Nine

Look at Gallaghers data, look how Howe has coached improvement into our entire midfield (or squad). It would make sense for the right price.

God the reactions to that are gold. They are so mindfucked by us now they are condemning their own ‘heroes’. Amazing.

Understandable why some fans got emotionally attached to him, but in reality he cannot be consistently effective in this squad and system anymore. His best days for us were dragging us along under Bruce.

We won’t, they will want too much. A link will break out soon and it won’t be him.

Smart business

Yes let’s just pause and reflect while the market moves without us, what a bell

I guess we see more value in serie A than anywhere else

Did them over on Botman and now are taking their best player off of them, if they did that to us the reactions from our side would be the same.

Our midfield options are disgusting with Tonali in, proper CL ready stuff. Add in a Nmecha and we’re sorted for depth in the middle.

Well there’s only about £20m left in the budget now

Holy bollocks, what a start to the window if this happens

Some late career resurgence he’s having, what a guy Will always love him for that shit goal vs Liverpool where the defender basically tackled it in for him

I can’t disagree

Man just not seeing Schar there feels so harsh after this season

That makes sense until you realise that the likes of Chelsea and Man United will eclipse our wage offers.

Apparently it was all Moyes fault that they ended up in the third tier, the absolute delusion..

Ahh ok I mis read your post, took it as a we shouldn’t sign relegated players take. Seen enough people say that lately.

There are good deals to be had from relegated teams every season, the ‘don’t want relegated players’ thing is such a lazy take.. so many examples of successful transfers coming from teams that went down.

Pretty sure Targett did an interview shortly after signing and stated that Saint Max was fined more than any other player for being late, wearing jewellery during training etc

I think this goes over a lot of peoples heads, fitting within a system and style dictates how effective a player can potentially be far more than raw talent.

That could mean £31m or £39m, or it could mean that no one has a fucking clue.

This approach opens up a lot of potential issues down the road if we don’t get top 4 next season though. The players that signed for CL football don’t have it after a season, what do we do? Move them on? Or keep unhappy players that consider a non CL club below their level? It’s just never that simple to say let’s take advantage and sign CL players as a non established CL club, so far it’s one season. I personally don’t think our targets will change much from where they were pre top 4 finish, maybe a tweak here or there but I expect it will be the same trend of steady squad building progress that we have seen developing already.

If talent moved linearly with transfer fees then Ben Arfa would have cost us £30m back then. Maxi is talented, but he’s also been on a fitness downturn for a while and a move to Serie A makes a lot of sense here as it would be a lot easier on his body for a start. His attributes/style of play also do not fit into to many top sides and I can see why he might not be desirable for a lot of good coaches, this won’t drive up his price. We can agree to disagree here but for me anything over £30m is fair business for both parties. All that being said he might not even be leaving. I do hope he is mind, I’ve said for a while he no longer is a fit here since Howe came in and changed our style so drastically. He’s not cut out for our identity on the pitch now.

That might not be a leaving message but out of any of the valuable expendable assets we have, he is the most obvious one that would be leaving this summer imo. £30m is fair money for him.

This place will meltdown if Gordon is our starting LW