Transfer Rumour Thread Season 2021/22

[Bethnal Yellow and Green 1,557]

4 minutes ago, Hoolahoop14 said:

Incredible bit of business that, £8m is a steal for someone with such high potential. From what I've read, £8m is actually his release clause, which makes me believe Reading perhaps weren't expecting him to kick on as much as he did last season.

Players and agents aren’t dumb. They will know that £8m is well below the player’s value so will just up the wage demands as well as a larger signing on fee (and agent fee). 

[Hoolahoop14 124]

4 minutes ago, Bethnal Yellow and Green said:

Players and agents aren’t dumb. They will know that £8m is well below the player’s value so will just up the wage demands as well as a larger signing on fee (and agent fee). 

Oh absolutely, but let's say that Olise's true value in the current market is close to £20m, are they bumping up the wage demands, signing on fee and agent fees to the tune of £12m? I doubt it's anywhere close to that. 

[Top corner 228]

What does Paddy Davitt mean when he says #nocircus? Is it someone is signing or not signing?

[Hoolahoop14 124]

10 minutes ago, Top corner said:

What does Paddy Davitt mean when he says #nocircus? Is it someone is signing or not signing?

It means that there’s truth to what he’s saying, essentially.

[Top corner 228]

16 minutes ago, Hoolahoop14 said:

It means that there’s truth to what he’s saying, essentially.

Thanks for clearing that up 

[Nuff Said 5,117]

4 hours ago, Danke bitte said:

That classic Hughton first season. Just wait, next season they’ll be blitzing their way to 1-0 defeats

Fixed that for you!

[Essjayess 307]

5 hours ago, Fuzzar said:

https://www.pinkun.com/sport/norwich-city/canaries-ncfc-celtic-kristoffer-ajer-transfer-update-8129116

Ok well that seems very clear...there is no 2nd bid of 12 mill plus sell on %s..just the original 10 mill plus add ons from a few weeks back. So i guess its now how long do City wait for Celtic to come around to this bid...or not...before City  turn to another target. Its just over a month to go before season starts and thou the transfer window is open till end of August there must surely be a point in time when City  consider times up on this offer...which, if  rumours were correct, Leverkusen also submitted. Wonder which Ajer himself prefers...

[tricky974 61]

I am sure SW wont be held to ransom accept the offer or will will move on, I'm sure we have other targets that we are looking at.

 

 

 

[sgncfc 1,227]

11 hours ago, Bethnal Yellow and Green said:

Add in the £5m for Gunn, the likely £1m for Gilmour and then most of the budget is probably getting eaten up (when you consider agent fees, signing on fees, wages etc). To get enough budget to bring in a striker to challenge Pukki would need to be £15m at a minimum I reckon. Just don't think the numbers work without another sale.

We'll get around £100m from TV.  Our wage bill cant be more than £60m. We still have a reasonable kitty left for incoming.

[Alex Moss 2,165]

15 hours ago, PurpleCanary said:

The Davitt comment from earlier this week looks increasingly interesting:

'Do not rule out another forward arriving to compete with Pukki. One capable perhaps of actually challenging the Finn for his crown.'

One point that has been made in the past is doubting that we can get in anyone really good, on the basis that they fear they won't get much game time. The Davitt quote suggests that might not be such a concern.

But even if Pukki is still the main lone striker, the likes of Armstrong, for example, who is only 24, might be willing to live with that, on the basis that they think they will gradually take over.

Completely agree, Purple, as we discussed earlier in the thread. Definitely think there’s something brewing there 100%. To go from the stance ‘we’re not looking for a specialised striker though Adam Armstrong is of interest, Idah it’s felt this will be his time’, which the Pink’un boys have pretty much stuck to throughout in their Q and A’s, to ‘don’t be surprised if we bring in a striker to directly challenge Teemu’s crown’, I think is more than quite intriguing. And since then it now sounds like Hugill might well be on the way which frees up the necessary squad space. Throw the fee we get for him plus his wages back into the pot, then I think the signs are pretty clear that Webber might just be about to buy Farke his ‘gun’. 

[Alex Moss 2,165]

https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2021/07/07/west-ham-ellyes-skhiri/

Looks like one of our rumoured CB targets handed in a transfer request on Wednesday.

[Petriix 2,834]

9 hours ago, sgncfc said:

We'll get around £100m from TV.  Our wage bill cant be more than £60m. We still have a reasonable kitty left for incoming.

I would expect our wage bill to be closer to £80m, but it's a complex figure which I believe is fairly dynamic depending on performance related clauses; it could be £60m if we go down or £80m if we stay up. Football finances are a lot more fluid than the way it works in the computer games: the TV money arrives in multiple chunks spread across the season, and payments for transfers in and out are typically structured over many instalments rather than a single payment.

