tajjuk

How is it fantasy football? Both those players are surplus to requirements at Chelsea and I believe Christensen has been listed as a make weight in other deals, plus both are young talented players who aren't getting game time at a bigger club, worked out all right with Bertrand and Romeu.

IIRC Liverpool are playing Hoffenheim who also finished fourth in the Bundesliga, so I'd reckon they are 50/50 for being the Champions League. Nor are they really regulars in it and you wouldn't get that great odds on them getting back in this season considering they only just finished 4th and that was with no european football. So not sure he can say he's leaving for champions league football. Their last 10 finishes are 4th, 8th, 6th, 2nd, 7th, 8th, 6th, 7th, 2nd. Champions league three times in 10 years (and that is saying they qualify this year) so hardly a Champions league club.

Bertrand with JWP as vice IMO. But I reckon they'll give it to Davis.

£50 million flat fee plus Christensen and Baker, I'd take that.

Barkley is massively over rated, believes his own hype and apparently wants £150k a week, if he wasn't English most people wouldn't rate him. No way we'd pay £40 million for him, especially as he's thick as two short planks, doesn't fit the mould at all as we look at the person not just the footballer. He was a good prospect like 2-3 years ago but has barely progressed. Just compare the development of JWP in the last couple of years to Barkley, JWP has come on massively, Barkley is barely any better, making the same mistakes. It's because JWP (who is probably less talented) has the work ethic to improve, is intelligent and doesn't have a massive ego. I fully expect Barkley to be playing for like West Ham on the bench in a few years, he's a Ravel Morrison that got more game time IMO.

Its an irrelevant article, there are 11 clubs that are split by 0.8 of an inch.

Seems a pretty irrelevant way of listing them. There are 4 free transfers there, several players were specifically signed as cover, some very short term cover, not sure why you would criticise the club for that. Every club does that, Man City signed Richard Wright and he never played a game. Then Pied and Bednarek have had zero chance to do anything, Bednarek looks like cover and Pied got a bad injury within weeks of signing (but again was FREE) . So we are actually down to what 4 players on your list that at a stretch are SUPPOSED to be first teamers, Redmond was very good, as was Gabbi from the half a season we got to see. Hojberg and Boufal were inconsistent but are clearly talented, and it's just ONE season for two young players in their first season in the country and the league. Not to mention Boufal started the season injured and picked up another half way through. So we signed 4 fairly young, talented players, none of whom have had more than one season (two barely had half), two were good and two were inconsistent. OMG sack all the coaches how terrible. Our last 9 meaningful signings, i.e players that were clearly signed to challenge for the first team spots. - Gabiadini Boufal Hojberg Redmond Van Dijk Clasie Romeu Cedric Austin Hardly bad now is it. Austin scoring 1 in 2, Romeu our most consistent player last year, Cedric wanted by Juve, £75 million rated VVD, Redmond who was raved about last year by the pundits and got in the England squad, Gabbi who came in and scored for fun. Leaving Clasie as a bit underwhelming (but hardly a bad signing) and then two young guys who were inconsistent, one who had a season blighted by injury. 6 successes out of 9, and no obvious terrible signings. But of course we can come up with retarded ways of criticising the club over nothing. Seriously I do not get some people, why not be up front with your obvious club bashing agenda and that you are clearly being disingenuous to feed that agenda. Listing free transfers and loans FFS, could you get more stupid.

We seems to be linked with two Lazio players but neither story seems to mention the other which seems odd to me.

He's 6' 4" so I'd expect him to be fairly decent in the air. They have big cash though don't they? Chinese backed I think and want to compete with their city rivals who also have big cash. Plus they are a huge club, just been a bit crap recently but had way more recent success than Liverpool have. I'm sure they can splash some big wages his way. What I don't get is that story saying they are offering £35 million as it's basically what Liverpool paid us.

Well from what we have heard, VVD staying seems to be linked with use signing some quality players, so I'd expect they will need to sign two players for the first team to meet that promise to him.

