SWLondon Saint

I'm in the same boat as S-Clarke above - great move financially of course, but for football development - not sure. Moyes is a good manager, but this is totally different to say, Rooney who came through under him. The £45m+ pricetag puts big pressure on straightaway, people expect the goods every week, and his game still needs quite a lot of work from the looks of it. He probably needs more games but with less pressure and that's pretty much the opposite of the mid/lower PL. The benefit of somewhere like Dortmund or Leipzig is they dominate games anyway so it's easier for a young player. We would too, in the Champ, but obviously a lower level.

Most likely yes, he'll go somewhere in between their last offer and the £50m we want. I do agree with Willo above that expectations would probably be unreasonably high if he moves with that kind of price tag as he'd be the 2nd most expensive teenager in PL history after....Romeo Lavia.

Yeah, it's absolutely daft some of the stockpiling of talent and the money they're on. Everton aren't gonna want to spend £15+m just on his wages for 1 year. TD looks like a bloody bargain at £45m compared to that! 😂

The problem is those players are always incredibly overvalued and I reckon it'd be incredibly hard to stay up buying top Championship talent. Look at how much Leeds' players went for last season after we beat them, and sure, some of them are young, but if we'd added any of, say, Gray £25-30m, Rutter £40m, or Summerville £25m we'd have gotten absolutely nowhere fast.

This kind of ties in with what I was saying - £15m to £20m is a absolute ton of money in the championship and you're paying it for an 'established championship player' so the price is massively inflated.

Well, we don't know what Fellows ceiling is, but no PL club has decided to take a punt yet, which says they don't think so, and if his price really is £15m+ he would be one of the most expensive in-Championship transfers which shows a great deal of confidence he is PL quality. No-one is suggesting we go in with a squad full of unknown gambles, but the fact is we already have a bunch of 'established and proven' championship level quality players. So it probably does make sense for us to be a bit riskier.

Yes, but 'proven and established' in the championship means players like THB, Downes, Manning, Armstrong, Archer, BBD - who may not be able to make the step up to the PL. Isn't it better to swing for the fences on less known talent than take established talent with a lower ceiling?

This is the thing that gives me some confidence in what's going on at least. Part of the reason Martin was so infuriating was that he had his favourites and they could basically do no wrong - Baz among them. Still says if he keeps performing as he has done so far, he'll be fine, otherwise he'll be on the bench. Very different. Also I think Still has a different GK coach now compared to the last 2 seasons, who he hopefully trusts.

OK, definitely smaller fanbase than us, happy? 😂

Pretty sure that is what we'd want hence he's going nowhere fast. I agree he's a tough one to judge, in a dominant team that has the ball all the time he'd probably look the business as he can definitely pick a pass. But he doesn't have that yard of pass he needs to make up for when he gets caught out, not does he make up for it positionally.

Yep, no point people griping about 'size of club' and all that, look at Bournemouth - tiny ground, probably smaller fanbase, but they're in the Prem and if they coughed up the £45m he'd be going there.

Look, he was f***ing terrible in his season in the PL and carried it on into the championship, but the club and manager seem to be determined to press on with him so all we can do is hope he improves or we bring in someone who takes his place. The only point in his favour is that he's still young and the management and coaching before now were a shit show so maybe the new coach can improve him. Trafford had a mare during Burnley's previous PL season and got dropped so he's not unique in that aspect.

At an initial fee of £40m +, he'd be Forest's record signing, West Ham have only spent more on Haller, I think, and same for Wolves with Cunha, so I don't see it happening. As I said ages ago, those sides would all want a Gibbs-White type deal of £25m+ add-ons, which I can't see us accepting.

What I meant was a lot of the clubs who would be interested - say, a club of the size of Porto, European football, smaller league - can barely afford £25m, and the bigger ones like Atletico, Napoli etc, who can afford £25m-50m would only pay £25m for younger / less proven talent as opposed to the £40m+ we want. McTominay went for £25m last year, Dani Olmo for £46m + add-ons so that's the kind of market we're selling into. Yes, he'd obviously be better off in the PL or another top 5 league if he'd be playing regularly, but I can't see that happening because the type of club he would get that at - maybe a West Ham, Wolves or Forest in the PL - probably won't be coughing up the £40m+. So it's an impasse. The agent's job is to to make the most money possible for the agent. The player's best interests are obviously involved in that to a degree, but anyone who's ever worked via an agent or commissioning type company has always got to bear in mind that they work for themselves, and you benefit as a byproduct. It's not personal, it is literally their job to 'stir shit' for their own and their client's interests.

Hoping you're right on this as agreed completely - at least Still has already publicly said we need more attacking help so he's not going let them make a mug of him hopefully. Other 'bright side' thing to remember is as I said before, every decent AM in Europe will be hanging on till the last minute hoping to get a Champs League club then Europa League, top league and only after they've had their hopes dashed do they come to us!

Got to disagree here, the second one which was weaker came through Quarshie's legs which makes it very hard, and the first one was hit with power from between 2 players, Quarshie + ?Manning? who again should have done better blocking it as they partly unsighted the keeper. Those were firmly defender errors in my book, don't think anyone's saving them. The only issue is you'd see an experienced keeper like Rambo having a go at his defenders afterwards which I think is actually important for keeping people accountable for mistakes.

They *can* afford it, but they won't - for the £40m + we want, most European clubs would want a Dani Olmo level proven player. I agree completely we should be looking for that amount though as he's worth it to us. I honestly hope we keep him as I think he's the kind of model pro who will just knuckle down and give 100% anyway like he did in last season's farce. It's just recent experience tells us that when agents are stirring the shit, clubs like ours rarely get what we want. He'd probably be better off playing week in and out for us than sitting on the bench somewhere bigger anyway.

Very believable on both fronts. I reckon the problem with Fernandes is that while the agents would probably be happy with him moving to a bigger club for £25 million or so, there's actually not that many clubs who can even afford that *and* would want to spend it on him, *and* we don't want to lose him at all, let alone at that price. Most likely way out is a loan to a glamour club like Alcaraz to Juve, which also had a very high buy option if I remember right?

Charles looked class, a huge difference from 2 years ago. He did give the ball away a couple of times, but overall he was good in possession and offered something going forward, good runs and very unlucky with the header.

Not much you can really say about that, the goal we conceded was a classic PL type goal, back to front and right in the corner in about 10 seconds flat, we won't see that in the Champ. Downs looks good, genuine yard of pace into the channels every chance he gets.

Come on, for the championship it's perfectly fine, just not what we would want, which is dominant / great.

Pretty much the only thing you can say SR have done well over the last few years is getting decent fees on player sales so might as well relax about this. Can't complain about what they got for Onuachu, Sulemana and Bednarek.

I'm trying to forget...

Same could have been said for all our loanees last time round in the Championship... And they all went.

On the team front, I could see something like this possibly being a good use of what we have: --- Bazunu --- - Edwards -Stephens- Quarshie- Sugawara - Charles - Downes - Wellington -- Robinson or Matsuki or Smallbone -- - Downs - Archer - Obviously the AM spot is the weak point.