The club will reinvest every penny, there won't be big dividends to shareholders or profits extracted by the owners. But they need to budget for relegation so that the club remains solvent. That means retaining enough money from the guaranteed future income to cover the wage commitments of existing contracts as well as those of any new signings.

In practice, that means your £100m (plus about £80m in guaranteed parachute payments) has to cover the full wage bill for the next three seasons. I'd guess that wages would roughly halve on relegation, so lets say £180m in and £140m out. We've probably already spent a chunk of the first TV payment from this season on the promotion bonuses and transfer clauses so it's probably tighter than that. The club will also need to budget for the worst case of there potentially being no fans in grounds for the foreseeable future. 

So the £33m for Buendia likely represents the majority of our transfer budget. We might spend £50m in total, but that's including the players signed already. I would guess around £20m more might be spent, so it's about getting as much value as possible out of that.

[Bethnal Yellow and Green 1,557]

10 hours ago, sgncfc said:

We'll get around £100m from TV.  Our wage bill cant be more than £60m. We still have a reasonable kitty left for incoming.

Wage and staff costs for the 19/20 season were £89m. I can't see why it would be lower now.

[king canary 7,599]

2 minutes ago, Bethnal Yellow and Green said:

Wage and staff costs for the 19/20 season were £89m. I can't see why it would be lower now.

Worth adding that that was 13 months worth of wages due to the way we filed accounts. 

[Badger 2,405]

9 minutes ago, king canary said:

Worth adding that that was 13 months worth of wages due to the way we filed accounts. 

True, but also includes the much debated furlough payments which presumably reduced wage costs? Either way a lot more than the £60 million Sgncfc quoted as a max.

[PurpleCanary 5,556]

7 hours ago, Alex Moss said:

Completely agree, Purple, as we discussed earlier in the thread. Definitely think there’s something brewing there 100%. To go from the stance ‘we’re not looking for a specialised striker though Adam Armstrong is of interest, Idah it’s felt this will be his time’, which the Pink’un boys have pretty much stuck to throughout in their Q and A’s, to ‘don’t be surprised if we bring in a striker to directly challenge Teemu’s crown’, I think is more than quite intriguing. And since then it now sounds like Hugill might well be on the way which frees up the necessary squad space. Throw the fee we get for him plus his wages back into the pot, then I think the signs are pretty clear that Webber might just be about to buy Farke his ‘gun’. 

And Davitt again today, in his considered overview of where the club is at in terms of transfers:

‘But with those fresh fitness concerns [about Pukki], allied to the gruelling workload he has carried in recent seasons, Farke will know he needs alternatives to ease the pressure and cope with any absences to the main man. Adam Idah is expected to step up and start to justify the faith Farke has in the Republic of Ireland international. But there is also the possibility of enticing fresh firepower in what remains of this transfer window.’

That said, I take the points Bethnal has made about finance in particular, and how it seems hard to bankroll big-money transfers for the key targets of a CDM and a central defender, and also then a central striker.

The trouble is there are so many imponderables. Was the kitty (post Gibson and Giannoulis and pre-Buendia sale) the EDP’s £15m or Bailey’s £20m-£30m?  How much of the Buendia money do we get to spend? Could we get one of these targets on loan and so afford all three. And what if we sell Aarons? Does that make big-money transfer moves for all three financially feasible?

The other question is whether we have enough cover in Idah and Rashica anyway. That certainly seemed to be the steer Davitt and Freezer were getting, until recently. But there has been a bit of a shift there. Both in terms of how much (or how much longer) Pukki can be relied upon and the linked question of how adequate might the replacements be.

I don’t take Hugill’s possible departure very seriously either way (apart from it freeing up a wage). He never seemed to be included in the list of stand-ins or replacements for Pukki. But Idah and Rashica (the latter not mentioned by Davitt there) were definitely name-checked, and in a positive way.

For Idah it would be a significant step up from OK Championship striker to the same level or better in the Premier League. What if that faith from Farke that Davitt mentions is misplaced?

As to Rashica, I take Bethnal’s point that he has played as a central striker, albeit one who moves wide a great deal, but there is a big difference between that in a frontline of one or two others, and the extremely demanding multi-task role of a lone central striker that Pukki has fulfilled. I don’t know, but my suspicion is that Rashica would struggle with that in the Premier League.

Of course, we could alter the system, not least, for example, if we signed Billing and used him as an advanced midfielder providing a central goal threat, with Rashica and  Cantwell or Dowell or whoever flitting around. But if our default system is the one we have been using then the cover for Pukki looks problematic.

