S-Clarke

I think that tells you all you need to know about the guys motivation. They are prob the only club who were prepared to pay him what he wanted for an 18month USA holiday. He won't need to work as hard as he would have had to in the Championship or PL either, just what he was after. Once the WC is over he will fade into obscurity and then retire on mega money. It's a shame he fell out of love with football like he did, a few years ago he was in and around the best 4 players on the planet.

It seemed to go cold, so maybe we didn't feel he was worth the release clause we were quoted. I don't think guaranteed starts would have been an issue, any new striker we sign will be first choice from day 1 as we have no one else! I reckon we're looking for more mobility and pace up top.

This is the point I'm trying to make. £75m is nothing if we spend it like we did the VVD money. We don't have enough good players 'here at the moment' to absorb the loss of our best player, let's develop some more good players here before we sell our only one at the moment. That's all I'm trying to say. Yeah, we can spend £75m but it's all a gamble and we'd be gambling with no safety net. This is totally different to the situation we had selling Lambert, Lallana, Shaw, Chambers, Lovren etc. We still had Morgan, Wanyama, Clyne, Fonte at the club - with decent scouting we managed to offset the loss of those other key players, but let's not forget the impact the existing important players still had on that side.

I think the most surprising part of this is the fee. He's not into his final year or anything like that, £42m in this market for an English international seems a bit cheap. Not sure what's happened there. Looks like the signings Leeds have been making (Aarronsen/Roca etc) have been done in advance of his accepted departure, like Villa did with Grealish. The DM they've signed from City is interesting though, they were very interested in Lavia but clearly unable to secure a deal (i'm sure they tried). I wonder if that now puts us in pole position for Lavia, even if it's just a season long loan?

No one is going to offer that! But even £100m I'd say no. Selling JWP would equal relegation with the current state of the squad, keep JWP around with the new players we're buying this year, let them mature and we can absorb his loss a bit better next year if all goes well. At the moment, you're taking out 1 of our 2 PL quality players and that would be curtains in my opinion.

This has come up a few times in recent months, but as of this window - no, no matter what the bid is. Once we've sorted the rest of the team out, the likes of Bazunu, AKP etc have matured as regulars and there's value in other individuals like Salisu/Tino next summer, then we could maybe absorb his loss a little easier. At the moment though, with a squad that already needs substantial work, selling JWP would just create too much to do and leave us with a load of unproven players.

Surprisingly quick, he's strong enough to hold off a defender and then quick enough to spin them and run away from them. It did seem as if teams and opposition players figured that out a bit last season and stopped getting so tight to him, which made it harder for him to spin and run. In terms of finishing, he gets a bit excited and isn't always the most clinical - but if he can calm that down and get a bit more composure he'll be excellent for anyone as his raw physical attributes will always make him a threat.

There's an equally good write up in the Athletic by our new reporter. I think this is Jacob's first article, but already he looks to be on a different level than Dan ever was, who just found lots of words to describe what we already knew.

£10m for Pope apparently, which is insanely good value. I think it's clear what our model is, the big fee's go down on young players with potential with a view to recouping double/treble that in a few years. I doubt that would be possible with Pope, although in respect of the here and now it would be perfect.

If he's half as good as Anders then we're going to be more than happy with him!

Yep, seconded. Appreciate his posts and keeping across all of twitter!

My take on that is that he was referring to players who had top level experience and 'could help us now', rather than being older in age terms. ABK and potentially Svanberg tick those boxes.

Never really thought he was cut out for the PL, I'm not surprised there weren't many takers in this league at that price. He'll probably do well in France.

The Mane deal came out of nowhere.

There is most value in Bednarek, so it will be him who departs. Will prob get 15m for him.

He's Chelsea's player tbf, totally up to them what they do with him. Not for us to dictate what we want.

Well, having 'experienced' Bednarek and Stephens didn't stop us. We'll always conceded goals playing how we play, so we certainly need to add more firepower up top. But...having more pace at the back is critical because of how high we push, having just one slow defender in the back line can kill you with this system.

I do like this summer so far. It's somewhat refreshing to be involved with a club showing ambition. And showing ambition doesn't mean throwing zillions around either, just having engaged owners is enough.

It genuinely sounds like he's got everything we want in a CB, a right sided Salisu. One of the most important things about playing the way we play is having the players capable of doing it, you could argue that Ralph doesn't seem to know how to play another way but that's another argument. At least it seems like the club are properly backing him with players who totally suit the philosophy and he won't have to try and hang out Bednarek and Stephens to play in this team. Having mobile and quick defenders is so important against the transition, something we remember all too often last season with Bednarek being turned.

I thought that the other day actually! Svanberg next...? Leaving the big $$ for the attackers! How refreshing is it to have a bit of money though, we're able to act on these improvements without figuring out who we have to sell first.

It's Salisu all over again!!

If you were to describe a CB we needed for our system, you'd pretty much describe that video of this guy. I don't like reading too much into youtube videos as they can be jazzed up, but he does look like he ticks every single box we could actually ask for. No, he's not experienced, but his potential is huge and that's the model we're going for.

That's about fair, given his significant drop off at the end of the season. We do need him back though, well if not him then someone similar - as an on form Broja gave our game something totally different, a bit of penetration in behind to start with. It's odd that the club went from openly trying in January to then not being interested from March onwards, does beg the question as to what went on behind the scenes as we just went cold on him. It sounded like we were prepared to pay £30m in Jan.

We've lost Broja though, he was our second top scorer. We need to replace his goals and his physicality. After him was Elyonoussi, and most of his goals came against Newport county. Adams needs to step up, but he seems incapable of being that regular 10+ goal a season man. We need another forward and number 10.