"We've got bucketfuls of agents throwing players at us. We'll trawl through it." - The PL/CL/EL/world off-season transfer thread '17-'18

I wouldn't say we're behind last season but on a player by player basis it's hard to say we've significantly improved. Lukaku should match (and will probably exceed) Zlatan's tally but unless the rest of the squad significantly increase their goal production we'll be in bother

Rooney leaving alone improves ManU as a whole tbf

The problem now is I think the slightly incoherent set of players behind Lukaku. Successful Mourinho teams, no matter how defensive, have always had strong and lethally effective players in wide forward and attacking midfield positions. Mata has been good for United but doesn't appear to have his full trust and Mkhitaryan, Martial etc are a couple of levels below the likes of Hazard, Sneijder, Robben, Ozil, Di Maria etc let alone Ronaldo.

LBI nails it

Stick Lampard in there as well b/c I don't see any scenario in which Pogba chips in with 20 or so goals next year.

Yeah it's 100% dependant on Martial, Rashford and Mkhitaryan (and Lingard…I guess) stepping up. I expect Rashford to improve this season but he's still pretty callow. Mkhitaryan should do better as well but he seems worryingly unsuited to the PL at times (he was like a different player in the Europa last year). Martial is the big question mark. He’s got more ability than anyone in the squad bar Pogba but he doesn’t seem to have developed his game at all since he arrived and possibly has a bit of an attitude problem.

We completely lack an orthodox wide player which is why Mourinho was seemingly so keen on Perisic but that deal appears to be dead now. Couple that with the fact that our full-backs, Valencia aside, are on the conservative (read: shite) side and it’s makes us annoyingly narrow and predictable

i think if liverpool get vvd that could make a big difference. either way i'm looking forward to another season of us playing largely entertaining football.

If Neymar leaves though does that make it odds on that Coutinho will be off to Barca?

Think it goes:

Neymar psg coutinho Barca keita vvd lfc *breakdown of civil society* rooney

Rooney shuffling into Carrington asking gotta light, gotta light

i doubt liverpool will sell coutinho. they would be mad to do so. and they won't get keita, maybe not even vvd. money is of almost no worth to liverpool this summer, plainly.

If Neymar leaves though does that make it odds on that Coutinho will be off to Barca?

― groovypanda, Wednesday, August 2, 2017 11:36 AM (two hours ago)

then again I read somewhere that Coutinho would only go to Barca if Neymar was there which sounds like bollocks tbh argh i dunno what to believe anymore

If neymar is worth 200m I can only imagine what Levy's internal ticker for Alli goes to

Spurs currently being linked to Giovanni Simeone, who ticks a lot of boxes, but the move would potentially hinge on whether Milan are willing to pay €30m for Nikola Kalinic, which isn't a sentence anyone would have imagined typing five years ago. If they buy Kalinic, Fiorentina would go after Simeone.

assuming Diego Costa does axctually leave this month, Chelsea have only got about 15 usable players in their squad. nowhere near enough now they're back in the Champs League. barring some pretty big investment before the window shuts I don't see them retaining. an awful lot hinging on how good Morata actually is, it's always been kinda difficult to judge before now. i'm looking forward to seeing him as the undisputed first choice striker for a top team for the first time.

i'd also be worried if i was a Man City fan - when Kompany gets crocked they're gonna be stuck with Stones, Otamendi and Mangala as their only centre backs and apparently Pep isn't interested in signing any more. seems a bit daft really considering the amount of money they're spending everywhere else

share the sinking feeling expressed upthread about Man Utd. it doesn't feel like the Matic transfer been greeted with any particular enthusiasm by the United fans but that Matic-Pogba-Herrera midfield combo just screams smothering, bullying efficiency. gonna be a lot of 1-0 set-piece-goal wins for them this season

Look this neymar thing for this neymar price is actually happening

i think if liverpool get vvd that could make a big difference. either way i'm looking forward to another season of us playing largely entertaining football.

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Wednesday, August 2, 2017 6:30 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^ cosign

“Morata talked about myself, in the media – he said: ‘Mauricio called me,’” Pochettino said. “That was from the beginning, two years ago or more. He said to me: ‘Why do you want me if you have Harry Kane?’ You know, if you go to try to sign a striker, they will say: ‘Eh, gaffer, you want me for what? To be on the bench?”