Of course it will all come down to money. But one possible scenario, if Webber and Farke are starting to think they need better Pukki cover, that would potentially provide better balance to the squad and be affordable, would be to sell Aarons, find a reasonably cheap replacement, and use at least some of what is left over on a striker for the longer term.

[TheGunnShow 5,937]

6 hours ago, Alex Moss said:

https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2021/07/07/west-ham-ellyes-skhiri/

Looks like one of our rumoured CB targets handed in a transfer request on Wednesday.

As ever, with a player based in Germany, I'll have a look on Kicker to see his score. He came up at 3.5, so around average, possibly a shade above. What IS interesting is this - they have a section called the "Spieler-Rangliste" (player's ranking) where based on marks, they are rated as whether they are world class, international class, "im weiteren Kreis", so best of the rest in essence, then "Blickfeld", so they're noticeable in terms of decent performance.

("nicht berücksichtigt" means "not considered", so didn't stand out in this context).

Bornauw's got into the "noticeable" category twice. Could be an interesting candidate especially with his age, and that Cologne are not usually one of Germany's stronger top-flight sides.

Sebastiaan Bornauw | 1. FC Köln | Spieler-Rangliste - kicker
 

[Bethnal Yellow and Green 1,557]

The PinkUn have their live Transfer Talk at 1pm today @PurpleCanary I'm sure this will come up, so all might be clearer afterwards. Although I expect something along the lines of 'Idah is see as being able to step up, but if something becomes available the club might move on it' - i.e. as clear as mud. 

[Yella Army 57]

5 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

As ever, with a player based in Germany, I'll have a look on Kicker to see his score. He came up at 3.5, so around average, possibly a shade above. What IS interesting is this - they have a section called the "Spieler-Rangliste" (player's ranking) where based on marks, they are rated as whether they are world class, international class, "im weiteren Kreis", so best of the rest in essence, then "Blickfeld", so they're noticeable in terms of decent performance.

("nicht berücksichtigt" means "not considered", so didn't stand out in this context).

Bornauw's got into the "noticeable" category twice. Could be an interesting candidate especially with his age, and that Cologne are not usually one of Germany's stronger top-flight sides.

Sebastiaan Bornauw | 1. FC Köln | Spieler-Rangliste - kicker
 

This is the player I want us to sign the most. He is extremely good in the air and can offer a threat at set pieces. Something that can help you win 6-9 more points across the season and be the difference from staying up or going down.

[cambridgeshire canary 6,698]

1 hour ago, TheGunnShow said:

As ever, with a player based in Germany, I'll have a look on Kicker to see his score. He came up at 3.5, so around average, possibly a shade above. What IS interesting is this - they have a section called the "Spieler-Rangliste" (player's ranking) where based on marks, they are rated as whether they are world class, international class, "im weiteren Kreis", so best of the rest in essence, then "Blickfeld", so they're noticeable in terms of decent performance.

("nicht berücksichtigt" means "not considered", so didn't stand out in this context).

Bornauw's got into the "noticeable" category twice. Could be an interesting candidate especially with his age, and that Cologne are not usually one of Germany's stronger top-flight sides.

Sebastiaan Bornauw | 1. FC Köln | Spieler-Rangliste - kicker
 

Much I'm still hoping something happens with Ajer fair to say Bornauw would be a decent signing, and of course with him being a Bundesliga player who has impressed I'm sure Farke is aware of him

[Branston Pickle 3,651]

4 hours ago, Bethnal Yellow and Green said:

Wage and staff costs for the 19/20 season were £89m. I can't see why it would be lower now.

Covid has seen plenty of organisations cut right back on staffing, freeze pay, and reduce costs. Clearly a football club’s largest cost is its playing staff who seem immune to such things, but you’d expect to see some savings.

 

[Bethnal Yellow and Green 1,557]

39 minutes ago, Branston Pickle said:

Covid has seen plenty of organisations cut right back on staffing, freeze pay, and reduce costs. Clearly a football club’s largest cost is its playing staff who seem immune to such things, but you’d expect to see some savings.

 

As mentioned above by Badger, these accounts were over a period where Norwich had furloughed all of their non-football staff, so once all the catering, tickets, match-day staff are back working then you would only expect to see wage costs rise. 

 

[birchfest 397]

Listened to today’s transfer talk, key points are;

Norwich not any further on from the position they were 2/3 weeks ago with Ajer, seems the ball is in Celtics court with the offer of 10 million plus add ons

 

Billing is interested to move on and Bournemouth seem potentially resigned to losing him, but no movement on that yet

 

Norwich potentially in for another Striker and Winger as well as central midfielder and CB that we already know they are keen on, they acknowledge that it’s a different line from the one they had been giving out over the last month or so. Might depend on Hugill moving on,

 

Omobamedeli appears to be impressing those at the club with the shape he’s returned in, looks like there is a hint he could be viewed as the main back up for this season, wonder what that might mean for Zim.

