Chez

Is any of this "transfer negotiation detail" actually coming from the clubs or is it just made up/assumed? I am minded of all the bollocks that was written/posted when Lavia was departing. He'd signed about 8 times with Liverpool before the actual signing with Chelsea happened.

Found his post. He said: Forest, West Ham, Fulham, Porto, Galatasary, Al-Qadsiah, Juventus, Inter, Atalanta and Monaco. Having read the Paul Pogba article on the BBC website, Monaco seems very unlikely due to overall lack of funds and desire to add a little more experience to an extremely young squad. Porto are not spending £50m. Juve spent £48m on Koopmeiners last summer. Have they given up on him already?

no one, yet. The bought Larsen outright. They have been linked with Amine Adil from Leverkusen.

and the long contract (and other sales) means SFC hold pretty much all the cards. Maybe that's why the player is now suddenly "ill".

Google has Leeds, Villa, Palace, Forest, West Ham, Juve, Athletico linked. Not sure who the other half dozen are. The £50m price tag will see a lot of those interested parties disappear. Who is realistically left?

Fair point, but I'd say the ability to go past players is a move valuable/expensive trait.

The info coming from SFC/Echo has been pretty consistent "Saints want £40-£50m for Dibling". First time I've seen them say the same about Fernandes. IDo you know who is leading the chase/made actual bids for him? I've lost track.

I don't doubt they want the move, if they didn't, nothing would be happening, but why on earth would they do that? He will lose potentially millions in lost loyalty bonus (assuming he has something in his contract to that regard) by doing so. Besides, we want the move too. If we didn't, we would have trotted out the £100m line all summer. It will all be worked out soon. It's the usual transfer game. The only difference is that Orstein appears to be on speed-dial.

Absolutely, but the "best players" can't play if they have a "knock" or are "ill".

Anyone that watched the Sunderland documentary will know how buyers get obsessed with a player and find it almost impossible to walk away. Admittedly the folks at Everton are not a complete bunch of clueless amateurs like they were at Sunderland, but still...

You are right, but the player can always put in a transfer request. He will then forgo the massive loyalty payment he's probably going to get, which would bring the two parties closer in terms of the deal.

The manager decides who starts. But Will Still doesn't exactly have a lot of choice. I don't want to get into Ramsdale's departure here, but obviously there were financial reasons. What is now the option? Unless there is interest from somewhere to take Baz off our hands (he only went last time because his former coach at City was at Standard Leige), are we really going to add another high earner to the goalkeeping department? If McCarthy wasn't on the books, you could bring in another and push Baz down to reserve, but not sure we can have three here in the championship.

Does "check for numbers" suggest more that we only really have two senior keepers, so probably now need to get a third (choice) in rather than a new number 1?

is this rumour basically just a rehash of an article by Zach Lowry where he suggests some possible options for the back up right back role: https://psgtalk.substack.com/p/three-realistic-right-back-transfer?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1480878&post_id=170002087&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=657x3&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email Please tell me there is more to it and we can consider starting again at the RB position.

What a performance that was. After seeing the Leeds and Barnsley wins, even a pessimist like me wondered if we might actually go straight through the league.

I'm thinking Celtic take him to try to help give the impression that their league is remotely competitive. Give the opponents the ball more often, gift them a few goals, make the league a bit tighter...

Most of the sumo wrestlers are quicker on the turn than Vestergaard. Not sure how many skate though.

Everton can't buy world class players as finished articles. They can buy next level down or they can gamble on `unproven' talent that may become world class talent. It's kind of like our decision to avoid "next level down" and instead invest in the Man City lads, only Everton at least are buying a player that has already shown he can do it at senior level...we didn't even have the money/foresight to buy that.

When he was 17, yeah, lightweight, but at his pomp I saw him regularly shutting down breaks by outpacing opposing wingers. He was bloody quick and he covered a huge amount of ground in games - and not at a snails pace. He was doing Rodri things before we'd heard of Rodri. He was also strong. Again, not at 17, but in his Saints prime he was muscling players off the ball. He was a beast. I am not sure he needed presence alongside him. He needed a manager that rated and trusted him. I clearly don't share your view or analysis S-Clarke, although my failure to understand how he couldn't replicate what he did at Saints while at Everton maybe suggests you are right and I am wrong.

If Sir Alex was still there, maybe he'd of bought Dibling for ManU this summer?

Me neither. I blame Jose. The first season under van Gaal he played regularly in the league and looked OK, although nothing spectacular - he's not that type of player. When he was benched their record was woeful (four defeats, two draws and two wins). The next season Mourinho fucked him. he didn't play him until January. He then played nine times and did pretty well (I obviously didn't watch all the games, but I thought he looked good in the ones on TV). They lost one game in that period. He was then dropped and they immediately lost 3 out of the four games he didn't play. Mourinho didn't seem to understand what Morgan brought to the party - a guy that shuts down attacks and gets the ball moving. I think by the end of the season his confidence was shot. The manager had lost faith in him and he didn't seem to know what he was doing any more. He never seemed to recover and looked lost at Everton. Which is madness. He was absolutely brilliant for us (Bristol City away when he was 17 apart...I hold my hands up that I said he was a fucking pussy in that bad defeat). It pained me to see him playing for someone else, and play poorly didn't make me feel better.

There's some decent management fees to SR, but nothing out of the ordinary. Not the owner "taking money out of the club".

If his agent allowed him to sign a new contract with Saints over the last 12 months, he would have badly advised him. The agent's job is to see pound signs. That is literally what the player pays him for. To help him earn more money. However, the idea that the agent pushed him into a move so he personally could make a quick buck is not accurate either. The agent would probably have got 10% of his earnings this past year. Someone posted on here that Dibling was on £5k a week. I've no idea if that is true, but let's run with it. That's £250k a year, so £25k to the agent. If he had signed a new contract with Saints 12 months ago on say, £50k a week, that would be £2.5m a year, so £250,000 to the agent. The agent just missed out on £225k and any percentage of the signing on bonus Saints were offering by telling the player not to sign a new deal. The player had to be patient. But so did the agent. He knew that one way or another Dibling and himself would get paid and the longer they waited the more they would get. He told him to sit tight because it also offered more flexibility in terms and a way out if Saints went down and he wanted to continue in the PL (and not have to take a 40% cut in wage). Equally if Saints stayed up and he wanted to stay, by waiting a year or even two, Saints would consider offering him a better deal than they were before or risk losing him for free at some point. And now 12 months later, he is about to get paid a lot more than Saints were offering. The agent has played it perfectly. The advice, in order to maximise his income, was spot on. He's now going to get £100k+ a week for four or five years, probably a massive loyalty bonus due to Saints profiting off his back and a signing on fee from the buyer to boot. The lost £2.25m is a distant memory.

Understood. Can you point to the director loans in/out in the accounts, as I can't find them. I thought they had to be listed along with the interest payment.

we loaned him out. That has got to hurt, a bit after he got us promoted. My guess is if WBA had the funds and made a suitable offer this summer, he would have jumped at the chance of a move. We are not letting him go cheap though.