ClaphamFox

No

They’ll have to pay a lot more in the summer if we go up.

We were excellent against Ipswich for 70mins. I get the frustration at conceding a late equaliser, but it's simply wrong to suggest we've not been playing well when some of the football played last Monday was fantastic.

Which would not be enough, hence why this is so unlikely to happen.

Eh? Nelson is a ball-playing centre-half. That's a major part of his game...

Does anybody live in the Seagrave/Quorn/Barrow/Sileby/Thrussington area and is willing to sit outside the training ground with a pair of binoculars and a box of donuts, and provide updates?

Excellent - many thanks.

Has he been speaking about it again today?

I'll be very disappointed if the welcome video doesn't start with a patient lying on a hospital bed wrapped head-to-toe in bandages, with mournful music in the background. Then the opening bars of post horn gallop start playing and the patient jumps up, rips off the bandages and reveals himself to be Sensi in a Leicester kit.

When you work for an online media company, clicks are everything. You need to drive traffic to the website irrespective of how strong your story is. So it's obviously in the interests of journalists to exaggerate the likelihood of a transfer happening because if they tweeted, for example, "Brighton are interested in Dewsbury Hall but it's highly unlikely to happen", hardly anybody would bother to click. Rob Tanner was up to it also yesterday - tweeting that KDH's future at Leicester was 'uncertain', then linking to a story which basically admitted that nothing had changed and Leicester aren't inclined to sell. He was just trying to generate more clicks, which is fine - he was just doing his job. But it does create a distorted picture of what's actually going on. With this story in particular, I've no doubt Brighton are interested and that Ornstein spoke to somebody there. But I suspect he deliberately used the word 'negotiations' when in reality he knew it was just a tentative offer followed by swift rejection. He needs to imply that the move is very possible otherwise he doesn't have much of a story, which is not good for an online journalist who is paid to break stories. Personally I can't see this happening unless Brighton offer silly money that is enough for us to make 2-3 signings that clearly improve the team overall, and I'd say the chances of that happening in the next three days are very slim.

Massive coup from us if we’ve loaned him with an option for a free transfer in the summer when he’s out of contract.

They reportedly bid £20m. I doubt they’d go to £30m, let alone the £40m we’d apparently demand.

Exactly. The strong implication of Ornstein’s piece was that we wanted to sell. By contrast, Dorsett’s story suggests we definitely do NOT want to sell. Very different angles.

No, it’s because Dorsett has a long track record of covering Leicester and Ornstein has none. I doubt Ornstein bothered to speak to anybody at Leicester before writing his story.

Judging from the phrasing of the story, I’d say that Dorsett has definitely spoken to someone at the club. I’m not remotely convinced that Ornstein did.

Ornstein may be reliable when it comes to other clubs, but does he have good contacts at Leicester? Maybe he sourced his story from Brighton and Dorsett has managed to get the Leicester angle…

They know how to scout quality players. Maybe they see something in him that you don’t.

I’ll say one thing though. This shitty transfer rumour has finally stopped me from brooding over Ipswich’s late equaliser on Monday…

Perfect summary of the situation.

Phew! And there was me all worried…😅

Who’s going to play in the 8 positions if KDH leaves and Ndidi is injured?

If offloading Praet meant we were able to get somebody else (eg, Sensi) in, then I'd say it was a pretty important deal. At the very least, if Praet starts tomorrow we can probably assume that a move is not imminent...

No. Starting (for us) tomorrow, according to Rob Tanner.