We managed to sign Sol Campbell, Tottenham's fucking captain. Wish we had balls and negotiating skills like that nowadays.

In those days, we had so much more money than anyone else (not named United). We paid Sol a fortune. Spurs stood no chance. They're only now paying their players what we offered Sol 16 years ago.
This is why I have no qualms about bullying Serie A, Ligue 1 and Bundelsiga clubs into giving us their best players. Bullying works.

Also Sol wanted to stay in the area which played a huge part.

Claudius wrote:

In those days, we had so much more money than anyone else (not named United). We paid Sol a fortune. Spurs stood no chance. They're only now paying their players what we offered Sol 16 years ago.
This is why I have no qualms about bullying Serie A, Ligue 1 and Bundelsiga clubs into giving us their best players. Bullying works.

AW won't touch a player unless his club says he's available.

would anyone take aguero if he was available? dont think pep fancies him

Gazza M wrote:

would anyone take aguero if he was available? dont think pep fancies him

Not in this formation and roles aas he's more a poacher and couldn't provide what we saw from Welbeck in the Cup Final..
That said if we were playing with 2 or more strikers then yes, because his partner could do the heavy lifting & Aguero could look to stay around the area.

A similar question could apply re Sturridge - don't think he's in Klopp's plans re his inability to play the high intensity counter pressing,
but he could well be able to play in our less demanding system in games he wasn't expected to do as much work as we saw from Welbeck.

I think Sturridge's performances in the last few games of the season have put him back in contention for a bigger role next season. He's the best they have in that position and by some distance and I doubt Klopp would take the chance of selling a player with that quality to a PL rival. It runs the risk of him looking daft if Sturridge stays fit and does what we have seen him do in the past and also directly hurts Liverpool if a rival benefits from that.

Gazza M wrote:

would anyone take aguero if he was available? dont think pep fancies him

Definitely. I think he's still got a lot of goals in him and he'd love playing with Alexis.

@lorddulaarsenal wrote:

I'd been keen to sign Ihaenacho too

He's been linked to WHam, but agreed.

This Perisic link to Utd is rather strange. Have Mourinho given up on Mkhitaryan already?

On the other hand they have guys like Young and Lingaard on the flanks...

Mata, Mkhi, Perisic, Martial - looks like a great set of wide players. Obviously Mourinho will find a way to transform them all into a mind numbing team compared to which one would rather watch paint dry, but the idea is a good one.

I have no idea who Ederson is and have never seen him play, but City and Pep willing to pay 43m for a goalkeeper piqued my interest.

Any idea how good he is?

He's meant to have big potential but a world record fee for a lad who's not even that young (24 this summer), has no caps, and has only one season of top flight European football, is a massive gamble.

Distributes the ball very well though which is all that Pep probably cares about.

If it's the Benfica keeper I think it is, he was incredible in both legs against Dortmund in the last 16 of the Champions League. Made about 5 saves in each that were out of this world.

Yep, that's the guy! I thought he looked excellent in CL too.

You never know with brazilian keepers though. They have a tendency of looking like clown shoes in any european league where you need to be dominant in the air and commanding of your area.

£43m is a lot of money as well, but I suppose that doesn't matter much to City (even though some om here insist on them and us being on the same level financially!).

He looked a little rash during the two game I saw of him too. Insanely quick off his line, but on the edge constantly.

We'll see what his made of because it looks like it's pretty much a done deal.

Klaus wrote:

Yep, that's the guy! I thought he looked excellent in CL too.

You never know with brazilian keepers though. They have a tendency of looking like clown shoes in any european league where you need to be dominant in the air and commanding of your area.

Julio Cesar comes to mind when you put it this way. Brazilian goalies are normally brilliant shot stoppers.

Watching Szczesny yesterday really don't fill me with any kind of confidence if he comes back. Cech is getting on a bit and is clearly not at his best anymore. I really hope we do some forward thinking in the goalkeeping department.

Cech has been fantastic the last couple of months, not that worried in the short term.

BWoolley wrote:

Mata, Mkhi, Perisic, Martial - looks like a great set of wide players. Obviously Mourinho will find a way to transform them all into a mind numbing team compared to which one would rather watch paint dry, but the idea is a good one.

Probably could have done with another fast winger though for Mourinhos style to work.