Summer transfer/exodus window 2026

[UpweySaint]

6 hours ago, Baird of the land said:

He was good for us in the prem but that was years ago. He’s 31 now and yes legs do go as players get older, especially one who’s whole success was covering every blade of grass. His fall from grace at WH, forest and Burnley isn’t some glitch.

31 for a player who looks after himself isn’t necessarily an issue. Hard to know his current level with his lack of consistent game time of late. It may indicate he’s gone to shit or it might just be he’s not pushed his way into starting 11s. My guess is he would look very good in a championship side under the right manager. There is a bit of sentiment in there but it’s not exactly jobs for the boys. Taking his name out of the equation if you told me Jander and Charles would leave I wouldn’t be too gutted about signing a 31 year old centre mid with a lot of prem experience, an eye for a pass and the sort of dead ball delivery many of ours would potentially thrive on. We have been stung before ‘getting the band back together’ but some of the bashing he gets on here feels OTT. I do wonder if he suffers somewhat by association- he was the captain during some shite seasons. Quite how much of that he should be accountable for is up for debate but it certainly seems to impact some views on him.

[RedArmy]

14 hours ago, Hodgey said:

We need to play the loan system, was a big mistake not doing so last summer.

 

 

You put yourself at an immediate disadvantage when you get promoted as we found out last time having to spend the best part of £40m on THB and Downes just to stand still. 

[skintsaint]

3 hours ago, AlexLaw76 said:

Oh FFS. first we get dumped out of the playoff final, then this!!!

 

Decent Hayden replacement that, make it so Boro!

[skintsaint]

16 minutes ago, RedArmy said:

You put yourself at an immediate disadvantage when you get promoted as we found out last time having to spend the best part of £40m on THB and Downes just to stand still. 

Just don't agree to mandatory purchase loans on promotion, do them as an option to buy instead.

[Pwoite]

3 hours ago, Saint86 said:

I would expect the club to maximise saleable assets - partly to balance the books, partly to free up funds for reinvestment.

I reckon Scienza and Jander will both be sold, and for at least double our initial outlay which is much needed from a PSR perspective - reasonable to expect £40-45M for those 2 i think?

Charles will also be sold due to contract situation, hopefully another £15M.

That's a likely £55-60M for those 3.

Ramsdale for circa £10-15M if we are lucky. Plus £100k/wk (£5.2M/yr) wages.

A potential £65M-£70M if we sell Ramsdale

If anyone will give us a profit on THB then i expect he will be sold as well. The reality is that having a £20M CB is a luxury in this league - i rate him and think he's a brilliant CB for the championship, but if someone offers us £25M to replace him and strength elsewhere, we will take it...

So potentially £85M-90M sales just on those 5players.

Rumours of a sell on fee for Fernandes - so hopefully a small bonus there as well.

Against that, we need to offset a circa £15M drop in parachute money this coming season.

Plus we need to make sure we balance the PSR 3year loss limit of £61M - for which, we don't know where we stand for the season just gone.
 

All in all though, i think we could have a tidy pot to reinvest this summer.

Larin for £3-4M isn't a bad buy - but crucially he will have no resale value. And Stewart will be similar in that he's going into his final year on his contract. Having those 2 as our strikers leaves us staring at an issue in a couple of seasons where we may be needing an entirely new front line and have no parachute payments etc., to replace them. If any championship teams are in for Ballard, given our sell on fee (discount) we should at least be considering joining them...

I hope this is cautiously optimistic. Does anyone know what the sell on for Fernandes might be, if talks of a £80m sales are to be believed.

Add to this our wage bill should be reduced with Aribo, Romeu, McCarty and Ramsdale gone, freeing more cash.

Maybe some of this will be put towards the ‘appeasement fund’, as a bonus for players who stay till September 1st but who missed on on a promotion bonus this season. For example, those four players leaving will save c£7.5m in wages. Spread that over 15 players sticking with the club, is a sizeable £500k thank you/loyalty bonus, and eliminates the risk of having to buy and replace the likes of Bree, Downes, etc, as well as next season giving them the opportunity of another promotion bonus.

[Hodgey]

10 hours ago, Saint Garrett said:

It's a tough one, as it was also the reason we were completely hamstrung when we got up...

Interesting but I don’t get this. If THB and Downes were terrible I’d agree - but they aren’t. So are you saying we overpaid for them, or that you think without the options to buy we would have found far better or bought in different positions ?. Im putting this in context of us buying utter gash such as Archer : bbd etc (ie our recruitment dept were incapable of finding gems rather than if they had another £40m they would have found better players)

interested in your thoughts here

[wild-saint]

On 25/05/2026 at 23:28, kitch said:

Great read, that.

 

On 26/05/2026 at 00:07, Saint86 said:

Is this true? I haven't seen the actual evidence for it as yet.

"Bullying" (etc) wasn't a listed charge. The use of junior staff was a reprimand.

