The Summer 2024 Transfer Thread.

Lycan said:

Rodrigo and who else?

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Well I would have said RAN but we've just got rid of our other LB so I guess we'd be shoehorning Bellegarde or Hwang in there, not ideal obviously.
Right side we only have Sarabia. Not sure what we're doing with Chiquinho or whether hes even adequate.

Chiq goes if we sign another right side player.

So, staying

sycophantia said:

Well I would have said RAN but we've just got rid of our other LB so I guess we'd be shoehorning Bellegarde or Hwang in there, not ideal obviously.
Right side we only have Sarabia. Not sure what we're doing with Chiquinho or whether hes even adequate.

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You don't want Hwang or Bellegarde in that position. Hwang needs to be playing centrally so he spends as much time as possible in goal scoring spaces and Bellegarde's only real elite quality is that he can run at players in tight spaces, you'd be negating all of their positive attributes by playing them wide.

Rodrigo's only back up is Chiquinho at the moment and he isn't good enough.

Deutsch Wolf said:

Apples and oranges.

We'd just finished 7th and could afford him time to develop (indeed as late as the end of October he was playing in what was a reserve team away at Villa Park in the League Cup). He started one league game before Christmas.

We've just sold our best player and won't replace him.

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Totally agree with all this - it’s about replacing him.

We’re not naive enough to know that the big clubs will come and take our best players - unless you’re Real Madrid, it happens to everyone.

It was Neves last year, Pedro this, probably Cunha and/or J Gomes next, and so on…..

If we’re replacing them with Bellegarde, Larsen, Doyle and similar (and not necessarily critical of them - just pointing out they’re not comparable) then we are left with not much.

We know what happens next.

As it is, currently, I fear that the current squad is pretty threadbare in the top quality cupboard.
Cunha is probably the best we’ve got and he’s made of biscuits.

Big week for Hobbsy.

NicholasG1973 said:

Big week for Hobbsy.

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Has a bit longer than a week.

Doubt anything we do this week will make much difference to our defeat on Saturday

Lycan said:

You don't want Hwang or Bellegarde in that position. Hwang needs to be playing centrally so he spends as much time as possible in goal scoring spaces and Bellegarde's only real elite quality is that he can run at players in tight spaces, you'd be negating all of their positive attributes by playing them wide.

Rodrigo's only back up is Chiquinho at the moment and he isn't good enough.

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Oh I agree, I'm just trying to suggest what might happen if we don't get the replacements you mentioned.

I could've written that Hobbs piece having never met Pedro and never been near Compton, it's the usual dialed in puffery.

A few issues in there that he didn't need to say that are just nonsense though. It's nowhere near 'the right time' for us. We've basically lost 50% of our creativity, and the other 50% is just cong back from injury. He talks about all the scouting and planning they do for every position, that's as may be but then why have we not had a fit for purpose centre forward for four and a half years? And as for being a deal we couldn't turn down, fuck off. The Nunes deal, the Kilman deal, fair enough - massive over payments. But £50m isn't a massive overpayment, so it's not a deal you can't turn down. You can argue decent value, and Chelsea can argue bargain. Maybe there was gentleman's agreements or what not but don't try and fucking gaslight us into thinking that we've been made this once in a lifetime offer that was impossible to turn down for the good of the club

Del Woppio said:

I could've written that Hobbs piece having never met Pedro and never been near Compton, it's the usual dialed in puffery.

A few issues in there that he didn't need to say that are just nonsense though. It's nowhere near 'the right time' for us. We've basically lost 50% of our creativity, and the other 50% is just cong back from injury. He talks about all the scouting and planning they do for every position, that's as may be but then why have we not had a fit for purpose centre forward for four and a half years? And as for being a deal we couldn't turn down, fuck off. The Nunes deal, the Kilman deal, fair enough - massive over payments. But £50m isn't a massive overpayment, so it's not a deal you can't turn down. You can argue decent value, and Chelsea can argue bargain. Maybe there was gentleman's agreements or what not but don't try and fucking gaslight us into thinking that we've been made this once in a lifetime offer that was impossible to turn down for the good of the club

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Tbh even Neto’s comments are pretty shallow. Once a wolf always a wolf, I'm sure our paths will cross again...yes in a fortnight. I know he didn't write that any more than I did, but it's in his name. Just do the thanks for everything, I'm off to a bigger club line, that's the reality

If you put quotes by Hobbs* and Sellers side by side I'd imagine they aren't all that different.

They're the symptom rather than the disease.

*Hobbs has more credit in the bank and less tactics boards.

I really don't know what clubs of that size are doing showing interest in him tbh.

If we can get one of them to bite on a permanent deal that's amazing, we can't be too greedy though. The best possible outcome is to get him out of the club ASAP.

Wolfsburg were very poor last season, they're at a low ebb in comparison to how they've generally been over the last 15-20 years. Valencia have been a bin fire of a club for the best part of 20 years.

