honeybradger

He would be fine if we didnt try to play possession football as he's a good tackler but that's the style we're going for so he's not good enough. Just shows how bad the scouting is that the average Serie A fan said we were making a mistake paying so much money for him but the so called professionals at the club could not see it.

Looks good enough. Hopefully we stick to the £12mil valuation and dont get bullied into paying £20mil+. ( I dont think he's worth any more than that first bid)

How sad is it that a player who couldn't start for us in the championship is better than our £25mil PL signing.

Winks has already played nearly as many league minutes with us as he did for Tottenham. Don't get me wrong he's good enough but not so good that we shouldn't/can't improve on him. Dewsbury Hall would provide us attacking threat as well as the ability to carry the ball up the pitch whilst El Khannouss could play the Winks role with better passing and more physical presence/workrate.

Players develop and change as they get older. Dewsbury Hall didnt offer as many goals and assists with Luton in the championship when he was with them as he did last season with us. I would play him alongside El Khannouss and Buonanotte and perhaps playing him instead of Mavidi or player El Khannouss deeper instead of one of Winks/Soumare.

It's insane that people are saying Dewsbury hall, who go 26 g+a for us last season, would not start for us. Even though it was in the championship this side needs goals and creativity and he would offer that for us.

Because we consistently overpay for average players. Udinese wont care who he goes to as long as they get £16mil for a player theyve barely used this season.

Is he actually that good? He's got similar passing stats to Okoli who has been very shaky on the ball for us. There isnt a guarantee that he will come here from Argentina and suddenly discover how to pass the ball accurately.

I think the only issue is that he seems to have worked his way back into contention for them recently. They might not be as willing to let him leave as they would have a month ago.

Lamptey is a defensive disaster. He is only good when playing as a wingback.

Any good centrebacks? Ideally better than Wout Faes/Conor Coady/Vestergaard. I've heard Rein Van Helden and Emin Bayram might be good options but it's hard to tell whether players are Premier League level or not.

Jerry St Juste at Sporting FC could be worth a look. We were linked a few years ago and he's had loads of injury issues but he's very talented and has been great for them recently. With Sporting's first choice centrebacks coming back from injury he could he available for transfer. Fastest centre back in Europe as well which is much needed in our backline.

Personally I think of the three I would go for Esposito the least. Of the two physical options (Ivanovic and Esposito) I would much rather Franjo Ivanovic. He's the Croatian replica of Victor Gyokeres. It just depends whether the Brighton/USG setup would be wary of making the same mistake again and not wanting him to go. I see you point regarding Kroupi but he is so good at everything apart from being physically dominant that I cant imagine he wouldn't be a success here.

He better than our fullbacks due to his quality on the ball but he gets bypassed defensively pretty easily.

Ideal striker I'd go for is Eli Jr Kroupi. Others I've seen mentioned are Franjo Ivanovic and Francesco Esposito. Surely anything is better than a striker with one goal in the Greek league unless we get him on the cheap?

Literally any striker in the top 5 leagues. This guy is being outscored by Tete in his own team.

1 goal this season. Surely we just see this as a bullet dodged and move onto other targets.

What do you mean by 'none of the managers'. Rodgers gave him his first team debut at 16 in January 2022. He got injured in the December of that year. Maybe he could have played more games in the league cup but he was still very young. Dean Smith couldn't pick him due to injury. He only came back under Maresca for the last couple of games. Cooper is the first manager to have him available and ready and not give him a fair shake. Van Nistelrooy has had him on the bench for the last couple of games and gave him his PL debut. It feels like he's finally getting his chance. Out of all our managers Cooper is the first and only manager to seemingly not rate him based on not giving him minutes in pre season.

Cheick Konate at Clermont foot in Ligue 2. Could be worth a punt on the cheap, seemed to hold his own against world class players like Mbappe and Nuno Mendes in the video but he's a bit short.

Regarding Nottingham Forest's centrebacks I didnt mean that they were a well run club, just that there are good centrebacks available for £10mil and they were some of the examples from the PL. Regarding Fofana I think signing him for £32mil was a mistake and we got bailed out by Chelsea. The risk of having him injured (like he did) or not performing exceeded what our tolerance for risk is as a club and we would have been in deep financial trouble had we not been able to sell him. I hope we dont make transfers like him any time soon no matter how good he was for us. Regarding Coady I dont think he was good value for money at all. He's an example of our poor recruitment. We overpaid for him for guaranteed experience similar to how we may overpay for someone like Khusanov for guaranteed quality. The issue is that nothing is guaranteed in football, for example Coady's inability to hold a defensive line against Man City despite being a veteran. Khusanov may not be the great defender we thought he would be and we go down anyway. With someone like Khusanov his value is inflated because there is loads of interest in him, if we go for uncovered gems it's easier to get better value as there isnt as much competition and if they dont work out we can sell them on for a nominal loss. The spend more to win more fallacy isnt always correct. Ajax tried to start spending large amounts of money and they collapsed, they have now gone back to their academy and recruitment of unknown players and got much better. Man United and Everton are lower table teams despite spending. We collapsed after a summer of no major sales and buying multiple £20mil players. At the end of the day half the best teams in Europe are the likes of Atalanta, Sporting, Benfica, Porto, PSV, Feyenoord, Ajax, Leverkusen etc that dont spend much but have excellent scouting and youth development. That needs to be our model, not following the top 6 PL team model of overpaying for the big name of the day.

True, contradicts your point that we need to spend big for a quality player when a good scout could find one for £5mil. Not true. Forest signed both of their centre backs for £10mil each. PSV signed Ryan Flamingo for £8mil. Bournemouth signed Huijsen for £12.5mil. Porto signed Otavio for £10mil. There are loads of good and ready centrebacks in the market available for £5-£10mil. We just need to do our due diligence on our transfers. If we cant do that then £25mil being spent is an even worse idea. As above we could easily spend £15mil+ each on centrebacks/fullbacks and go down anyway. Faes, Vestergaard, Souttar and Kristiansen cost us £15mil each and none of them are good enough. A well run club such as Bologna, Porto, PSV etc would only be willing to spend £5mil or less on each of these players. None of these will be in for Khusanov for £25mil as they know there is better value to be had in the market. It will come down to how well the players were scouted, not how much was spent on them.

If I were Brighton I'd snap their hands of for £37mil. Facundo has his moments but he's nowhere near a £40mil player currently, you would just be paying for potential and there is no guarantee that he will reach that next level.

Well run clubs sign quality players in the £5-10 mil bracket all the time. Some of our worst transfers have been £20mil and over. A higher transfer fee does not guarantee quality and if it doesnt work out it means we are stuck with them for the foreseeable future. We should not be spending £25mil+ on players any time soon.

Why does he massively need to take that chance? Why is the requirement for game time so much higher for our academy players than our senior players? Cordova Reid gets given consistent minutes despite usually playing poorly for us, why does Alves need to blown the doors down just to get given a chance.

He's on loan from Juventus