Yep agree, the 'victim' reputation is much more than Hillsbrough, and things like that hardly help them. I mean you only have to look at their reactions about Coutinho potentially going, how unfair it is etc. yet they'll quite happily think we should just bend over and sell them VVD. That is Liverpool fans, will quite happily excuse their club for tapping up, sing songs about other clubs disasters, support racist behaviour, but as soon as the shoe is on the other foot they are the first ones to come out and play the victim. To be fair some of their fans I've met in person seem quite self-mocking, but a big proportion of them are massively deluded and arrogant, worse fans in the country IMO, especially as they have so little to back it up these days. ---------------------------------------- Anyway, interesting information that VVD might be tempted to say if we get some quality signings in, let's hope that happens.

I think Wimmers would be a pretty solid signing, one game in pre-season is pretty irrelevant, plus Spurs fans opinions are worthless IMO. Also £20 million sadly seems to be the market, but I doubt we'd move for him unless VVD did go and we aren't going to replace VVD, but we hardly did terribly defensively with Yoshida and Stephens. I'd also expect the club have more options and the Wimmer thing is just being heavily pushed by the media because it's an obvious link.

I think he'll be better with the shackles off, you can clearly see he's a guy who likes to be on the ball but not so much the defensive side of things. Just give him a bit of a free role, let him influence games and see what happens as he's clearly talented. Let's also hope he stays injury free and this full pre-season will help him, can't have been easy coming to a new club and being injured for like 3-4 months trying to get match sharp in October/November when everyone around him has played 10 - 15 games AND learning a new league. Then you add learning the language, settling in a new country etc. on top of that as well.

Ah bless them, my heart bleeds.

They clearly don't have the money which asks the questions why are the club still bothering keeping this going? Her stated aim is to get investment to take the club further, Lander clearly aren't that if they can't get the funds to buy the club in the first place.

Have to agree with him, Spurs are basically the top 6 version of us, investing in youth, using their academy and spending within their means. It would be good for the Premier League IMO if the likes of Utd, City and Chelsea failed

Let's hope that is not us. https://www.getfootballnewsfrance.com/2017/sm-caen-threaten-clubs-with-sanctions-for-tapping-up-yann-karamoh/

I seriously doubt we will sell him to Liverpool, I'm like 95% certain that won't happen for five reasons - 1. We'd look like idiots after publicly complaining about them. 2. The club know the fans would be upset if we sold to them. 3. I don't think the Liverpool owners want the fuss and bad PR, even if they haven't done anything further wrong, if he goes then immediately there will suggestions that Liverpool were behind his strike and were further meddling behind the scenes to push the move through. They are club built on their old school reputation and their history, this mess has tarnished that and I don't think they want to be seen to be that club. 4. I don't think Liverpool have the money to meet our valuation and I don't think the board want to back down on that valuation. 5. I think the Coutinho thing helps us, they can't have this both ways, of course some moronic Liverpool fans will think they can, but they can't, you can't stir up one player to agitate a move and just expect a smaller club to roll over to the bigger club and then when the shoe is on the other foot stop one of your main players moving to a clearly better and more successful team. It looks stupid and goes back to point 3. I'm also more and more of the opinion that he might not go at all, whilst I'm pretty sure the club will let him go to someone else that isn't pool, the number of suitors with the cash seems limited to me and the two main players Chelsea and Man City seem to have distanced themselves from this transfer. Man City are splashing the cash elsewhere and Chelsea are not exactly desperate for centre-backs. So you are looking at a change of heart from them, are they likely to splash £60-70 million on a player that is not a main priority? And how likely is another club with that spending power likely to appear, Real, Barca, Arsenal, Man Utd, PSG? seems unlikely to me, Real and Barca have good centre backs and seem to be looking to recruit elsewhere (like Coutinho and Mpabbe), Arsenal have two good centre backs, have just spent near £50 million on a striker and are more focused on desperately keeping Sanchez and Ozil. Utd have just bought a centre-back, unlikely they will spend Lukaku levels of money again this season and PSG are trying to sign Neymar, which will leave them zero room for any other spending under FFP and they will more likely have to offload some players.

