Shadow Puppets

Errrmmm… have you actually followed football / transfer season before? Of course they make things up / make educated guesses / post things without corroborated sources. It’s far more valuable to people like Romano and co to get likes / shares / comments than it is to be accurate. Their social media numbers are their brand. Sometimes they go hand in hand, sure, but you must not have being paying attention if you think that they don’t make stuff up. Romano, in particular, has pretty much always just posted stuff when all the other actual journalists have come to a conclusion on something. As Rich quite rightly said above (albeit in a sarcastic way) he is absolutely a “tap-in merchant”. He very very rarely breaks a story. The only journalists I trust on that front are the 3 Athletic guys… Ornstein, Caulkin and Waugh. You rarely get speculation from them. That being said, perhaps if he is actually a Watford fan / has connections with their owners as claimed above, then perhaps this time it’s different…I just find it odd that literally no other journalist has backed him up (yet).

I hope you’re right. I personally think he’s making an educated guess, and he’s worded his exclusive in a way that makes it very easy to back away from should it turn out not to be true (“verbal” usage). We’ll see. Fingers crossed either way.

Well yeah, exactly.

Odd that it’s only Romano talking about this, no?

I don't know why anyone thinks Romano knows anything to be honest. He's a tap in merchant... has he ever been first with news? Ever? He watches all the journalists, sees what the consensus is, and then posts. That's all.

Or you're putting words in people's mouths to suit your own agenda? I really liked Mitrovic and wish we'd kept him because the potential was obvious to me. I think the same about Pedro... there's a tonne of potential there.

Of course. It’s just pretty laughable/predictable to read these “opinions”, that’s all. People saying he’s shit / Wood mk2… I mean, it’s just completely objectively bullshit. He’s 20 years old, been one of the rare top performers at a struggling club for a couple of seasons, has bags of potential but is nowhere near the finished article, yet. You could write the above almost word for word for Ekitike but he got an entirely different reaction because he was new to people. I just think people aren’t understanding what kind of player we’ve actually been looking for. We’ve, to me, quite clearly been looking for a versatile, young forward player that isn’t afraid to play backup to Wilson for a while, but who can contribute a lot more than Wood. With the added bonus of providing more competition / pace across the whole front line. He fits that bill quite well. Not necessarily my first choice for it, but a good shout.

As fucking always, this place is bi-polar when the truth is actually that he’s a pretty decent player. Not a world beater (yet), but nowhere near as bad as some posters are making out. Very similar to Ekitike, and still only 20. Think personally, for around £20m, he’d be a good solid addition to add competition across the front line. But I would still hope to see another player (ideally RW or AM) come in too.

Odd performance. Don’t feel particularly worried or pressured by Brighton, and we’ve exerted ourselves well at times, but been pretty sloppy overall.

Was lucky enough to be in corporate hospitality today and was sat next to Botman’s dad all game. His whole family, mum, dad, brothers, sisters and grandma all came across. Absolutely lovely family. So proud of their lad. When the flag display was in full flow pre kick-off, Botman’s dad turned to me and said “I think he made the right choice!” ?

He was an absolute pleasure to watch today. My favourite player ?

Can’t fucking wait! The last time I set foot in St James’ it was for the Arsenal game, one of my greatest ever experiences at football. Been desperate for the season to start again.

It was mentioned in the press earlier today that we had been encouraged by his agent that we could get him for £42m. Hence why we were interested I guess.

Because they invest in a business, which is perfectly fine, and that business owner got involved in buying their own football club, which is perfectly fine.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with our approach and, if it is true that we only have a small budget available, so what? We are quite clearly going to strengthen before the end of the transfer window. People just need to calm the fuck down. Look at how far we've come.

It won’t be our budget. It will be carefully briefed to the journalists so that the word gets out that people can’t fleece us.

I'm still convinced that we're going to go back for Maddison.

Still convinced we wouldn’t have come this far in negotiations for us not to end up reaching an agreement. We got the Botman deal done eventually, we had everything agreed for Ekitike…it was the player who turned us down. We managed to get Bruno and Trippier for great prices. Once we go all in for a player we rarely lose out. Give it 3 days and I bet we have reached an agreement.

The encouragement could be coming from agents, it could be coming from the player, it could be coming from someone at Leicester who knows they need to sell quickly. Who knows? As things stand, it's still not 100% clear whether this bid has actually been rejected.

They'll be bidding £20m under the asking price (if it's true) because they're getting encouragement to do so. I think we'll meet in the middle somewhere, probably in the next 3 days.

I'm still confident we'll get him... think we'll put a package together in the region of £50m and it gets done ?

I think £45m is a good offer like. I'd imagine we'll go to £50m and it'll get done.

Outstanding achievement. Really chuffed to bits for them ????

I’d prefer Maddison to be honest. Proven PL quality. (though I would love either)

I’d prefer Maddison to be honest. Proven PL quality. (though I would love either)