This is the quote (below) that relates to it, it doesn't mention tonda - which, given he is named for other charges, is an explicit/interesting omission I would say. To me, that omission suggests that any evidence (if any) relating to pressuring staff / bullying is lacking and/or doesn't actually show tonda is guilty of bullying. Has it instead been added as a nefarious "doesn't this sound bad" to back up / hammer home the punishment without really being proven - because I cannot see any hard evidence of it? Happy to be wrong and shown it?

It's feasible this could have been part of a plea style deal for Salt after the fact. The reality is that it is very likely he did the dirty on us after getting caught to save his own skin. The EFL had one oral witness (which is almost certainly salt), and 4 witness statements it total - and someone gave us up for the Eastleigh/Ipswich spying after the initial offence (and Ipswich weren't aware of it) - this cannot have been taylor. Boro only knew about Oxford from the start (on the same day salt rocked up at their training ground). Which we all know was very fishy anyway.

The report appears to go on and mention salt (without naming him), and him saying verbally in the his oral witness statement that he felt under pressure. But this is oral evidence after the fact and initial charges, and from someone accused / admitting to wrong doing for the initial charges - it is seemingly not backed up by any messages (text/email) and it's essentially a case of "he said, she said". And frankly, he just isn't a credible witness at this point as he is basically saying whatever the EFL want to protect himself.

So as above, I am happy to be wrong on this, but I haven't seen actual evidence that tonda bullied Salt into spying against his will yet 🤷. And yet the story from the media (and Blackmore has said this incessantly ) is that tonda bullied salt. It looks like a further trial by media, and people choosing to interpret the report to hammer eckert. But I'm afraid that in the "bullying" accusations, Eckert has to be given the benefit of doubt and be treated as innocent until proven guilty - and people, especially journalists, and club journalists in particular, should keep that in mind. Sadly it's been a witch hunt since the start..

In fact, it's all a little bit dubious that the report puts so much weight on oral evidence of a whislteblower (again, almost certainly salt - guilty of multiple incidences of wrongdoing himself) to justify such a disproportionate punishment after the fact... Whilst also the same report outright dismissed the oral evidence of our 4 witnesses when convenient. Thats a kangaroo trial in my book.

 

4 minutes ago, Hodgey said:

Interesting but I don’t get this. If THB and Downes were terrible I’d agree - but they aren’t. So are you saying we overpaid for them, or that you think without the options to buy we would have found far better or bought in different positions ?. Im putting this in context of us buying utter gash such as Archer : bbd etc (ie our recruitment dept were incapable of finding gems rather than if they had another £40m they would have found better players)

interested in your thoughts here

I think the point is we had a budget of circa 100-120m to spend but 45 or so of that was spent on securing 2 players without improving the squad. This time round we would have had a largely better permanent squad and the c120m could have been spent improving it.

[Ex Lion Tamer]

11 hours ago, Saint86 said:

I would expect the club to maximise saleable assets - partly to balance the books, partly to free up funds for reinvestment.

I reckon Scienza and Jander will both be sold, and for at least double our initial outlay which is much needed from a PSR perspective - reasonable to expect £40-45M for those 2 i think?

Charles will also be sold due to contract situation, hopefully another £15M.

That's a likely £55-60M for those 3.

Ramsdale for circa £10-15M if we are lucky. Plus £100k/wk (£5.2M/yr) wages.

A potential £65M-£70M if we sell Ramsdale

If anyone will give us a profit on THB then i expect he will be sold as well. The reality is that having a £20M CB is a luxury in this league - i rate him and think he's a brilliant CB for the championship, but if someone offers us £25M to replace him and strength elsewhere, we will take it...

So potentially £85M-90M sales just on those 5players.

Rumours of a sell on fee for Fernandes - so hopefully a small bonus there as well.

Against that, we need to offset a circa £15M drop in parachute money this coming season.

Plus we need to make sure we balance the PSR 3year loss limit of £61M - for which, we don't know where we stand for the season just gone.
 

All in all though, i think we could have a tidy pot to reinvest this summer.

Larin for £3-4M isn't a bad buy - but crucially he will have no resale value. And Stewart will be similar in that he's going into his final year on his contract. Having those 2 as our strikers leaves us staring at an issue in a couple of seasons where we may be needing an entirely new front line and have no parachute payments etc., to replace them. If any championship teams are in for Ballard, given our sell on fee (discount) we should at least be considering joining them...

It's a big summer for Spors - can he oversee the signing of more gems like Scienza and Jander or has he used up the knowledge he brought of underrated players in the German leagues?

[Lee On Solent Saint]

1 hour ago, Ex Lion Tamer said:

It's a big summer for Spors - can he oversee the signing of more gems like Scienza and Jander or has he used up the knowledge he brought of underrated players in the German leagues?

You are presuming he will still be here?

[Matthew Le God]

2 minutes ago, Lee On Solent Saint said:

You are presuming he will still be here?

There has been no indication so far that Spors was in any way involved in the spying. Even if you say he should have known... how would he if they tried to keep it a secret?

[Lee On Solent Saint]

39 minutes ago, Matthew Le God said:

There has been no indication so far that Spors was in any way involved in the spying. Even if you say he should have known... how would he if they tried to keep it a secret?

Guess the truth will all be revealed in the coming weeks