He's still nowhere near where they should be aiming and I can almost guarantee that he'd be crap for either, but hopefully they get sucked into the thinking of "if Wolves paid that much for him then he must have something about him" or they love his goal compilation of tap ins vs Liechtenstein and Faroe Islands U21s.

They're looking at him purely based on his youth reputation, fee, and that he's at a PL club.

It happens all the time. See Liverpool sales of young players for examples.

Alan said:

How often does any club sell one player and immediately replace him with a player of equal “value” at the same position, though? It doesn’t feel often, at the least.

Regardless, my point was more that solutions don’t always come from expected places.

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To me, a good club will have a first team squad (with some players pulled from youth/reserves) of anywhere in a flux between 21-28 players, and have a Best XI with anywhere between 1-3 players in their system to step up once a first team player is sold. Then it's a case of rinse repeat and see who can step up.

We kinda did this under Nuno, and did sign youngsters like Neto and Vintinha, but got lucky imo with him only having a very small squad he used for most his tenure.

Since then the transfer policy and team strategy seems all over the place, likely because it is. A "reaching the bar" situation, or whatever you describe it as, shouldn't be where we are now which is looking like our depth is going to be tested yet again after losing 3 players (Kilman, Neto, Bueno) despite getting in 2 players early (R.Gomes, JSL).

We're not at panic stations like this time last year and there's definitely not as much fear of relegation threat. Yet the familiarity of same shit, different season with the squad remains. And after the off-field stuff this pre-season its understandable I think that people are already fatigued by it all.

"He's irreplaceable for a club like us at this moment," O'Neil said of Neto's departure.

"He's a top winger in world football and we knew it would be a challenge to keep him because of that.

"Obviously his last few seasons have been hampered by injury, but when he's fit and free-flowing there's not many like it in world football.

"I'm gutted to lose him. He was quite emotional as he's been here for a long time.

"I know he likes it here and he really enjoyed his time before I was here and with us.

"But when big clubs come calling you have a big decision to make.

"I spoke to him about the option of staying. It wasn't that he needed to go, it was up to him and we'd have loved to keep him if he wanted to stay.

"No-one can judge him for choosing to go play for Chelsea. It's one of the biggest clubs in England and we wish him very well. I loved working with him.

"You can't replace him, we're not going to go and sign another Pedro Neto, it's about using it (the money) well enough to replenish the squad in a few areas – a wide player being one."

“Next week is a big one for me to make sure the lads are ready for the Premier League and next week is a big one for us in the transfer market.

"The early business that we did was great because it showed everyone that we mean business and we are able to do stuff, Rodrigo, Pedro, Jorgen, it’s fantastic of the club to get them done so early.

“We are all really aligned with what we want to do here, and we understand there are still challenging situations which we’re trying to manage. We’ve made another £100 million this summer, we made £100m last summer, and that does provide its challenges to keep the team staying competitive and keep the team as strong as it once was four or five years ago when they were competing for Europe and there was fantastic times here.

“We’re trying to get it back to that, but with a very different make-up behind the scenes that we’re working to. But I enjoy those challenges a lot.

"Me and Matt (Hobbs) have spoken a lot about what we’re trying to do, trying to get players in who can help us with the money we’ve received, and hopefully we can help this group now, because they’re in a good spot, they’re giving everything, but the Premier League is tough.

“We’ve signed a lot of young players and hopefully we can sign a few that can help us in the here and now, as well as some more young ones. As a club, we try to sign ones who are going to add value to the football club, Rodrigo and Pedro Lima especially, they’re ones who have real talent, but also have a value.

“But we do need to do some who are ready now and have played in the Premier League and know what it’s all about because it is going to be a tough test.

"We need to make sure we get it right, we need to make sure that I get the team right, and I’m really looking forward to the season, but there is still some work to do between now and the end of August.”

Winds me up more than it probably should that Hobbs keeps giving that talking Wolves kid information

SkySports reporting we're in talks with Nantes for an 18 year old CB called Bastien Meupiyou.

Lycan said:

SkySports reporting we're in talks with Nantes for an 18 year old CB called Bastien Meupiyou.

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Mendes client. Left-footed CB who is out of contract next summer. We apparently have already made two bids for him, the latest one being around 4m EUR. They want closer to 10.

Was looked at by Spurs and Man City in January just gone. Only 18 and played 1 senior game for Nantes but very highly rated.

Lycan said:

SkySports reporting we're in talks with Nantes for an 18 year old CB called Bastien Meupiyou.

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Played a whole 9 minutes of senior football but did have a red card in those 9 minutes.

I'm guessing he's a generation talent

Seriously fucks me off all this "Chelsea are a big club" business.

What's the point of being in the Prem. if this is our mentality? Sure, they have become a big club over the recent past but all this bullshit seemingly makes us subservient to them.

Pedro was hugely important to us. Seems to me he wasn't particularly bother about going if we had made more of an effort to keep him. Making a player feel wanted is massive and it's not always down to money.

I could handle Neves leaving, even Raul and Traore but this one leaves a massive void. The one player we had of creating something out of nothing. Smacks of what happened to Southampton with all their best players being cherry picked. It's happening to Brighton as well.