Palace potentially playing with fire. An injury, and not even a serious injury, would likely see us pull the plug and come back to it in January/next summer.
They want 40M now, and we want to pay 35M? That’s very close and if we negotiate on Monday I’m sure we can achieve a breakthrough. But if he gets injured, it will be 15-20M in January, and nothing next summer.
On the other hand, they have already made moves to replace him and have faced up to the prospect of losing him for free next year. There is maybe a sense that every game they get out of him is a free hit.
Be interested if he plays or is on the bench, assume we will step up our plans this week.
Is there anything stopping us from getting Diomande in the meanwhile ?
I think Palace are still waiting for that to be confirmed before willing to let Guehi move.
It’s a risky game that they are playing as in a club like Liverpool could quite simply take Diomande and then wait for Guehi to run his contract down.
The club tend to act in a way that suggests they won’t just go down the list of possible names too quickly. Won’t settle for second best. Ofcourse we can assume there are always a few names top of the list that we never formally get linked too as they arent attainable.
We went for Yoro, rejected, no one followed. Same for Caicedo and Lavia.
If Guehi doesn’t sign this window, I’m not convinced a different CB comes in. Guehi could be a deadline day deal..
We were happy enough to wait till Yoro ran his contract down. Only United were the guys desperate enough to pay a fee for someone in the last year of his contract.
Depends on how much leeway we have with Guehi. If he’s not listening to any other offers , then the way forward is straightforward even if palace want to keep him as long as possible.
The risk is Guehi picking up a knock. Scuppering the deal till the Jan window or at worst leaving for free. For a team which rejected close to 70m for him a season or so back , that will be a sizable loss.
They might be able to handle the loss to some extent if they were in the europa league. Not in the conference league.
We were reportedly willing to pay a fee, but the numbers (fee/wages) didn’t make sense for the club.
My point however stands, no one else came in.
Everyone else let it be RM or us were happy enough to let him wait out.
It’s only the idiots down at old Trafford who thought they would get someone special. Especially with his injury history.
Once we started the talks with CP I thought the deal would get done quickly but they seem to slow things down perhaps so that he plays today for them against Chelski? This would be very risky Sod’s Law he picks up a bad injury and it is bye bye £35M and we have to rely on Leoni getting ready quickly to come on as a sub for Konate.
If we actually wanted Diomande he’d be here by now.
It’s actually quite interesting to see the top class CB pool be quite shallow and yet the likes of Diomande, Gonçalo Inácio, Lukeba, Hincapie and Antonio Silva all look like they’ll stay where they are. Even both the Spurs lads look like they won’t be moving and the Greek lad at Wolfsburg we were linked with too.
Think we’ll get Guehi sorted eventually but if not we’ll go with what we have as we’ve shown very little interest in anyone else in that next tier of options.
https://x.com/indykaila/status/1957095830998897081
I hope so Indy… I hope so
If we do get Guehi, will be interesting to see if we see us use 3 CB set ups more often either to start or close out games (I very much doubt we would be using it as the go to formation).
Would give Virgil some extra legs around him, more game time for Guehi and Konate who would otherwise be pushing each other for the starting role, opportunities for Gomez and Leoni to feature also. Tactically it might help allow our fullbacks bombing on, or to provide additional cover against counters particularly if Grav isn’t on the pitch.
If we get Guehi I’d imagine he’ll challenge Konate for his starting spot immediately, particularly given Konate’s recent performances and contract situation.