I like the idea of Morata using the word 'gaffer' two years before coming to England.

El Gafferino

i think the implication there is Poch using it, not saying Morata did. i know that's not as good.

Even Conte said he'd prefer Kane :(

Chelsea will actually be starting the season with Fabregas and Kante as their midfielders

*only midfielders

presumably we're talking central mids, they got bakayoko too

Bakayoko is recovering from injury.

ah

Look this neymar thing for this neymar price is actually happening

― jk rowling obituary thread (darraghmac), Wednesday, August 2, 2017 8:54 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this price makes complete sense to me when you consider that the last time a similarly feted player (and lets be honest a similarly commercially marketable player) playing for a similarly big club was bought by a club with almost unlimited resources it was Cristiano being signed by Real in 2009 for over 80m

There's possibly something to be gained by playing David Luiz as a stopgap defensive midfielder but that relies on Rudiger settling quickly.

Lol I didn't realise Hazard and Pedro were injured as well. How does a club with a basically limitless pile of money get its squad into this kind of threadbare state?

yeah it's mad right. fuck em, i really hope it bites them in the ass this season. Nathan Ake, Kurt Zouma, Nat Chalobah, Dominic Solanke, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Bertrand Traore, Tammy Abraham - they have/had ridiculous young talent on the books but clearly no one in the hierarchy is interested. the most hateful aspect of a thoroughly hateful club.

also speaks pretty badly of Conte imo that he's not interested in making any use of any of those players. pretty striking compared with what has been achieved at Spurs under Poch. i guess it's fine though, they'll probably be buying Cuadrado back next summer at four times the price they sold him. wankers

What's been achieved with Conte is a league title but yeah id take our top fours the way we're doing it every time

eh sure, and credit to Conte for having turned the team round so spectacularly last season. when they only had 38 matches to worry about all year. Spurs are proof that you can compete in the Premier League by giving your young players a chance, provided the manager knows what he's about. all this "wahhhhhh how can we be expected to compete when we're not buying up all the top-level talent" bullshit that Conte and Mourinho (amongst others) indulge in just makes them look incompetent

Neymar's lawyer apparently turned up at the headquarters of La Liga with a cheque for €222m and they told him to get lost.

Reportedly some dodgy stuff going on around Neymar's role in the Qatar World Cup as well.

Bastillons of morality huh

Whole business is a bit ironic considering Barca suckled at the Qatari teat for years

Como le encanta la Gazzaniga? Dame mas Gazzaniga.

http://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2017/08/03/report-spurs-close-to-first-summer-signing-pochettino-lines-up-r/

Max Meyer rumour a bit more exciting.

Reportedly some dodgy stuff going on around Neymar's role in the Qatar World Cup as well.

― Matt DC, Thursday, August 3, 2017 11:19 AM (fifty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Afaik he will be 'employed' by the WC Qatar organisation who are loaning him the 222m. That seems dodgy for Neymar himself first and foremost.

Whole business is a bit ironic considering Barca suckled at the Qatari teat for years

― Number None, Thursday, August 3, 2017 12:04 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The fact that Barca chose a different sponsor actively made the Qatari go the extra mile for this one iirc

did bbc.com/football get a new font or are my settings messed up?

Paid in full. Neymar's a free agent.

New font - Reith Sans, apparently.

That is some quality big baby giving himself a wedgy picture editing from the guardian

Neymar thing actually happened then.

wtf was the point of all that then? even if they win the champioons league (they wont) how does this possibly make financial sense for them? idgi

It doesn't have to make financial sense. PSG, Man City and Chelsea are vanity projects.

This is the same amount of money Qatar is allegedly spending every three days on World Cup construction, to contextualise it.

Money is anxumb way to keep score these days. Take it where you can, use it better than the gas giants. Outraged at fees, wages is an irritant.

United are going to be insufferable this season.

Ever

City and Chelsea have appeared weirdly reluctant to spunk crazy money on attacking talent, given they have just two senior strikers apiece at the moment.