bluedave

Well, the club have confirmed the squad for the CWC (I don't trust these 'in the know' twitter accounts, especially that 'piss' account), and no Petrovic. They have included new signings, such as Delap, so the reason given for the exclusion of Petrovic (sticking with the 2024-2025 squad members) is confirmed to be nonsense. Here's the full list: 1 - Robert Sanchez 3 - Marc Cucurella 4 - Tosin Adarabioyo 5 - Benoit Badiashile 6 - Levi Colwill 7 - Pedro Neto 8 - Enzo Fernandez 9 - Liam Delap 10 - Cole Palmer 11 - Noni Madueke 12 - Filip Jorgensen 14 - Dario Essugo 15 - Nicolas Jackson 17 - Andrey Santos 18 - Christopher Nkunku 19 - Mamadou Sarr 22 - Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall 23 - Trevoh Chalobah 24 - Reece James 25 - Moises Caicedo 27 - Malo Gusto 30 - Aaron Anselmino 32 - Tyrique George 34 - Josh Acheampong 38 - Marc Guiu 39 - Mike Penders 44 - Gaga Slonina 45 - Romeo Lavia

The Delap signing was our most significant activity during the 9-day window, so to leave it off the "summary" seems very suspicious. I'm generally in favour of not allowing the likes of Dortmund, Milan, etc., gauge us for exorbitant fees in order to 'get it done' before some nonsense deadline, but that seems to be an unpopular opinion on here. The real transfer window runs from June 16th until September 1st.

I'm not familiar with that Twitter account, but that is a f**king (I suspect deliberately and disingenuously) terrible summary of this 9-day window. Why does it totally fail to mention the Delap signing?

Yeah, he had a decent game. England didn't make it hard for him though.

He just assisted for Sarr's (deserved) equaliser against England.

Nico starts against England tonight. He'll be up against Colwill and Chalobah, which will be interesting. I don't usually bother with England games outside of major tournaments, but I might tune in for this.

Zero games in 4 years on a full professional salary... Bettinelli is truly my role model in life. Good luck to him at City.

I know, right? This makes our refusal by the incompetent owners to spunk 30 million on Maignan even more outrageous!

I see this as an opportunistic interest, an experienced goalkeeper on the last year of his contract who made it clear he wants out. With Petrovic coming back and Sanchez's improvement over the last couple of months, we're actually not desperate for another keeper right now, but if Maignan's available for nominal fee, it makes sense to at least try. He would add some quality and experience to this young team. But we don't need to be throwing away another 20-30 million on goalkeepers this summer. I can't blame Milan for trying their luck, based on our ridiculous spending habits in recent years, but I'm glad the club are standing firm. Of course there will be 'fans' who will twist this into some way to sh*t on the club/owners somehow*. I expect Milan will lower their valuation significantly over the course of the summer when the reality hit that they will lose him for nothing if they don't sell, so I doubt this is over. *edit - see what I mean ↓

And Bettinelli's apparently getting poached by City... how will we cope?

"Narrative"... some of us accept that it's possible he may have ingested a banned substance without knowing and are withholding judgment for that reason. I find the "narrative" that he would knowingly take a banned substance with debatable performance-enhancing benefits, which will severely impact his career if he tests positive, also quite hard to believe. When you state "He took drugs and he knew about it" you loose all credibility with me. How the f**k can you know that?

I liked what little I saw of him for us. I gather the loan was pushed for by him in order to get more minutes in the CB position with an eye on being selected for Portugal, but I definitely think he could feature there for us next season. Colwill, Fofana (if fit), Veiga, Tosin and Chalobah would probably be one too many CBs under normal circumstances, but Fofana's fitness is a big uncertainty. I've not included Badiashile and Disasi, as I'm expecting/hoping they'll move on in the summer.

Unlike with Jackson, we're not being reminded every weekend how bad he is at doing the thing he's paid to do. There's also the understanding that the performance-enhancing effect of the substance he tested positive for is debatable, and he may well have ingested it unknowingly while back in Ukraine.

it's what we've always known, winning trophies and managing Spurs are mutually exclusive positions.

That's more or less where I am on this. I assumed, after the season he had, that Petrovic would be our #1 going into the new season and was at peace with that, so I was surprised to hear about our interest in this guy. It's funny that he seems to polarise opinions on here between "sh*t" and "one of the best in the world". I think the reality is somewhere between that, and the £30 million price tag seems a bit rich, for me.

I've never seen him play, but he got 8 goals for Dortmund in 32 appearances, which seems pretty decent for a winger. However, we have to consider this was in the Bundesliga, and we've a history of signing players from the Bundesliga and them not getting anywhere near to reproducing their numbers over here. Hopefully our scouts have based their interest on more than just a quick glance at his Wikipedia page.

Several months ago, 25 million for Sancho seemed like an absolute steal, but now I'm on the fence. His 'form', similar to quite a few other players, has just reflected the performance of the team overall. It's all about the wages now, apparently, and if he can't accept a cut and goes back to Utd, I won't be devastated. If he does agree to a cut and signs for us, then I'll welcome him as a decent addition to the squad. We can (and likely will, if he does not sign) do a lot worse for the money. He definitely is not worth f**king up our wage structure for, though.

My feeling is that, if we don't snap him up now, we'll be kicking ourselves in a year or two. He's 22 and already shown he can perform in the PL and scored 12 goals for the worst team. I'd prefer that to another hyped player from the Bundesliga or wherever.

Both goals created by wizardry from Palmer.

That was a nice ball forward by Noni for Enzo. That Betis keeper is a right bitch.

That was a classy assist, tbf.

I kinda hope Villa can nick an equaliser so that Newcastle miss out, tbh. Exit - my app was saying it's still 1-0

Chris Would-not.

Palmer on his own with only five Forest players to beat...

Utd ahead.