Ed Vinegar

I hate when we get pinned down like this. Brutal to see the opposition keeper collecting the ball in the centre circle.

Pope has been good today, important save there!

Gordon and Murphy both looking suspect. Woltemade is good like, some of his hold up play it looks like he can't be dispossessed. Don't know how to call it but I'd love us to score another 5 or 6

That Gabriel is a fucking melt, glad he's got nothing from that pathetic display.

Nice goal like. Man u have looked toothless.

£55m for a 29 year old no one else was in for does seem like a lot... But fuck it, we needed a striker and we've got one so I'm delighted. He's a good player and I think he'll do well here. I know this isn't the best possible outcome but we're in a hell of a lot better position now than when the Isak news broke last night.

Allow a man a crumb of copium

I hope his groin injury gets worse and he's limping round Anfield managing 5 games a season by next year. Then it would turn out to be excellent business. Otherwise I think I'm coming round to the view that we've absolutely fucked this. If we get someone passable in tomorrow then I'll reduce that to 75% fucked it.

It's all about tomorrow now. We've simply got to get a striker. If we wait til January we'll fuck the season and the following few. We must have someone we're very confident on bringing in. If we don't then we're weak as piss.

If we don't bring in a replacement the season is a write-off. That's probably the case whether or not we keep Isak. So we've just got to sign a striker tomorrow. If we don't it's a colossal fuck up no matter if we bag £130m or double that. FFS.

Decent result, we need a striker. Not much more to say!

Spent the afternoon on the train up from London to Edinburgh. Stag do on my carriage featured (presumably) the stag in a full Liverpool kit with Isak on the back. They got off at Newcastle. Wish him a fun weekend!

Me too, they died in the same year as well. I always well up watching or reading about Sir Bobby.

My 11 year old nephew texted me "say goodbye to Isak" at the weekend. Can't handle the intrusion of this saga into my real life tbh.

This window is painful man. If we don't get in at least a CB, CM and a striker we're weakened. And then there's a knock-on effect where next summer we'll need even more players to come in as Burn, Schar and Trippier are all 33+ and Isak will definitely be out the door (if he's not already). Realistically if we go into the season as we are now, we'll not finish top 5. So this is the window when we're likely the most attractive we'll be to players for a while - champions league, just won a cup, money to spend. Dread to think what next summer will be like if we retain the same recruitment infrastructure, have a more pressing need to bring players in, and we lack the allure of being in the champions league. Anyway, fingers crossed for a miraculous transformation in our ability to identify good targets and get them to sign for us in the next 3 weeks!

It's fair enough for him to want to consider his options. Also fair enough for us to insist on a timeline that works for us. I hope we're telling him+club that if we don't hear back today or latest tomorrow then we'll move on.

Am I alone in thinking that the amount Liverpool bid doesn't matter at all at this point? We can't sell until we have replacements signed. They could offer us £300m up front today and it would still be a crazy risk to accept as we might go into a full league season with Osula as our only striker. Hard to see in practical terms how this could get done in the remaining window. Of course, we might just totally give up on the prospect of being a top level club and sell him without replacements. But surely not.

Shola: 53 goals in 312 appearances for Newcastle. Wissa: 45 goals in 137 appearances for Brentford. I think there's a bit of a difference at least.

Womens shootouts are way more fun. Enjoyed that a lot (whole game was good).

We can't sell him to Liverpool for less than £250m imo. Would listen to lower offers from elsewhere, but surely we've got to hold out for £180m+? I don't want him to go, but he's one player and we can't lose the place over someone wanting to leave. We've just got to make the exit as advantageous as possible.

If we lose Isak with one incoming player this window is a nightmare. Only thing is, who has the money to buy him at the moment?

Agree with you here. We've got plenty of keepers but how many would we actually want to play regularly? I think it's a big miss if we don't get Trafford. It's not like decent keeper prospects are available every window.

Wissa would be a good option. Loads on here were moaning last year about the prospect of signing Mbeumo, but either of Brentford's strikers would be a massive improvement over our current back up. Maybe there's some absolute star 17 year old out there who would consider signing for us but it seems unlikely and better for us to focus on good players who might actually join us imo.

I'm hoping they bring home Robbie Keane from Ferencvaros

Thanks! So it seems like it limits the pool of clubs that can take a risk on more established players to either those with other areas of profit or those with established footballing revenue. Would be interesting to see how PL clubs would have fared without mega money deals from Saudi clubs. Yeah, my thinking was that it will effect transfer demand for players past say 26-27. You're right though that that could benefit players - either their current club is incentivised to keep them or they can get more money out of a new club that will be saving a transfer fee. Does feel like PSR might decrease transfer activity overall which presumably isn't good for the football economy, will be interesting to see what things look like in a few years.