Well that’s not very fun.
Ekitike, Fofana, Guehi. Three more signings for me, and job’s a good 'un.
There will obviously be outgoings.
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Falconetti
Who the hell is that?
Are you assuming Diaz stays and Fofana comes in?
A minor character in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Probably, but let’s see what happens. There is a lot of smoke around Diaz right now and earlier in the summer it felt friendlier. It looks to me like he wants to maximize his earnings and I would imagine he probably feels like a 4 year deal to take him to 32, on better terms, is deserved.
If he’s not getting that at Liverpool, he will want to get it elsewhere. Preferably at a top European club, Barcelona his ideal, but Bayern is fine too.
But they will need to put down the money, and there’s the problem. He’s a good player with two years left on his deal, so we won’t do anyone any favors over the fee.
At some point something will give. If he stays on the current terms, will he be happy to do so, and keep harmony in the group? Will we extend his contract and give him a pay bump? Will we sell him? And to whom?
Fofana is versatile and extremely fast. If he kicks on he could be in with a shout of replacing Salah in a couple of years. Slot might prefer to shape a young player with a very high potential ceiling as his refreshed team takes shape.
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Apologies
I was drunk.
He was the best baddie ever.
Rich Man, Poor Man
Played by William Smith.
Plus @Bekloppt answer.
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I don’t see how we can entertain the idea of letting Diaz go this summer with what’s happened and Nunez’s departure looking like a case of when rather than if.
I think we have to do at least one CF and make a decision on whether we’re confident with a combination of Diaz, Gakpo and maybe Wirtz being options there. If that’s then the plan a winger like Fofana makes a lot of sense.
Or the other option is we go for a second striker but perhaps we have to look outside our usual ideal parameters. Maybe that’s more of a younger development project type like a Samu Agehowa at Porto or a Woltemade at Stuttgart or Biereth at Monaco. Not quite the body of work we want to see just yet but plenty of promise.
We could also go the other way and get an older head like we did with Endo. Can’t think of any real candidates here and I doubt it’s the route we go.
But we have to get a CB and a CF to replace Quansah and Nunez. The question then is how to we replace Jota? Unless the idea is we keep Chiesa for another year and hope a full pre-season is enough to persuade Slot to actually use him more often. I thought he was out the door for sure but maybe with what’s happened with Jota means a reprieve for another season.
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Makes me wonder why we have an academy, if we have not got one youngster that can come through with the same desire Owen & Fowler had
I mean it must be bad if they cant get a break to step in for nunez who struggles to hit the back of a cows arse with a banjo.
We just won the league with 4 academy graduates in the first team squad.
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We’ve literally just seen Danns, who is about the best forward prospect knocking about currently, come into the first team, look good against lower league teams, but stuggle against better opposition.
Ngumoha appears to be the forward with the best chance of breaking through, but he looks a way off yet.
A Fowler or Owen, or a Rooney, are like hens teeth. You have to enjoy them when they do come through, but realise that asking an 18 year old to step into mens football is a big ask.
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We seem to want our 9 to do everything from being a false 9 like Bobby,. A natural finisher like Jota , a complete forward like prime Sturridge.
Seeing Isak perform for Newcastle reminds me so much of just now good Sturridge was in his prime.
We’ve worked around building the team around Bobby’s playing style. But , we’ve never had pure CFs after Sturridge went off the boil.
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Isak is still my #1 choice for our new striker if he becomes available.
Rumors now have Newcastle in the hunt for Ekitike. If they buy Ekitike he won’t come cheap. What are the odds we can woo away Isak once the Ekitike transfer to Newcastle has been completed?
If we look at a stats comparison between Isak, Ekitike and Sesko. Ekitike is clearly favored over Sesko in terms of Xg and Ag, shots, chances created, and passing percentage.
I think if Ekitike ends up at Newcastle we need to go 100% in on Isak and see if we can land the biggest prize of this window. I don’t fancy Sesko based on the numbers.
With our confirmed interest in Isak, I think we’ll see departures begin to happen fairly quickly, given how much we’ve spent so far, and what we’ve recouped.
Mamardashvili - £25m + £4m add-ons
Frimpong - £29.5m
Kerkez - £40m
Wirtz - £100m + £16m add-ons
Let’s say we pay and receive everything inclusive of add-ons, we’ve spent £214.5m so far, with potential incomings as follows based on approximate figures (could be far more).
We’d be looking at roughly £374.5m spent if the transfers below went through at the following fees.
Isak - £120m approx
Guehi - £40m approx
Trent - £8million
Nat Phillips - £3m (inclusive add-ons)
Kelleher - £12.5m + £5.5m add-ons
Quansah - £35m
And about £55.5m incoming so far, and that’s not even accounting for what happens with Diaz, Nunez, Elliott (as you mention), Tsimikas etc.
It was always going to be a massive summer, but if we did sign Isak, I’d expect significant movement on departures to follow pretty sharpish.
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Well absolutely. What you’ve outlined there would be a net 320m spend pre Diaz, Nunez, Elliot, Kostas etc sales. I’d expect we’d need to recoup ~150m for that to be plausible - even considering our low net spends in prior years. If we sold those four then we could even conceivably get the net spend down around 150m which would represent great value.
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150 is doable. We’ve still got Morton and Doak as pure profits.
30m for both probably.
Wouldnt our new goalie feature on last years sheet? It was suggested that we had about 200m if we wanted to play about.
Of course the moaners will be back next summer when we buy one bloke for 10m
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This is going to be a huge window, with the age getting younger and the quality getting higher. More transfers, in and out, than we imagined. Holy shit balls!
I dare not even list it all out, but what is happening is the reds are having the mother of all windows, and we are being set up to compete at eye top end, in all competitions, for years to come. It is astonishing.