S-Clarke

It's actually a China club, £1m a week contract. Absolute waste of a player to be honest, but never mind.

Thursday 8th of august I believe, just a couple of weeks left.

There is talk they are selling Dunk for £45m

How weird. Utd are a club without any sort of clue transfer wise, aren't they? He's certainly not what they need or want. I have no idea why they are even interested. Baffling club that is right now.

I'd be very surprised, 1 decentish one at the very best for £20m.

He's probably the one we could potentially get value from. But if we're honest he is just another indictment of our horrific transfer policy over the last few years. He'll never fulfil his potential at the top because he lacks some key elements as a professional and in his football brain. Not denying his talent, but you need more than that.

Unfortunately, the tone of what I'm hearing is that Ralph is reluctantly having a look at Hoedt and some others, mainly because we have so many CB's already and we are finding it difficult to shift so we can't afford to sign another. Pretty rubbish situation. My belief is that unless we see significant outgoings in the likes of Cedirc, Hoedt, Carillo, Boufal etc, then we will not see any further incoming. It's frustrating because that means we go into next season still horrifically short at CB in terms of quality, but this is the pain of assembling such an expensive and rubbish squad over the course or 3 windows. That's why I'm as baffled as anyone as to why Ross is still around, should have been held as accountable as Les.

To be fair, he's been a bit of a **** about it. Not the first time he's seen the cash on the horizon, got fidgety and handed in a transfer request. This time WHU didn't blink and offer him a new contract as they've done before, so he's gone. Look at what he did to Stoke before he left there too. He's a divisive piece of work. He'll drift way off into obscurity now, but he's got his money which is seemingly his sole goal!

The most typical Burnley signing ever.

People keep saying this, but I think he'd still be as error prone. He'd still give the ball away, probably lose tackles, and not be quick enough to recover. The curx is that he's not a very good player what so ever and is so out of his depth as a regular at this level.

Arsenal starting up discussions for Wilfred Zaha, £40m ish initially being discussed. Palace are seemingly going to be raped this summer.

I may be wrong but I think he had to undergo more Surgery at the end of last season, so there's no immediate come back for him.

I think this is a good deal if we're honest. As you've said above mrfahaji - it's already happened down there. You had Rhodes being bought for what was 10-15m, Britt Assombolonga (i think that's how you spell it) - who cost Boro something like 15m. Villa spent something like 10m on that preverbal championship scorer McCormack. So, given that he was a top scorer in the NPC and we've supposedly got the PL riches, we've got ourselves a deal which can't be sniffed out.

Deserved a crack at first team football. He may make a decent PL player, but to me he always had flaws and parts of his game which weren't improving. So, I think we did well to get what we did. I wish him the best.

Yeah, we have. But the £30m+ figure being bounded about made me gasp, a little.

Iago Falque - he's actually gone onto have a decent career in Serie A at Roma and Torino.

But you'd need a high spec internet connection...

What on earth is this thread about. We're ripping apart his goals because they weren't very good? He was there to score them though? Would you rather it was a video of him missing chances? Sometimes people on here confuse the hell out of me.

Pretty much adds weight to the 'Che Adam's chooses Southampton' claim then.

Their attack is lethal, pure quality throughout that now. They've got Arnoutovic to spearhead it as well, really impressive - could do really, really well next year.

I don't think they do ensure our long-term future. You need investment to be a success, you can't run on income alone - not in this day and age. If he's not going to invest, then we will slip slide away. I'm not suggesting we go and splash zillions on mega players, but some ambition and some investment will be required if we want some fun and enjoyment. How are we going to compete in the NPC if we went down? He doesn't want to invest, so how can we compete? There's not enough income alone, and then you've got clubs down there splash £15m themselves on players now. So this belief that he doesn't have to invest into us is just tosh. He is being a lazy and unattached owner with no intentions to do anything with us, therefore he needs to **** off. And also....why is he talking to the FT and not fans of the club? We want to hear from him, we don't want to be searching other webistes to get info. He's an absolute charlatan.

This is exactly it, and I share your concerns. As others as said, whilst we are Top Flight we will tick along...but as soon as we go down, the entire place will just come falling down on top of us. If we go down in the near future with Gao in charge, we will not be seeing top flight football for decades in my eyes. He offers us nothing, there is no connection and no meaning to his ownership. It's a token ownership and I can promise you when he realises he is losing money, he will try and tip us of the edge as quickly as he can to save his own skin. It's a very, very worrying future ahead for us. Everyone has the right to ask why Bournemouth are able to invest more into players than ourselves (without selling) - something has gone horribly wrong when that happens.

Spurs would be a better move for him for sure. But you've got to wonder what exactly clubs will be getting? He was utterly dreadful last year, didn't live up to any hype. Granted, in a poor Fulham side. But I still expected to see some more from him.

I hope we get this one over the line, he's a really good forward. Would add a lot of pace to our attack and that would probably finish our additions in attack - then we can focus on the back.

Villa have just signed Jota from Birmingham, so maybe their sights aren't really set too high for next season.