Kid Icarus

FWIW my preference is to not sign him anyway.

Don't need to be inside this thing to see what every single media report (that local one aside) said about this - that he was waiting for Man United and preferred Man United.

Good riddance

Been obvious for absolutely ages. Can only assume the thing driving our encouragement were our own desperation and gullibility.

Everyone that's reporting on it, including Ornstein and Romano. Man United aren't offering daft wages anymore, they can't afford it under the PSR bind they've got themselves into through overspending.

We're matching fees and wages

Him being 22 is why I think it should be easy tbh. When you look at the player development at both clubs it's chalk and cheese. The prestige and size are heavily in Man United's favour but that hasn't translated onto the pitch or to improving players for a very long time, so it does make me wonder what his priorities are in terms of what he wants to get out of the move.

Finding it hard to care or have any time for a player who's finding this to be a difficult decision tbh.

It's the biggest 'should I just sack it all off?' situation I've had since Rafa left. I won't, but I'm going to find it extremely hard to handle it and a big chunk of the last few years will be unwatchable for me for a while as well.

Just realised he looks like modern day Ruel Fox

This is basically the problem. If we can sort this and have a situation where it works like it did when Staveley and to a lesser extent Ashworth were doing it, then I think/hope the bottleneck is fixed. The club being left in the position it's in this summer is shocking though, I get that the DoF leaving and CEO leaving is the problem but the lack of reaction and contingency plan put in place has damaged us.

Wouldn't even need to be that, just one with enough joined up thinking so that there's little to no cannibalisation. Them bankrolling our rivals is a serious problem for us.

The hype around him a couple of years ago was crazy like. Absolute carthorse.

That sounds an awful like knowing fuck all and using guesswork to me...

It was also the logic that was used to drive up Mbeumo's price. In Isak's case Liverpool are acting like its a reason to drive the price down.

It's all well and good you knowing x, y, and z, the people involved, and that the effort is there. If the bottom line is that they don't get the job done they're worthy of flack and the people who employed them are much more worthy of flack. I don't blame Andy Howe and Nickson at all, they - just as Eddie has - have been hung out to dry. You've reiterated that if we sign Sesko or Ramos that Isak will 100% be sold to Liverpool. For some, me included, that alone is in direct conflict with what's best for the club and their intent to do what they think is best is really here nor there if they've demonstrated that they're not competent in these situations.

And sell them

He has sources inside the club, it's far from guesswork

They were there already, it was APT that changed but it's a fair point. I still can't accept the domestic part of this, if this was Barca, Real or PSG I think we'd all drive Isak to the airport on our backs at this point.

None of them were their best players. Van Persie is the last one you can think of - Man United won the league, Arsenal entered their banter era. The likes of Suarez, Coutinho, Kane, Modric, Ronaldo all had their antics to force moves to domestic rivals met with a firm no before being sold abroad. I should say it's not that it's Liverpool. If it was Chelsea, Man City, Arsenal etc I'd be the same. The fact Liverpool have acted like cunts AND bought our #1 replacement is just added incentive to not sell to them. They've completely rag-dolled us in front of the world and we've accepted it despite being in a strong position.

Do you think this happens by selling them our best players? 2nd paragraph, they've won 2 leagues in the last few years with the one before that 35 odd years ago, their success in that regard is obviously recent.

There is absolutely nothing about our PSR situation that dictates we need to improve it by selling our best players to domestic rivals. Nothing whatsoever.

It was a 5 to 10 year goal coming up to 4 years ago.

We're in the same league, they're number one and our stated aim is to be number one. If you think how it is now is how is how it will be even in 5 years time, fair enough, but I couldn't disagree more, we're a club that has stated ambitions to be number 1, they're a club that has only just recently found a limited amount of success in the league.

Yorkie your PSR specs are taking you to some mad places. PSR doesn't distate whether financially we need to sell Isak now or in a year. There's no unknown on whether clubs will be in the market for nigh on the best striker out there or not, of course they will be.