ish. I don’t know why you guys insist on reacting like this to every tweet that gets put out like 😁

For what it’s worth, Romano is adamant in his latest video that we are firmly in negotiations.

Yes, I think that’s the most likely scenario.

It’s clearly just brinkmanship from Brentford, played out over Twitter. This will happen, I’m convinced. Player wants it, isn’t training, and we are still at the table.

Press conference was excellent. He looks absolutely fine 👍🏻

This one will still happen, I reckon. Brinksmanship.

Err, agents absolutely can and do “force issues”. Two of the people I cite regularly on here (including the person who gave me the Elanga info) are agents and they have told me multiple times about the power an agent has over a player. I’m not saying Alex couldn’t have resisted, or acted differently, but this has all initially been brought on because his agents have been forcing the issue behind the scenes.

Well no, obviously 😁 But it does sound like his agent’s been in his ear and has been forcing the issue.

From everyone I’ve talked to today (including a current employee behind the scenes), I’m convinced this is agent driven by the way. It’s out of character for Alex to act like that.

He’s 22. Much like Isak at that age, he has been incredible in moments, average in others. He’s quite clearly very talented.

He’s 22. The exact same could have been said (and was said) for Isak when we signed him.

Well this is disappointing 😁 I’m now firmly in the camp of “sell him abroad for anything over £120m”. Don’t entertain any offers from the prem for less than £150m. It’s massively disappointing news, but trying to think positively, I’m not going to beat up the club about it until I see where we end up at the end of the transfer window. If we sell, reinvest, and it allows us to get 3-4 top quality players in (and spend that extra 5-10m on players we’ve been reluctant to do), then it will make the blow much easier to take. I’m still not remotely convinced this is coming from Alex… truly believe it’s agent agent agent driven. But it is what it is. We clearly can’t offer the wages and/or the chance of titles that they want right now.

I disagree. For me this summer has always been about improving the quality of the squad. If we get Wissa plus another couple of similar level players to him and Elanga, that is transformative IMO.

I don’t buy the negativity like. Elanga will be mint under Eddie Howe. Wissa, if it happens, is a really solid PL striker to replace a perpetually injured PL striker. Two good signings.

The point is, it’s the same as Forest’s bid. They’re trying to level Brentford’s expectations on what people would be willing to pay.

As reliable as any other mainstream journalist.

Fuck knows 😁 According to one guy on Twitter.

Because it means an entirely new ceiling, one that Tonali, Bruno, and other new signings would want to be closer to.

We‘ll agree to disagree on this one. Players are just people. Most of them are already massively aware of how stupidly lucky they are. Most of the NUFC players that I’ve gotten to know (some better than others) over the last few years are very humble, down to earth, understand the privilege of the position and the privilege of playing for a club like ours. Once they hit a level of earning top end PL wages, I don’t believe that “give me more money” enters their heads at all really. They want to play for good managers, good crowds, with good players and friends, and have the chance to win trophies. In my opinion, if you were to list out reasons why Alex would be attracted to a move to Real, Barca, PSG, or even Liverpool, the money aspect would be the bottom of the list to him. Agents on the other hand… all of them that I know and speak to… they are money men. That’s literally their entire purpose for existing.

Let’s see. I’m not against giving him a new contract like… I just don’t particularly think it’s urgent. But I’ll say it again… “Alex Crook believes”.

I don’t particularly believe Alex does care, knowing how much he loves it here… his agents will care though. I know he can play for any of those clubs, but my point is that he most likely will anyway next summer, so why more than double his wages now? 🤷‍♂️ Just to appease his agent for a year?