Kid Icarus

That's 10mins per match away from top level like, especially for a rotation player who doesn't take pens.

The halcyon days of circa 2004 when the furore on here was based on Sunday's News of the World lies and Del Piero airport sighting lies. We were always a bit mental I reckon, social media just preys on it.

Unless you're TBG you're going to get taken seriously when it's something other people are saying earnestly. Glad you're just taking the piss though.

You would hope that it's deliberate hyperbole to make a point, but I've seen it enough times and fleshed out as a serious point enough to still give it the benefit of the doubt. Always the possibility that a lot of it is engagement farming/rage baiting like.

Best mental state to be in is that Wissa is shite and not worth signing. Then if we sign him he's everything I've ever dreamed of.

Way back in the reserves vs frequent first teamers Ashley would never have had paid for the best striker in the world in the first place. Good was good enough to sell at the first opportunity. Can't believe I'm arguing this tbh, they're both obviously chalk and Cheese.

It all harks back to that interview he did for me, came in like an absolute mad cunt insinuating the plan was for Howe (a brilliant DoF in his own right) to stick to coaching, then using management speak at any opportunity, and criticising a transfer policy that had contributed to us staying up, getting into the CL, and since then win a cup and qualify again. Even after that I was willing to give him a chance and let the relationships build, but everything I've heard about him since then has backed up the conclusion that he's a talk-a-good-game, arrogant management speak tosspot and that aside from selling Lloyd Kelly to Juve he's done nothing of note in his actual role. Our posts about him on here are identical to the ones I read about him on the Monaco forum while he was there and raised a few red flags about him. It's a shame because when it was announced I was really excited about him based on his incomings at Spurs.

When did Ashley sign Athletico Madrid and Chelsea players and hoy the best striker in the world on a new contract rather than immediately cash in? The window has been really frustrating but the comparisons with Ashley are always insane.

I think this is going to become an increasingly popular opinion if things don't change fast.

Why am I not surprised.

What was the Forest bid that was rejected before they were quoted £50m?

Sorry, what's the point in that bid?

N-O is simultaneously one of the most anti-bald and bald-energy corners of the internet.

Since Trafford I have no confidence in us signing anyone. Just gonna go on a ride now and not look into any players at all.

Course he is, that money exists within football and he and other players should be the ones compensated for it rather than agents, clubs, directors etc

He'll be good enough to start very soon I think.

Yeah but the source is...oh it's The Athletic, one of the most reputable sources going.

Surdashan Gopaladesikan Innocent coincidence?

Demanding £7m less than we rejected from Liverpool eh.

Even at the points you're talking about we were 10m apart from Burnley on a fee, a quarter of the total fee. Then a few journos mentioned that we were ready to walk away as we were unwilling to budge and were prioritising other positions. I'm just not having it on this one, sorry Yorkie. It was so clearly an open goal that we either fucked up or decided to walk away from.

What's the literally everything that points to that? Man City are currently negotiating paying less than the £40m buy back fee that Burnley quoted us. By all accounts available we got to £30m and refused to budge. The values are all well and good, but it's yielded barely anything. Elanga, which was also a long drawn out affair, and a series of seeming dead-certs we've failed to make happen for 2 years. I totally get bemoaning PSR, but that in itself isn't a solution and unless it's ever thrown out, we have to either work with it or work around it. Our strategy seems to be to work with it rather than around it and while it yielded some great results initially, since Staveley/Ghodoussi/Ashworth have left, it's been arduous, which would be fine if it still yielded results, but there's now a pattern of failed attempts where previously there weren't.

Because I see no evidence of that being the case, only the opposite. The reason I think we've walked away is for the reason the couple of journalists who hinted that this would happen gave, for the same reason we often seem to - because we've refused to budge on our valuation to the extent that it'll get a deal done and are persisting with this best-of-all-worlds strategy of trying to get a player for every position, that'll also take us to another level, that's also in budget.

I mean that is undeniably racist like