DJ Barry Hammond

£200 million was just the debt King Power wiped off into equity on the last set of accounts. It’s likely that much deeper pockets would be needed to buy the club at this point - even with a willing sale.

Well - our academy will be getting tested at this rate. Who knows - could that end up being a blessing disguise?

Last season was an easier sell - Enzo was an interesting appointment and of course he’s going to speak to incoming players about what he wants from them. I can’t imagine the same sort of chat with Steve is going to go down the same. There might also be a clue here as to why Fawatu took so long to announce too - because whilst the fee was an obligation I guess you still need to finalise and agree personal terms at that point. Maybe he/his agent wanted different terms to what was provisionally agreed at the start of the loan?

I’m going to say Cooper has a small part to play in this. Clearly our ‘project’ is a dubious one - trying to survive with a point deduction hanging over us - and Cooper isn’t exactly a manager players are going to be excited to play for. That meant he really needed to show something with the players he had in pre-season to make the idea of joining us that bit more exciting. If we had a couple of 2 or 3 nil wins, we at least look that bit more attractive for anyone looking to come in - and so perhaps should have treated the games as a bit more than just a run out.

They have haven’t they - the question would be do we even dare try and compete here at the risk of getting another rejection?

No, they’ve sold a striker that scored 16 goals for them last season and have European football I believe - so their need of a replacement is obvious and this looks like a sensible target for them. Additionally Hoffenheim is about 3 hours away from Leverkusen - so you can kind of understand why he might consider this a better offer for him. Final point - I believe it’s the German Supercup this weekend and he’s probably in the squad for that, so I wouldn’t expect a definitive move either way until after the weekend.

They sold Maximilian Beier to Dortmund for €30 million odd this week.

The last suggestion was Panathinaikos want to keep him for their Euro qualifiers. One of those is tonight, but if they lose against Ajax, they then drops into a Conference League qualifier - with those games taking place towards the back end of August. That probably means that if this transfer is to happen, it’s more likely to be towards the end of the window.

That’s probably a result of a years worth of fee inflation, Leeds reluctance to sell (they clearly prioritised selling other players) and Brighton’s cash positive position - compared to our need to sell against Spurs’ transfer fee opportunism. I think there would be a general consensus that Brighton are paying above ‘value’ here to get the transfer done.

Shit, first real signs of dementia! I had the score right at least 😬

Pretty sure MDV got a hatrick in the process of us coming back from 2-0 down. Edit: Yep, here’s a match report from way back in January 2006 to confirm. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2006/jan/09/match.tottenhamhotspur?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The reports I’ve seen suggest Brighton had made previous bids that were rejected. There’s also a suggestion the release clause has an expiry date to it.

Think we have Tranmere then

Sign purely for the memes and excuse to chant Phil Collins related songs at him.

It time

I think we’re going for the “ask everyone in the club you’re bound to pull at least one” approach.

Suggestion he’s rejected Rennes and we’ve enquired here;

I think another 😂 is required!

Looks like Boro are taking care of that one 😂

Leeds 😂

An incredible story mind.

As a side - I believe I’ve seen a tweet suggesting he’s going back to making telly programmes (inbetween the crossword making).

You don’t think a guy with over 500 games across his career has picked up any meaningful experience in that time? You don’t think Fawatu might look up to and enjoy being in a squad with someone who’s gained over 100 caps for Ghana?

Depends - if we give him a 3 year contract he’ll do whatever we want him to, he’s at the “get paid” point of his careeer.

So your points basically lead to where I am going with this in that yes, signing BDCR and Ayew is not exciting. But they’re not supposed to be. They’re being signed as solid experienced professionals to supplement the squad who can aid the development of our existing primary players for those positions. These relatively budget signings also allow us to focus a transfer budget on the areas that really do need addressing - we can’t replace all we might want to in one go. That’s why keeping Ndidi should be seen as a bonus because that’s one less position that would have been considered an immediate concern inside this window. In theory, once we get out of this PSR period we should be in a better position going forward - we’ll still be making losses, but they’ll be more slack when it comes to PSR (or of course something else could replace PSR). But the club have to deal with the here and now and the financial rules that stand - and because there’s no guarantee with financial forecasting, it’s very likely we’ll be in a position of needing to sell an asset come the end of the season.