Midfield_General

£18m for an 18-year-old who's only ever played in the French second division, yikes Ah - OK, stand down

However many times he saved our arses in a poor side last year though, I can see a PL move for next season being hard for him now. There just aren't many PL clubs who are in the market for a first team keeper, or would see him as enough of an upgrade on what they've got to make it worth the £25m or whatever we'd ask for him. He's not elite level, so the CL clubs won't want him. Go down a level to the clubs outside the top six and I'd say he's comparable to people like Sels at Forest, Leno at Fulham, Henderson at Palace, Vicario at Spurs, Sa at Wolves. They're all good quality Prem keepers and don't need replacing. Pickford's not going anywhere at Everton, Brentford have bought Kelleher, Bournemouth have just bought Petrovic and West Ham are going after Hermandsen. So what does that leave - Brighton maybe, as an upgrade on Verbruggen? And it would be interesting to see if Villa were interested if Martinez went. Other than that, it's only the promoted teams left which would more than likely mean a fourth relegation on his CV and another season of getting smashed every week which I very much doubt he wants, especially if as reported he's already got a £100k per week offer on the table so wouldn't really need to move for the money. The one I'm surprised hasn't shown any interest at all is Man Utd, because he is head and shoulders better than Onana, very affordable for them, and you could guarantee he'd go there if they wanted him. They should snap him up, but I hope they don't, and they won't because that would be way too obvious and sensible for that shitshow of a club.

A lot of his former managers have said he'd make an excellent coach. The dream: Romeu does his badges, smashes the Segunda División in his first gig and then returns as manager to lead our 2031-32 promotion charge. The likelihood: In six years' time a 38 year-old Jack Stephens proudly leads us out as player-manager (with Bednarek as his assistant and McCarthy as goalkeeping coach)

He was the only thing between us and some more proper, humiliating 0-7 or more hidings on several occasions. Bearing in mind how many records that team still set for being shit, it’s mind-boggling to think how many more we would have conceded if we hadn’t had Ramsdale. Bearing in mind our other options can only dream of being competent shot stoppers, let alone excelling at any other part of their game, we were very, very lucky to have him.

Four lucky lads got the chance to meet an actual Premier League quality footballer.

Interesting that we're taking a 4th goalkeeper. Surely suggests that they are expecting to give Moody more of a role with the first team this season, which would suggest that one of the three seniors is off. Also see that West Ham are rumoured to be going for Hermandsen from Leicester, which if true would at least be one potentially attractive suitor for Ramsdale who could be ruled out. Obviously it's still overwhelmingly most likely to be Ramsdale who goes, but one can live in hope.

That's why I think Rangers fans are in for a bit of a shock. They are all under the impression that he's going to bring an intense pressing game, when in fact his teams do anything but.

Rules out Manning too unfortunately

What a leader though. What a ruddy bloody leader.

Well, that's a shock that no-one could possibly have seen coming

Credit where it's due, that was a sweet pass with the outside of his foot from BBD in the build-up to Dibling's goal

Jesters

And because of that I believe that to this day he still holds the record for worst ever fantasy football score for any player in a single game: minus 21 points. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/55921200 Better still, he took the crown from... Ryan Bertrand, after the Leicester game God it's shit supporting this cursed club sometimes 🤣

Still time to sign that Saints contract offer KWP... and let's just forget any of this ever happened

Lucky for him the CoT wasn’t around then. He’d have to be thrown straight out and have his membership revoked for coming out with bullshit like that.

Jason Wilcox and the rest of Ratcliffe's lads continuing to do a cracking job at Man Utd: - Only made one signing (Cunha); Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Man City etc have all made multiple major signings already - Struggling to get Mbeumo over the line because Brentford keep raising the price - they are now demanding £70m, and fair play to them for seeing United coming and knowing they'll panic and pay it in the end - Rashford, Garnacho, Sancho, Antony and Malacia all estranged from the first team and training separately. Hundreds of millions of talent going to waste and no buyers I wonder when they start freaking out, panic buying and sacking more people? Wilcox has got to be next in the firing line if this window doesn’t improve pretty quickly

Imagine being synonymous with - and represented by - that

Yeah, it wasn't really meant to be an analysis, just a list of dates when we brought people in. You're right though.

Last time we were preparing for the Championship it went: 1st July: Manning (Perm) 6th July: Lumley (Perm) 12th July: Charles (Perm) Unspecified date in July/ August: Stewart (Perm) 21st August: Downes (Loan) 25th August: THB (Loan) 25th August: Fraser (Loan) 25th August: Holgate (Loan) So we got a few cheap perms in early and then the two 'big' signings, Downes and THB, both came towards the end of the window and were both loans, with Stewart somewhere between the two (and let's just forget about Holgate shall we). Different management and recruitment team now of course, but from what we've seen so far, we may definitely be following a similar pattern. Let's hope so.

I’m waiting until the end of the window to make a judgement. Signs are slightly concerning so far, but I’m telling myself that the proper signings will come in the last few weeks once we’ve got the money from our big sales, the big sides are fully restocked and need to shift out their fringe players who we can swoop in for, etc. That’s what I’m telling myself 😓

I know. That's not the point I was making. I was just using Bednarek as an example. The point is, we've got way too many centre backs and now that everyone knows Stephens is staying and probably starting (as he's also captain), they're going to know that that's one starting position gone, so we'll need to sell a load of the others, and the longer the window goes on, the more that weakens our negotiation position for any of those.

There's also no guarantee that anyone pays the release clause though. So let's say Bednarek's release is £6m - if no-one has paid that with a week of the window to go, we'll just have to accept the best offer we can get for him. If other clubs don't know we're desperate to sell, they might offer say £4m. But if they know we need to get rid under any circumstances, they might offer a lot less because they know we're over a barrel. You're right of course that we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. Maybe clubs are lining up for a bidding war, who knows. Whatever's happening though, I can't think of many situations involving buying and selling assets worth millions where I'd not want the strongest negotiation position possible. I'm not sure we're ever going to be a club that's got so much money that we don't always need to try and negotiate the best possible deal. Onuachu being a case in point - we clearly didn't want him but we still made them up their bid three times rather than just shipping him out at any cost and taking a massive bath* on him. (*and imagine how massive his bath must be)

Imagine, three years ago when we'd finally shipped Stephens off to Bournemouth on loan and Bednarek off to Villa on loan, where he promptly started slagging the club, that someone had told you that there was a chance - however slim - that they'd be lining up together for us on the opening day of the 2025-26 season 🤣

Don't forget ABK still on the books until we can shift him, plus Taylor (ditto) who has played there a lot, plus Sanda coming through. That's nine centre halves. There are many reasons why the new contract for Stephens, and the timing of it this early in the window, was an incredibly poor decision, and this is just one of them. Now everyone knows that Stephens is guaranteed to be staying, we've now given ourselves no wiggle room at all if things don't go as planned in terms of people actually coming in for ABK, Bednarek, Taylor etc. The longer that no-one comes in for them, the more likely it is that we'll have to sell them off cheap, give them away or loan them, just to get them off the books because there's no way we can afford to still have them all by the end of the window, and other clubs who do their homework will be very aware of this. They will be able to exploit that by hanging back and then going low with any offers for those players because they know we'll be increasingly desperate to sell. So even if the club wanted Stephens to stay, giving him the contract this early in the window was really, really stupid because it totally shows our hand and massively weakens our negotiation position.