sushimonster85

4 minutes ago, joeyt said:

Looks like an agent was linking us with Joe Gomez yesterday

We're getting to the stage where agents are just cutting out the journo middle men and putting rumours our themselves. 

39 minutes ago, The College Dropout said:

Thuram seems determined to do a Juve, Atleti or Paris type move.

He is 25 now (26 in August), even if we do qualify for the CL this season we're still likely 2/3 seasons away from consistently competing for titles/European trophies. He may think he doesn't want to wait till he is 28/29 to be in that position.

17 hours ago, danny said:

Mindgames by the master, This wasnt a overestmation howe always exaggerates injurys to keep people guessing

Howe is great at this and does it all the time. Remember the Isak concussion? This would have been cut and dry once his concussion was diagnosed there would be no way he'd make the next match. Howe managed to never really confirm or deny anything and people were guessing right up till KO. 

4 minutes ago, Toon No9 said:

It's like when Cardiffs owner switched from blue to red shirts.

It's really not. That was an owner changing the colour of the clubs home shirt.

Honestly couldn't really give a fuck what colour our 3rd kit is. Actually kind of annoyed about the automatic Saudi link this season alternative kit, and the rumoured one for next season get because I think they're pretty smart. Granted, having a lot of the family on one side as Celtic fans probably means I'm more partial to green and white than most.

3 minutes ago, STM said:

Could our Paraguayan Prince be back sooner than expected?

I honestly thought the '6 weeks' line from Howe could be to throw people off. Just seemed weird to me the club or Almiron would tell the international manager a figure that was so off what Howe was claiming the be the timeframe. 

Just now, STM said:

 

From my understanding Sports Management isn't coaching/team management. It's much more likely he's looking at DoF area, with that sort of degree.

Yep. Coaching is covered by the UEFA Pro licences. Fab's eyeing up a role like DoF, or head of youth development etc. 

There is absolutely 0% chance the home kit gets changed. Craziest thing I could potentially see happening is some Juve type experimenting with the stripes, which has led to some horrific designs. 

1 minute ago, STM said:

Bruno will be getting a new contract very soon and it will see our highest earner on more like 150/200k, it opens the door to the possibility of others earning that too.

Yeah, Bruno will likely remain the ceiling after Summer, but a new contract for him will likely open the door the higher p/w offers than we have currently been making. 

They may end up making a half-arsed attempt to make it look like they did further investigation, but absolutely nothing will come from it. The only reason it was blocked in the first place was the piracy issue, the whole 'who owns the club' thing was just a handy line they could spout. There's a reason the PL opposition to it dropped as soon as the Saudi's cracked down on BeoutQ. 

Remember, as much as other PL clubs may twist, its in the PL's interest to have another side able to compete at the very top. More exciting title races makes for even bigger domestic and foreign TV deals. 

Without wanting to get into the pros and cons (for the record I don't think he'd be a great signing but I also don't think we will sign him) of Scott McTominay, it's totally normal for the opposition forward to block off the passing lane to the deeper CM to prevent a team transitioning through the centre. If you look in that video you can see the attacker glance over his shoulder at times to check where McTominay is. This happens to Bruno constantly. Watch when the ball is with Botman or Schar. Bruno is either totally cut off, or has a guy right on his arse anticipating the ball coming into him. 

Should McTominay's movement be better to try and make himself available to receive the ball? Yep, but I'm pretty sure that's more down to him being a bit shit rather than him actually 'hiding'. 

17 hours ago, Mazzy said:

 

 

Wouldn't be cheap to buy out 3yrs of a contract, especially as Castore would have no reason to want to be bought out, they'd make far more money/publicity remaining with us. It's a real shame.

I do wonder if there are plans to attempt to negotiate a buy-out once we have our commercial side up to snuff and could justify the expense. It does seem odd Adidas reps being at the Leicester cup game whilst we still have so long left with our current manufacturer. Obviously Castore are nailed on for next season, but I do wonder if we start to hear things about a potential buy-out during the course of the next 12 months.

3 hours ago, KDT said:

I wonder just how fucked Forest are if they do end up going down. I was happy to see them get promoted but from speaking to their fans at the first game of the season to how they've gone on since it won't be a crying shame to see them back down.

 

I'll go with Forest, Bournemouth & Southampton for the drop.

 

 

 

Yeah, will be interesting to see. You'd like to imagine a lot of these contracts have provisions in place for massive wage drops and very attainable minimum fee release clauses in place just in case. 

