goon wrote:

If I'm going to believe and lose my shit over Rabiot, who's been pricing himself out of a move to Barcelona, United and Liverpool (never mind PSG), is going to sign for Everton, I'm going to need a much more credible source than 'rumours'.

We should not panic yet.

But if Everton make those sort of moves, we are in real trouble. You just know that Wolves will make some big moves as well.

Lucas Perez joins Alaves for 2m, West Ham taking a 2m hit after his transfer from us. They decided to cut losses immediately after a season.

Kind of weird player, very effective in the final 3rd and as evident everytime he plays for West Ham he scores. Must be absolutely shite in training from all 3 managers not to be convinced by him in England.

Jovic is a Real Madrid player.

De Ligt linked to Pool. They should do it and become a super club
This was supposed to be us. What happened? I blame Robinho and Baptista

Hey we almost got Mbappe and Cristiano Ronaldo. Go ask their mommies.

...and the Home Office conned us out of Ronaldinho.

The reason I mentioned Robinho and Baptista specifically was that we made a concerted chase. It was in that era when we were willing to go after Reyes while we still had 6 or 7 strong attackers on the squad. We went in hard, but failed versus the might of Real Madrid. And then everything just seemed to change after that. We humbled ourselves and shrunk. And we started talking about youth quite vigorously. And stopped spending. We shed our Invincibles and our ambitions to be a massive club just dissipated. And we never pretended to be ambitious again until last January. That's more than a decade of hibernation.

Suarez, Ozil, Alexis?

Quincy Abeyie wrote:

Jovic is a Real Madrid player.

52m, such a great deal. 

Clrnc wrote:

Quincy Abeyie wrote:

Jovic is a Real Madrid player.

52m, such a great deal. 

Figure has been undisclosed, for good reason hopefully. Marca says 60m+5 in bonuses

Hope it'll be a bit more, hes easily worth 70m+ in this market

Wow. Great deal for Madrid even at 60m guaranteed. Such a quality striker at 21. They should bring in Mbappe as well and have a proper dynamic frontline.

They don't really need Mbappe. Let Vinicius play and buy a CM instead, he's already good enough.

This is assuming that they buy Hazard.

jones wrote:

Clrnc wrote:

52m, such a great deal. 

Figure has been undisclosed, for good reason hopefully. Marca says 60m+5 in bonuses

Hope it'll be a bit more, hes easily worth 70m+ in this market

Everywhere's saying 60m + 5m, but euros, not pounds. It's £53m + £3m. Benfica get 20% of the fee too, which works out at £10.5m.

This will be the most active thread this summer.

Can't wait to see Wolves, Everton, Leicester, Bournemouth and Crystal Palace outspend us.

Ricky1985 wrote:

jones wrote:

Figure has been undisclosed, for good reason hopefully. Marca says 60m+5 in bonuses

Hope it'll be a bit more, hes easily worth 70m+ in this market

Everywhere's saying 60m + 5m, but euros, not pounds. It's £53m + £3m. Benfica get 20% of the fee too, which works out at £10.5m.

It's a wire transfer from a Spanish to a German bank account, that's why I gave the figure in EUR. Depending on the source Benficas share might even be 30%.

Regarding the fee I wouldn't trust Marca by itself, other sources have it at 70m, most importantly is however both clubs not announcing it which in this case is good. Frankfurt are usually pretty transparent about their transfers, let's hope the fee is even above what's floating around the media.

Quincy Abeyie wrote:

They don't really need Mbappe. Let Vinicius play and buy a CM instead, he's already good enough.

This is assuming that they buy Hazard.

Vinicius is full of vigour but still very raw. He makes so many errors every game. He will work them out as he goes along, but he is not going to win you a league title versus Barca this coming season. He reminds me of Ronaldo in his first 2 seasons at United. He's that level of raw 

----Benzema----
--Hazard-----Vazquez--
----Kroos----Modric--
--------Casamiero-----

-----------Jovic----------
--Vinicius-------Asensio---
----Kroos----Modric--
--------Casamiero-----

or

-----------Jovic-------
Vinicius -- Hazard -- Vazquez
----Kroos------Casamiero----

Feels like Madrid is still short a RWF, especially if they ship Bale

Claudius wrote:

Quincy Abeyie wrote:

They don't really need Mbappe. Let Vinicius play and buy a CM instead, he's already good enough.

This is assuming that they buy Hazard.

Vinicius is full of vigour but still very raw. He makes so many errors every game. He will work them out as he goes along, but he is not going to win you a league title versus Barca this coming season. He reminds me of Ronaldo in his first 2 seasons at United. He's that level of raw 

Even though Bale, Asensio and Isco are players who've regressed or don't fit to a wing role, it's still incredibly impressive from Vini to just come in and immediately displace all of them. I really don't think they should buy two galactico wingers who would both start every match when they have Vinicius. He's raw, but he'd still probably be their player of the season if he didn't get that injury. 

All of those players had issues though. When you're Real Madrid, you need to field a frontline that is ready to contribute. Hazard, Jovic and Vinicius is very good but not great. Just think of peak Madrid with a high-performing Ronaldo, Bale and Benzema. That's the expectation when you have 2-300m pounds a year more revenue than Arsenal. Not a project.