You don't need to play football manager like West Ham do real transfers though. When I play Saints in FM I do what they pretty much do in real life which is buy talented young players and often sell them on at profits as I progress the club. Plus you bring youth team players through, it's in the board requirements to do exactly that (and the buy young players thing as well), it's almost as if it's trying to replicate real life. ------------------------ IIRC Pellegrino's interview yesterday he said they were looking at signings but he was still evaluating the players because lots came back from international duty late etc. I expect we all want players that the manager actually signs off on, so we need to give him time. Plus Smalling and Delph are crap and too old to get any better, if we are going to buy players off big clubs they will be 20-24 sort of age looking to rebuild their careers, not 27-29 looking for a big pay day. Let Stoke and West Ham sign those players, I prefer our method. I expect us to make maybe two signings but I reckon they will be later in the day, mainly because the change in manager set us back, plus the whole VVD debacle.

Wow some really clueless people in here that know very little about keeping, have to laugh at some of the completely stupid comments being made. Granted he didn't have his best season last year but he's a quality keeper and we'd need like £30 million to find a better one. Personally I trust the club and all the managers that have picked him.

LOL Have a look at the twitter interaction as well, some guy saying no big clubs came in for him, Tiss saying he turned down Liverpool but that might not count!

So if we are not selling to Liverpool, Man City don;t seem interested and neither do Chelsea he is running out of options really. Very few clubs in the world can afford £60-70 million for a centre-back, I'm doubtful even Liverpool would pay that much, you are left with PSG, Real, Barca, Juventus, Bayern, maybe Dortmund and then Utd, City, Chelsea and probably Arsenal.

I think this is a good point, he's very composed, is a good quick decision maker, good at positioning, is good on the ball and is decently quick for a centre back, but he lacks physicality I could see him getting bullied by some players like Lukaku etc. Luckily though there aren't that many strikers like that around. Plus we should remember Fonte got pretty easily bullied by Imbrahimovic. Quite simply there are not many defenders around like VVD, there are a few brutes but they tend to me more like Morgan and Huth, bad on the ball, slow and have a tendency to struggle with quicker more agile players. Most big imposing centre-backs are basically big lumps. VVD is a big lump that is also quick and is good on the ball so he's basically the complete package. Hence the £70 million.

Would be great to see Stephens establish himself as a first teamer, I mean is he any worse than Gibson or Maguire? I don't think so and one of those has gone for £20 million and they are talking about the same amount for Gibson. We have some quality young players at the club, who knows what they can achieve given the chance? Spurs seem pretty content not to make massive transfers this summer and seem to be looking to their young players (probably stung by the £30 odd million they paid for Sissoko) We finished 8th last year, spending most of the season with Yoshida and Stephens at the back, who were nothing but very solid, it was actually our goalscoring that mainly let us down.

Not sure Sigurdsson would go back to Spurs, especially as where is he going to play? They have two of the best AMs in the league in Eriksson and Ali. Siggurdsson looks likely to go to Everton IMO as a replacement for Barkley, but I don't see a reason he wouldn't want to come here, we'd probably offer him a pay raise and he'd be moving from a relegation threatened club to an upper mid table club looking towards Europe. What's more likely is that we won't pay £40 million for him, especially as he's soon to be 28 and will have little re-sale value in 2-3 years. But to be honest at current market for a guy who scores 10-15 goals from midfield, as many assists, can take penalties, free kicks, corners all in a relegation threatened team I'd say in today's market that is a good deal. Man City have just paid £50 million for walker who can barely cross a ball, £40-50 million for a consistently quality player like Sigurdsson seems fair to me. --------------------------------- Thing is if we have no bids we have no bids, also I don;t think Liverpool are going to bid, I reckon they took too much of a PR hit and the owners want to steer well clear.