Agree on the three as well. As much as that is the boring option. Would love an Everton or West Ham in there, proper box office watching someone like that go down. Guess this is how other fans felt about us being in and around the bottom 3 so much these past few years. 

We appear to be in a situation now where the financial upside of staying in the PL is so vast that teams calculating a players importance in keeping them in the division v potentially losing them on a free are taking the PL survival figure into account and still slapping prohibitive fees on their best players. Obviously this applies more to well run sides without financial/FFP issues than maybe a team that play in blue who have a certain attack minded midfielder we may be after....  

The Athletic Football Podcast really has come on leaps and bounds over the past 12 months, at least for me. Was worried when they switched to a daily format that it would just be more inane shite, but they generally have cover really interesting stuff, even when its based specifically on other clubs. Rarely over an hour. Of course it helps having Mark Chapman hosting most of them, going between him and Taylor on PotT really highlights how important a proper presenter can be. 

Yeah, not great wording but that surely just means they're committing to not changing any of those three things without getting agreement from the fans. In which case I'm actually surprised club crest is on there given there must be branding/marketing folk behind the scenes itching to make it into some circular shite like every other badge. 

Likely looks like they want to have the ability to change stadium names without fan consent should it come to that. That being said, think it will be seen as an absolute last resort. 

3 minutes ago, The Prophet said:

 

His agent was talking up Real and Barca a week or two ago.

Barca accounts department right now...

If anyone thinks, after the season he has had, Kvaratskhelia is going anywhere other than PSG, City, or Real Madrid then they're kidding themselves. Based on this season he has instantly jumped into the elite tier bracket with the likes of Mbappe and Haaland. Personally I'd wait a season anyway, make sure there isn't a massive drop off in his second year. 

35 minutes ago, SUPERTOON said:

Can play across the front 3, not sure his best position but I’m pretty sure Watford fans say he isn’t an out and out striker.

I think Howe would love to be in a situation where he has a totally fluid/interchangeable front 3, with all 3 players capable of switching about with no drop off in performance.

19 minutes ago, KDT said:

 

Champions League qualification basically enables us to say bye bye to FFP restrictions with all the new revenue streams we can invent plus other legit income.

This is true, however with the caveat that it's consistent CL qualification that really opens these streams up. Say we do make it this year, it will have been partly based on us being absolute boss radgies, but partly based on Chelsea, Liverpool, & to some extent Spurs being abnormally shit. Even with heavy Summer investment we'd likely start next season as outsiders for a top 4 finish. Still think we are a couple of Summer windows away from being a consistent top 4 side. 

22 minutes ago, SUPERTOON said:

Hopefully not Lodi, he can’t defend, thought he was the worst player on the pitch on Friday night.

Think early signs suggest it's likely to be him or Tierney. 

1 hour ago, Keegans Export said:

That would be amazing. If we can get three first-team standard (Botman, Bruno types) then some young potential for the others the squad starts to look pretty solid.

Aye, my pie in the sky, in no way ITK at all guess would be: 

Renan Lodi - LB we know they like and is now PL ready. No more than 30m as well as that's his release. But Atleti can usually be negotiated down.

Maddison - Again, we know they like him. Contract up next summer so price wouldn't be insane.

Diaby - The crown jewel of the Summer business. £60m+

Then a young right sided CB full of potential to eventually fully take the place of Schar. And a young (likely from South America), more defensive CM, partly for depth, and partly to push the likes of J7 and Willock. 

11 hours ago, gbandit said:

Isn’t the main issue that he doesn’t want to come here? Seems a difficult thing to surmount 

On this, I believe it was specifically that his agent intimated there were only a couple clubs he was actually willing to move to in Jan before his contract expired (so missing out on a larger signing on fee). Believe it was Man U, PSG and someone else. Implication being that in the Summer he'd be far more open to the likes of us and potentially Villa, who were also being linked. 

Sex on legs, that. Assuming it is Adidas from 24/25 as rumoured I hope they go back and do some throwback style kits. They do it for Man U, that blue away shirt of theirs from last season was straight from the 90's.

3 minutes ago, Froggy said:

A rivalry for me doesn't disappear because a teams ability goes up and down.

The rivalry literally only existed because our ability went up in the 90's. We're not local rivals. We're two teams who competed against each other for about a 3 season spell in the 90's for the PL, some older members of the fanbase still hold a bit of a grudge, but its not really a shock that it's diminished over time.

11 minutes ago, Froggy said:

So by that logic it would be Arsenal and City you'd rather beat in this situation? 

You're catchable, they're not. That's where 80% of the heat in this game comes from.