Thumbheed

Just purely out of curiosity, I'd love to see what he's like in midfield.

I think we're severely underrating how important our midfield is to how we function and how improving it, is critical to our success and I'll bet that Howe sees it the same as well. There's not a team in the world that operates at a high level without a top quality midfield and if we don't add then essentially, ban ir not the middle has stood still for 2 years.

He's hardly played in the most successful of sides and 26 is a great age!!

Probably one for realistical transfer thread but I thought Sander Berge looked a good player. Definitely feels like there's a bargain to be had there for squad depth were Burnely to go down.

Targett's been stupidly unlucky. Hebwoukdnhave been a first team regular had he got a decent run in when Burn was injured. I still reckon a decent wedge if that £15m is retrievable if wages suit the buying team.

Yeh, back to my original post earlier on - I don't have a clue.

Apologies if this has already been posted but according to Athletic this is wages + amortisation + agent fees. So as things stand that's currently at about 271m which is far short of the 4.5 of the revenue of the bottom placed club, so we actually have huge scope to spend on fees but our challenge becomes managing wages to within the 70% revenue threshold (currently sat at 74%) So if our revenue goes up to 320m this year, our wage bill is allowed to be at about 227m (last year's was about 185m) leaving about 200m per year for amortisation + agent fees? How far off am I? Edit: so the challenge is actually aligning with UEFA who have a hard cap of 85% at present (70% in 25/26) all in on wages+amortisation and fees meaning at present our scope for expenditure is about 90m in wages and amortisation. Still plenty of scope, I think.

Nah me neither tbh. Our current wages are 74% of revenue with a turnover of £250m. I therefore have no clue as to what any of this means. That's all from me. Cheers.

Won't that be 210m per year on transfers and wages?

Is Joao Neves a realistic target?

Just looked over the squad list and it's genuinely exciting to see how many players we can improve on if we're to assume the likes of Bruno, Botman and Isak are the standard. We're actually sooo far away where we'll eventually so it's pretty incredible to see us battling it out with the likes of Chelsea and Man Utd at this stage of our development. Honeslty excited to see what Howe can do with an even better calibre of squad.

I'm pretty non plusses about FFP/PSR tbh. I feel like the club know exactly what they're up against and will found way round this as staying stagnant as the rules are intended to force just won't be an option. I'm also quite confident that we're arguably the only club outside the top 6 who have a real good opportunity to grow our revenue to a degree the other ambitious clubs like Villa can't based on the fact we have an entire country's market at our disposal. Guess time will tell butfor now, I've seen or read nothing that's got my heart racing.

Unfortunately he's worth every penny and more.

its not an excuse its a reason to be open minded. Like i say we have a terrible habit of judging players playing in poorly performing team despite the lessons we learnt of our own players. We don't know the budget and don't know the actually finances with revenue taking a significant boost this year on top of the likelihood of a couple players sales and with a number of players on good contracts leaving too. It's not unfeasible to have a more significant budget than everyone realises that's not based on a narrative that is imperative to the club not getting ripped off/subetly challenging PSR. We're continuously linked with midfielders, so it's fair to say it's a postion we want to strengthen and I 100% agree on it. As for the last point, it's the exact reason why another midfielder is imperative because they will still be our options off the bench and whilst there's certainly some ability in a couple of those player to be excited about they're not ready to be key players in a high performance team. Yet.

Tbf, I'm not doubting that at all, I'm just giving him the benefit of doubt. I'm probably more excited by his pressing because I honestly think it makes a massive difference to us, moreso than a midfielder who can chip in with a goal or assist now and again - sum of all part and whatnot