[WD40 720]

2 minutes ago, birchfest said:

Listened to today’s transfer talk, key points are;

Norwich not any further on from the position they were 2/3 weeks ago with Ajer, seems the ball is in Celtics court with the offer of 10 million plus add ons

 

Billing is interested to move on and Bournemouth seem potentially resigned to losing him, but no movement on that yet

 

Norwich potentially in for another Striker and Winger as well as central midfielder and CB that we already know they are keen on, they acknowledge that it’s a different line from the one they had been giving out over the last month or so. Might depend on Hugill moving on,

 

Omobamedeli appears to be impressing those at the club with the shape he’s returned in, looks like there is a hint he could be viewed as the main back up for this season, wonder what that might mean for Zim.

Thanks Birchfest. For me, Omabamadele looked as good defensively as Ben G when we needed Ben G in the Championship. Maybe not as aggressive, or as attacking in carrying the ball out. But supremely composed and physically up for it. I wouldnt mind keeping him in the building as a backup but would expect him to be very much targeted by opposing teams if he were to come in due to injury.

Agreed it was interesting the change in tone about more competition at striker specifically, and not just relying on a player that can play 'anywhere across the front'.

[Bethnal Yellow and Green 1,557]

8 minutes ago, WD40 said:

Thanks Birchfest. For me, Omabamadele looked as good defensively as Ben G when we needed Ben G in the Championship. Maybe not as aggressive, or as attacking in carrying the ball out. But supremely composed and physically up for it. I wouldnt mind keeping him in the building as a backup but would expect him to be very much targeted by opposing teams if he were to come in due to injury.

Agreed it was interesting the change in tone about more competition at striker specifically, and not just relying on a player that can play 'anywhere across the front'.

Definite change in tone around a new striker, which was surprising. Also interesting that Paddy said he was 'sure' that Hugill will be sold by the end of the window - which is also a big change in opinion to earlier in the window. Don't know if this is related to being told anything, or more their opinion based on conjecture. 

New striker and wide player seemed to be the transfer moving up the priority list after central defender and central midfielder. Back up full back seems to have stopped being talked about altogether.

[TheGunnShow 5,937]

Potentially another piece of the puzzle re. Celtic and centre-halves.

Tottenham fans react as Celtic reportedly eye Carter-Vickers (tbrfootball.com)

Cameron Carter Vickers keen on Celtic transfer as £5m Tottenham outcast eyes speedy exit - Daily Record

Edited July 9, 2021 by TheGunnShow

[Bethnal Yellow and Green 1,557]

1 minute ago, TheGunnShow said:

Potentially another piece of the puzzle re. Celtic and centre-halves.

Tottenham fans react as Celtic reportedly eye Carter-Vickers (tbrfootball.com)

Cameron Carter Vickers keen on Celtic transfer as £5m Tottenham outcast eyes speedy exit - Daily Record

Celtic know Ajer is leaving this summer - just a matter of where to. Seems Norwich have made their bid and are not going to be improving it.

Doesn't matter if Celtic are lining up replacements, as that was always going to happen, it is whether they are prepared to accept Norwich's bid or if someone else comes in with more money.

[TheGunnShow 5,937]

Just now, Bethnal Yellow and Green said:

Celtic know Ajer is leaving this summer - just a matter of where to. Seems Norwich have made their bid and are not going to be improving it.

Doesn't matter if Celtic are lining up replacements, as that was always going to happen, it is whether they are prepared to accept Norwich's bid or if someone else comes in with more money.

Sure, I wonder if they're playing that brand of hard-ball not knowing what they'll spend. If they buy two new centre-halves for, let's assume, ten million pounds and sell Ajer for that or just over, it's potentially good business for them. The lower those two newer ones come in at, the better our chances of our apparent ultimatum bearing fruit.

Not to mention if they're signed quickly as well.

[WSM 62]

Josh King signs for Watford - guess that's the end of that rumour

 

Think he wanted money we couldn't, and wouldn't pay

 

OTBC

[cambridgeshire canary 6,698]

9 minutes ago, WSM said:

Josh King signs for Watford - guess that's the end of that rumour

 

Think he wanted money we couldn't, and wouldn't pay

 

OTBC

Watford will of course be happy to pay, they have no problem with big wages and big attitudes.

 

They are welcome to him, won't end well mark my words