honeybradger

I'm not even sure he is an upgrade on Daka so I don't know why anyone thinks this is decent. Another step in the wrong direction.

Pretty sure we don't have to be contracted to players for them to start training at our facilities. Antonio for example, or we've had ex players come back and train with us such as Danny Simpson.

He was at least better than Faes and Okoli who we spent £10+mil on. Not a high bar but I would at least like him to get the same chances to prove himself with us as Faes did.

Corrected

He's probably the most technically gifted player in league 1, perhaps would even be a competitor for that title in the championship if we were still at that level. Reminds me of Iliman Ndiaye. I haven't seen a single player mentioned on this thread with comparable control of the ball. As you said hopefully he gets some consistency with us and that technical ability translates into performances.

Akanji is a good player who is error prone. Faes is an error prone player that does good things some times.

Just saw this. If we were linked to a player with these highlights, especially considering last season was a "bad" season for Alves, we would be creaming ourselves.

He's going to the 4th best team in league one last season, who are likely to be one of our main competitors. Sadly for us the reality is that if he does well for Bradford then he would have been good enough for us. He's not one of our tier 1 talents like Alves, Braybrooke, Nelson, Page, Monga, Aluko etc but some of our tier 2 academy players have gone elsewhere and done well such as Maswanhise, Johansson.

He's going to score a banger against us isn't he

He was poor in the championship last season as well though and Ipswich not playing him despite him being a 20+ g+a midfielder at that level 2 seasons prior indicates that he's tailed off a bit. I'm just saying it's one of those signings that could easily go poorly, not that he's someone we should outright avoid. He could rediscover some form with us if he does come.

Last 2 seasons have been mediocre from him. Last season he had a similar attacking output to Vestergaard and Luke Thomas. If we're getting the Chaplin from 22/23 and 23/24 then we should be all over it but considering he hasn't been good for a while it's definitely a risk.

Surely people aren't getting wound up because we haven't already signed a potentially washed Conor Chaplin. There's no guarantee he will ever return to the form he found for those couple of seasons at Ipswich. If it happens I hope he finds that form again but if it doesn't then there's a decent chance it's a bullet dodged.

His record in the PL2 isn't great either.

Hopefully not.

Different Rego. We were after João Rego, they signed Rodrigo Rego. I'm sure the one we were after would be the Ali Express Rego.

Page is perhaps too optimistic about being a key player this season considering the club went to every lengths to not have to play him last season. Mukasa, Aribo, Ramsey, James all brought in to play his position last season. I fear it will be the same case this season where we bring in 2-3 new midfielders.

All that editing for 4 likes. The Arabians really do have too much money to burn.

Personally i just think Skipp is very bad. There were too many times last season where he would just miss-time a tackle and get spun around or where he would go missing in possession hiding behind opposition players. In general he just seemed too slow mentally and physically to keep up with the midfield battle at championship level. There were a few moments where he would drop back and do well in helping out the defence by filling in at full back or centre back but in the middle of the pitch he was generally useless. Dont get me started on when he tried to join in with the attackers either, like a fish out of water. If he switches to playing right back he can probably have a second wind as footballer but as a midfielder i think he's going struggle for the rest of his career.

Surely the evidence from last season would suggest that Skipp is not championship level.

Joe Aribo was also the best midfielder in the Scottish League 3-4 years ago. Players' performances don't always translate between clubs and leagues. At any rate I don't think Cartwright is thought of poorly in Scotland, just didn't play much.

You're going through a lot of mental gymnastics to justify this transfer. If we paid £15mil and Skipp for Maddison then that would make Maddison an £18-20 mil player as Skipp is worth £3mil at best. This simply doesn't track. Within reason Maddison is a £40mil player so £15mil + Skipp for Maddison must mean that Skipp cost the club £25mil, which he did. If the point was to get the money up front we do that already by taking out loans from Macquarie against future installments so that doesn't work either. Whichever way you look at it we massively overpaid for Skipp, probably 10x his real value.

Facundo was actually good under Cooper tbf. Significantly worse under RVN and hasn't done anything since as far as I am aware.

Why would we need to buy Skipp to offset money already owed to us. Unless you're saying Spurs had an IOU with us for them paying £40mil for Maddison instead of haggling and cashed it in to make us pay £25mil for Skipp. Which doesn't make sense as £40mil was a fair price for Maddison. Whatever way you spin it we have been fleeced.

Honestly this part of pre season is the best part. Lots of exciting faces such as Braybrooke, Aluko, Nelson, Alves, Jayden Joseph etc. Even having a new manager in Martin who hasn't had the life sucked out of him yet is exciting. It's when Winks, Skipp and Faes all come back mardy after their deals have fallen through that my mood is going to plummet.

We shouldn't have to accept one or the other. We should be aiming for players that care AND have more in their locker than 5 metre sideways and backwards passes.