hypochondriac

Exactly. For a club in our position it's not weird at all, it's actually incredibly smart to have a great relationship with City and Chelsea who have probably the best two large squad setups in the country.

There's nothing dodgy or weird about it at all. City have a shed load of decent young players who want game time and won't be getting it at city. We have a number of current and former staff with links to city and a proven track record of treating their ex players well. City don't want to sell their prospects to rivals so we are the perfect club to sell to. It may or may not work out but the impending sale of Lavia proves that it's worth it for us and the upside is that we get talent that is really much too good for us for a few seasons and we make a healthy profit. We really do need to augment those signings with proven experience if we want to be a success and I am sure we will.

I still have no idea what that means. We haven't paid over the odds for promising players. The success of Lavia proves it can work, why would we not go with what we know? I care about getting good players in, if that means we sign every single one of our players from city then why does that make something dodgy?

You can question the wisdom of signing the players but what's dodgy about it? It's natural we'd go for a load of city players considering who we have working for us.

We will need both of jwp and Lavia go.

I'm OK with this but ffs it's really making me nervous that we aren't being linked with much experience. Does every single link have to be a promising youngster???

The fact we are apparently desperate to sign him probably means we have at least spoken to him and received some positive feedback.

Probably because he's not as good as Rice and with the Rice money they want better. Doesn't mean he's not more than good enough for the championship though and potentially the prem. If West Ham really wanted to keep him then we'd have no chance clearly.

It gives me benthelegend "who is that black defender he is so dominant" vibes.

You play football sue? You must tell us about it some time.

I think there needs to be a bit of realism. Yes we shouldn't sell for a stupid price but a championship club doesn't force a player of lavia's quality and potential to stay when champions league clubs come calling.

Well we will see won't we. Absolutely no chance he's staying so if no one will pay 50 something will have to budge.

Liverpool would ask for more than 50 million undoubtedly. Our asking price is below what they woukd want. FWIW I think he will go for 40-45.

In fact it would be significantly more if it were on the back of excellent performances over a season.

Hard disagree. Given his age and the price of players in the prem now, he's easily worth 50 million. It's not potential he's already an excellent player and will just get better. If he was at a big club already then 50 million would be seen as a decent price.

There's an argument that jwp and Tino are overpriced. I don't see how anyone could seriously argue that Lavia is at 50 million. There isn't a better u-20 player in the Premier league.

Not in the championship he hasn't.

He mentioned changing the way he plays in response to some of the players. There was some suggestion that he had no wingers at Swansea and he also mentioned having dynamism in attack.

Twitter people getting very excited at some non-commital statements from Alcaraz on social media. In all seriousness though, if we somehow manage to keep Alcaraz, Tino and Tella we are going to have some seriously good players in the championship.

To be fair, I don't think you can really have a go at any fan writing off almost any player in our squad given the shit show that was last year. Hopefully a few of the lesser performing ones will give us a nice surprise. Personally I'm hoping that Adam Armstrong can find some form and also that Edozie will be decent in the championship.

Agreed. Even if we dint go up, it woukd be nice to be competitive in every game and watch some nice football with the chance of some goals.

Yep that's where I'm at. I've been a fan too long to get suckered in by someone who can talk a good game without backing it up on the pitch but at the very least I can listen to him without wanting to smash my phone in anger. Nathan Jones was just so wrong for the club and it was immediately obvious a couple of weeks in. I have confidence that that will not be the case this time even if he's ultimately unsuccessful.

I think also we could bring players in but we have to give the manager enough time to work with the team. A bad start could be suicidal and would be criminal really given how much longer we've had than other teams.

I think if Sulemana leaves I'll be pissed off. I don't feel he received enough of a chance last year and was criminally mismanaged. He could be superb eventually in the prem let alone the championship.

I think a new signing or two will do wonders for making us view this as a fresh start and a new challenge. Until we get that it's just the same old bunch of failures. The club need to give us something to be excited about.