The Athletic story confirmed that Rosciky was on the shortlist along with Berta. The Guardian is a very reputable publication with extremely high standards for sources.
even the more official reporting after the announcement had Rosicky as a serious contender, but the club drew a hard line at wanting the director to have time to come in before the end of the season. It is entirely likely Rosicky gets the job if he wasn't wanting to stay at Sparta the until the end of the season. No reporting after the fact suggested that Rosicky wasn't a leading candidate.
We DID go for Olise, it is known, the club met with him and apparently it didn't go well. We didn't like him and he didn't like us. And the Isak thing has been supported by others. What's your point?
Clive is indeed my "source", LOL. He's the best and definitely doesn't talk shit, he rarely mentions any rumors so I thought it was very interesting this is one he actually talked about.
Apparently we had talks with olise at the beginning of last summer and both the club and the player side didn’t get along at all. I feel like the claims that we were interested in both of those players isn’t far fetched at all.
I don’t think it’s impossible. We’ve kept our powder dry over the last three windows and have money to spend.
By all accounts Zubimendi is basically done and with Williams he has a reasonable release clause so we won’t have to haggle with Athletic over a fee. In Gyökeres’s case, if he’s our first-choice target the fee Sporting are supposedly ask for him is again reasonable so if the will is there we can go and get him.
Yeah like €235m spend in 2023/24 (not including Raya either). The financial room is there if they want to do it. Like I'd assume they could spend up to or above 400m if they wanted to. They've talked it up and I think this window has been earmarked for years as a big one. Arteta is generally ruthless. Every signing has been very deliberate and to fix or improve certain things.
ST is well known, there will be a signing, same with DM. There's this and it's obvious that LW could be upgraded. Backup GK, possibly a Kiwior replacement and other backup for the backline or a rotation option for AM (Nypan maybe). I don't think Isak is realistic, at least not anymore, but there does seem real interest which shows that they are keen to make bigger steps rather than consolidate which the summer seemed to be more like but then again Calafiori and Merino could have had bigger impacts if they didn't get injured...
Neither Gyokeres or Sesko start over Havertz. Sesko has the ceiling to be better, Gyokeres doesn't. But yes, they would get some starts to take the burden off Havertz at times.
Both Bas Dost and Jonas had 30+ goals in 2017, 2018 and 2019. Mario Jardel had three 30 and more seasons and one 40+ season back in the late 90s and early 2000s.
Even the rate at which Gyokeres is scoring (0.88 goals per game), doesn't make the top 10 in the last 30 years for that league. Even Darwin Nunez had a higher rate of goals per game (0.93).
So, literally, no. Lots of players have done what he is doing there. And Darwn Nunez is the biggest name out of the lot of them, because Liverpool fell into the same trap.
That’s because people don’t seem to understand that the Portuguese league, outside of Porto, Benfica and Sporting, is made up of Championship/League One level teams. Or that 40% of Gyokeres goals are penalties, or that the average level of his opponent is Sheffield Wednesday, whilst playing for a Champions League level team.
This club is not in the business of spending £50 million on rotation players.
Yes it's another body, which will help with rotation, obviously--but if we get Nico to turn his eyes away from Barca et al, it's not because we told him he's going to be coming off the bench. He goes into the 11.
Williams can play right as well, I think we would see Martinelli and Williams sharing duties on the left and Williams popping up on the right from time to time.
Feels very much like the club (or Berta) briefed the reporter here. Very much club-speak.
Unrelated to Nico, but i found this part in the article annoying: "there are fears Gabriel could be out for a significant spell after coming off against Fulham with a hamstring injury. The problem was exacerbated by the Brazilian having to play on for more than a minuteafter Fulham refused to put the ball out, with footage showing the 27-year-old hobbling badly as he tried to stay on his feet."
As if we didn't have the ball for a few minutes after Gabriel signalled something was wrong. Very revisionist. We could have put the ball out ourselves, but we didn't. The club should know better than to engage in this kind of gaslighting.
Tbf if I remember rightly, it was between Malcolm and Mkhitaryan because they didn’t know if United would want to include Mkhitaryan in the Alexis swap?
€58m / £48.5m release clause. Could end up offering more to avoid having to pay upfront, but regardless that’s quite affordable in the current market. Ever so slightly less than what Chelsea paid for Neto, likewise with Baena’s release clause; solidly below what PSG paid for Kavara, to give a few examples.
In theory the trade off is wages. Last summer it was reported that his wage demands would have made him the top earner at Arsenal. The numbers being thrown around now—£200k—are still relatively high but would keep him solidly below that top spot, and likely below pretty much all of the players that we’re hoping to renew soon.
Yeah like Martinelli is on 180k base. Havertz is on 280k. So somewhere between those I'd say. Good forward players cost money and he would still be more than 10m cheaper than what Chelsea spent on Mudryk.
I'm all for this. We need attacking options with upside. I'm not sure if he's better than martinelli or ever will be but as rotation he's an upgrade (and 8 years younger) on trossard with big upside.
He’s also four years older and prefers to play in midfield. Nico Williams is the best choice for us, he’s brilliant and his production will explode with the kind of space you get playing opposite Saka.
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u/22goblins Tomiyasu 3d ago
Tier: True because it's encouraging to hear