southernmag

I'll consider myself told. I agree with a fair bit of that. Maybe I should have said, "CAN be a weak cover for". Might have been less inflammatory. I just think the club are saying the right things in interviews etc but then we're really not backing that up with action, in regards to transfers primarily. I'm not arguing it's not hard, but I'm arguing we're not doing things as well as we could.

That's very reasonable. In my opinion we need to either be quick and decisive with 'cartel targets', or go for ones they might not so readily go for. I understand and probably support the first approach, but you HAVE to be fast and pay what's required early on, or you'll miss out to the cartel. I think our club has been made to look stupid this summer in this way, and last. I do have hope and some cautious optimism for the rest of this window, I'm just frustrated by what I'm seeing. I imagine Eddie is too, but feeling frustrated doesn't sign players. We need to pull finger.

Do you think the evidence of this window so far (and previous ones) suggests we're going to sign the players we need? If so I admire the optimism.

I think it's overly simplistic to explain our poor window away by blaming it on the cartel. There are reasons to suspect we're not operating well in and of ourselves. Obviously I agree the cartel are shafting us to a decent degree.

I'm not a victim. Just tired of saying true things and getting rinsed for it. Nice try though.

Here's another unpopular opinion - "there are very few players out there that can improve us" is a weak cover for "our list of targets is unoriginal/too restrictive and we take too long to move for them anyway".

You can be optimistic all will be solved in the remaining weeks of the window, but questions still remain as to why the first half of the window has been absolute garbage for the most part. A few weeks ago I said all was not well behind the scenes, and got piled in on. Same thing happened at the same point of last summer's window. Just because the club is in a good place in many areas, doesn't mean we aren't messing up in others.

People trying to pass this off as ok by saying we don't need Trafford or he might not be worth the money.. maybe true. But it doesn't change the fact we're failing to move decisively for other positions too. And that's the more pertinent issue.

They've definitely sped some of those clips up.

Clubs like ours can only hang in the fight so long on these expensive transfers. Soon enough we have to bail, and the cartel clubs who definitely don't have an unsporting PSR advantage can waltz in and get it done in no time.

Can already see Joelinton chopping him in half on his first trip to St James's.

Must confess I started a new career mode on FC25 today on the basis we were signing him. Turns out FIFA is crapper than it's ever been and Ekitike's dogged us anyway. I feel dirty.

If Ekitike had really wanted to come here, he could and would have pushed for it. Clearly he doesn't feel an affinity to our 'project'. Doesn't now and didn't when he went to PSG. Let's go after players who actually want to be here.

I generally try not to post near identical thoughts to others, particularly if they're 'negative' thoughts. That would be pointless and unconstructive. Just seems that most of the time I say "I'm not sure this is a good/healthy thing the club is doing", it's met with disproportionate levels of "what do you mean, explain yourself!". Seems odd when basically the most offensive thing I say is "we're not being particularly efficient in the transfer market". At worst, that's up for debate. At best, it's simply true. It's not some blasphemy. Anyway... re Ekitike, I do hope we move on and have other targets ready to action, and in the coming days. If we take weeks and weeks to get deals done (which there is evidence of us doing) we're going to really struggle to bring in the numbers needed to have adequate depth this season. There is still time, but at the rate we've gone the first half of this window, it won't happen. Time to get backsides into gear.

You've assumed, based on insufficient evidence, that I "worry all I want". I don't. I just look at the objective evidence of our transfer dealings and form positive or negative opinions as appropriate. The reason I've shared negative opinions more often is that some here (not necessarily you) get very upset if someone shares a negative opinion about some aspect of the current or future state of the club. I push back against that. We can express 'concern' without it meaning the club and everyone in it is a write off.

We really need to get some deals done.

You're not allowed to be concerned till the window shuts. I have been informed of this repeatedly by members of the forum.

My feeling is if we sold Isak for 150m, we could do amazing things with that money. Trouble is, Isak is worth more than his monetary value. He's part of what intangibly makes this team tick, and I'm not so sure we could easily replace that.

I reckon refuse to sell to Prem rivals unless for something hideous.

Ok

Any players we could pilfer in a player plus cash deal?

The thing is, if we inject 200m of quality to go with what we already have, we'll have a huge amount of equity in the squad. So we'll be in a much better position in future windows to make profitable sales and stave off the PSR gremlins.

You just had to ruin it with facts and logic didn't you.

So I guess if Ekitike signs, we're either going two up top (seems unlikely) or using him as a wide forward? YT videos suggest he's comfortable on the flanks even if that's not his most natural position. In the case of two up front, presumably if one of Isak/Ekitike is missing, we just revert to one up top. In before Chelsea sign him and this was all pointless.

Little bit. Tbh I've doubted our speed and decisiveness with transfers, but virtually every fee including the big ones have proven justified thus far.