Shadow Puppets

It was from yesterday, and they are generally renowned for summarising Twitter rumours, so I wouldn’t give them too much attention. Plus, they didn’t even say it had been rejected. They said the expectation would be that it would get done very soon, but there were some finer details to iron out.

They’re both “chief football correspondents” for Talksport and have to fill airtime. Both of them said that nothing has been accepted yet, but that it’s likely it will get done. This was yesterday lunchtime.

😁

Martin, the main guy from The Lake Poets, definitely is a Sunderland and football fan like, and a very talented and good bloke. 👍🏻

Do they? Everyone else finds better players who can meet all the criteria that we want and who come in and perform straight away, for less? In today’s market?

Fuck… that’s absolutely awful. Just absolutely heartbreaking for everyone involved. RIP poor lad.

We’ll agree to disagree on that one. Although maybe I should have said you’re not going to find a “better signing for us”, rather than “better RW” in general. Elanga is about as close to a guaranteed “good signing” as you’re going to get for what we need at this point in time. Raw ability / attributes ✅ Premier League experience ✅ Easy to integrate into squad ✅ Off the back of a great season ✅ High ceiling to improve further under Howe ✅ Great attitude / personality ✅ Extensively scouted and been interested in for the last 3 windows ✅ Likely to come in and perform well straight away ✅ There’s certainly no one else who ticks as many boxes as that available for less than £50m. There might be some players available for cheaper who tick some of the boxes and may tick those boxes in the future, but IN MY OPINION, we want / need players to come in and perform straight away.

You’re not going to find a better RW than Elanga for less than £50m+ like, even abroad. Have you not seen the fees being quoted for some absolute bang average footballers this summer?

We do, don’t we?

😁

Only that as far as my contacts are concerned when I spoke to them a few days ago, Callum was definitely leaving. I assume that’s still the case, but don’t know for sure if anything’s changed. I guess it could have, but in my opinion it’s just an error on the website.

I don’t know if anything’s changed, but as of 3 days ago Callum was very much leaving. I suspect the website is just not accurate.

I massively disagree with £60m for Elanga being "crazy" like. He's a proven PL player, with massive raw attributes, only 23, on the back of a really good season. He's about as close to a guaranteed "good signing" as we're going to find. I'd put Kudus in the same bracket but he's coming off the back of a poor season. The "shopping abroad" thing is all well and good, but the prices being thrown around seem equally as high in Europe at the moment. I think we just have to get used to the idea that £60m today is the equivalent of £40m a couple of seasons ago.

Sadly the away kit with the thinner lines is correct.

Do you think Keith Downie has a clue what’s going on?

🙄 Give over man.

Nope, sorry.

Aye, that’s the one.

Two things: 1) how do we know exactly who the number one options are… it is perfectly possible that we have multiple deals being worked on at any one time. 2) with Pedro, the “extra mile” isn’t really something we can just “be willing” to go for. If Chelsea have beaten us to his signature it will almost certainly be because they are offering a wage far higher than we are allowed to, plus the London appeal.

Which is what I said earlier… we’ll be going after the “obvious” and highly competitive targets first, partly because they might be the top of the list, and partly because if we don’t, they’ll definitely be gone.

I posted a few days back about two other players we’ve definitely been interested in and enquiring about, but I don’t know how far we have taken them. That Monaco winger who’s name I have an inability to retain, and the young lad Prestianni from Benfica. If you only take last summer into account, sure I could see why you think Eddie only wants PL experience, but other than that he’s been more than willing to shop abroad.

Kudus is definitely on our list like. Don’t know how close to the top though.

History and common sense tells us that Eddie signs plenty of players from abroad, without PL experience.

Isn’t is all just a natural part of the process? I don’t think anyone’s “being let down” or “doing a bad job” really… it’s just the nature of the transfer market at the moment and the fact that we’re trying to be competitive for players we really want, but due to PSR predominantly, we’re struggling to compete on wages when one of the traditional big boys get involved. I’m sure we will sign players, but to me it’s pretty clear we’re working through our list in ambition order (i.e. trying to get the ones we’ll have big competition for first). Not the time to panic or point fingers, yet. Maybe in a month.

Elanga is 23 with bags of raw potential and all the attributes to be a perfect Howe player. I’d pay £60m in a heartbeat.