Lad from Brazil is attainable, there’s a release clause we could just pay. No one knows if he wants to come here or not but you’d be surprised if he turned us down.
Lavia was attainable. We didn’t want to pay as much as Chelsea were willing to. All signs suggest he was interested in coming here until Chelsea got involved.
So that’s one, Caicedo, who we spent all of what a week actively pursuing? Hardly a summer.
dont see any more on the horizon with solid links
How long were Endo or Szoboszlai on the horizon for?
The number of people (not just on this forum, but also elsewhere) who don’t appear to realise that Endo is a starting calibre player is astonishing.
Im pretty sure a few on here called it that it wouldn’t be long before someone was moaning about us not spending enough. An entire new midfield, 132m euros spent, net spend of 70m euros and still chasing more players. If we end here i’m happy, got rid of all but one of our constantly injured players and the 3 new midfielders are a definite upgrade in ability and availability on last years.
im at the age now where the players we are linked with ive never heard of.
When I was younger and had an xbox/PS - id know all these younger players via Fifa or Pro Evo
Now we get linked to someone and im like…never heard of him…and they want £50m WTF!!
I think it’s fair enough for people to be sceptical of Endo being good enough to start for us. He has never shown that level in his career.
Don’t write him off now, but it is a bit of a leap of faith to think he’s at our level.
It’ll be impressive of he manages to be a downgrade on the guy he is replacing though.
Yeah, by that alone, he should be an improvement. That said, @ILLOK is right, it’s not fair to the player to expect him to become a world class player overnight and that late in his career.
I thought I read in Globo that Andre has a 35USDM buy out that increases in January to 43USDM.
It may not be just the Quarter finals Fluminese want to wait for.
Did he not captain Japan at the World Cup, topping their group that had Belgium and Russia in it?
Aussie slang for a pullover or something,try on.
Farmers league or something…
No
I don’t think anyone is expecting a world class player.or even for him to become a world class player,but he is the same age as Milner was when we signed him and that turned out to be good business ,hopefully this will too.
Yep , for roughly what we would have paid for Caicedo. 
It was Germany and Spain in their group. Both of which Japan beat (and lost to Costa Rica). They did top the group though.
Who cares about the links in August with a week left.
Since end of May we’ve seen about 20 links for about 10-15 different players, none of which materialized to anything beyond “in talks with player’s reps”, how many more does one wish to see?
If we want Andre but he wants to see out the season with Fluminese, and hopefully help them do something big, I don’t begrudge that. I would lock a deal in now, for January, with a suitable exit clause in case of serious injury, should we wish to trigger that.
It gives us some succession and future proofing, and brings an orderliness back to recruitment.
Endo can play, now, and will be a key part of the new look midfield, which looks like it will be Endo, MacAllister and Szoboszlai, with Thiago, Jones, Elliott and Bajcetic all having a say too.
Andre comes to the party for the second half of the season, adjusting to his new country, club, training, style of play, etc. We will see him play, but won’t have to depend on him as a main man from the get go. As Thiago moves towards the exit, Andre rises up (different types, of course).
It is orderly and well planned, and as such, I like it. It brings a measure of calm back to our transfer dealings. This all assumes Andre is the one we want.
And because of the likely reasonable cost, we can afford to go big on the right defender, when the opportunity presents itself.
I just realised that means that Japan, Spain, and Costa Rica were in the same group for both men’s and women’s World Cups…