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Didn't play badly. Deserved a draw. Man U are shite relative to where they should be, but ultimately still a good side. Fìn.

Just saying it how it is.

No, I don't think it is, but I honestly think it's not too far away from those in terms of priority.

I disagree it's not a priority. Most of our defensive work is done in that midfield area and we saw how combination of tired legs and poor ball retention impacted us this season. It's arguably the most impactful area of the pitch and so strengthening that area has to be one of our top priorities.

We need at least 2 top quality midfielders on the pitch at all times and as good as Willock is, he's not top level (although he has the ingredients) and is also injury prone. Anderson and Miley aren't at the level yet to actively support out push to the level we want to be at.

I mean, there's been pretty significant reports that we'd been intensively scouting Ederson for a start. Put in an offer for Gallagher too from memory and I doubt either if those would have happened as a reaction to our injury crisis, it's not how we operate. We're very much in the market for a CM and it's absolutely the right thing to if we're to sustain a challenge on all front.

Dunno how I missed that.

Am I right in saying a draw tonight and a Chelsea loss pretty much guarantees us 6th?

Kone and Caqueret are the profiles I like the most, press proof, comfortable getting the ball off the defenders with good distribution. I wish we were linked with Merino. Not sure why Kone hasn't been snapped up yet though, he in particular looks ideal.

Aye, I think a lot depends on those free transfer tbh. Get those in, a couple of decent sales, wages leaving the building and some CL money and we're actually, on paper, in a decent position.

1 forward 1 RW 1 CM 1 GK and hopefully 2 frees will be our business this summer.

Just says it how it is.

Guess it depends on how you want to look at it. It'll be akin to *finger in the air* say, 20m (on top of what we currently get out of it) per year sponsorship deal which in itself is a signifcant sum of money in terms of amortisation.

I get the sense they're looking to have it fitter for bigger events and will pull in revenue that way as well and tbf +15% of say 400m revenue is a decent chunk of money.

Just purely out of curiosity, I'd love to see what he's like in midfield.

I think we're severely underrating how important our midfield is to how we function and how improving it, is critical to our success and I'll bet that Howe sees it the same as well. There's not a team in the world that operates at a high level without a top quality midfield and if we don't add then essentially, ban ir not the middle has stood still for 2 years.

He's hardly played in the most successful of sides and 26 is a great age!!

Probably one for realistical transfer thread but I thought Sander Berge looked a good player. Definitely feels like there's a bargain to be had there for squad depth were Burnely to go down.

Targett's been stupidly unlucky. Hebwoukdnhave been a first team regular had he got a decent run in when Burn was injured. I still reckon a decent wedge if that £15m is retrievable if wages suit the buying team.

Yeh, back to my original post earlier on - I don't have a clue.

Apologies if this has already been posted but according to Athletic this is wages + amortisation + agent fees. So as things stand that's currently at about 271m which is far short of the 4.5 of the revenue of the bottom placed club, so we actually have huge scope to spend on fees but our challenge becomes managing wages to within the 70% revenue threshold (currently sat at 74%) So if our revenue goes up to 320m this year, our wage bill is allowed to be at about 227m (last year's was about 185m) leaving about 200m per year for amortisation + agent fees? How far off am I? Edit: so the challenge is actually aligning with UEFA who have a hard cap of 85% at present (70% in 25/26) all in on wages+amortisation and fees meaning at present our scope for expenditure is about 90m in wages and amortisation. Still plenty of scope, I think.

Nah me neither tbh. Our current wages are 74% of revenue with a turnover of £250m. I therefore have no clue as to what any of this means. That's all from me. Cheers.

Won't that be 210m per year on transfers and wages?

Is Joao Neves a realistic target?

Just looked over the squad list and it's genuinely exciting to see how many players we can improve on if we're to assume the likes of Bruno, Botman and Isak are the standard. We're actually sooo far away where we'll eventually so it's pretty incredible to see us battling it out with the likes of Chelsea and Man Utd at this stage of our development. Honeslty excited to see what Howe can do with an even better calibre of squad.