Consigliere

The reports are that Barca cannot match Chelsea's offer but have proposed a different payment structure with more cash upfront which Sevilla might accept. According to the reports, the player himself would prefer a move to Barca.

That is a ludicrous wage for Lingard (more than twice what he was earning at United). Forest have taken a big risk here shattering their wage structure so for their sake, hopefully Lingard can get it done on the pitch rather than tiktok.

Barca has more pull than any other football club bar Real Madrid. I'm fairly sure they aren't going to have much trouble attracting top players.

Barca want their cake and to eat it too. They've reduced their wage bill by a combination of high earners leaving, renegotiating contracts with lower wages or extending some contracts so that wages can be amortised over a longer period. They've restructured their bad short term debt at poor interest rates with a loan at a much more favourable interest rate. All of that is good for the club's finances but then they also want to compete for league and CL titles so they've mortgaged 25% of their TV rights for up to 25 years which means less TV revenue in the long term in favour of a short term cash injection to make big money signings. There's also the possibility that they sell off 49.9% of their licensing and merchandising for the same reason with the same trade-off i.e., less long-term revenue in favour of a short term cash injection. If it works out then Laporta will be hailed as a saviour because Bartomeu's reign showed that the socios don't give a fuck about the president digging the club into a financial hole so long as the club is winning league titles and competing for the CL.

Swiss Ramble with a thread explaining Barca's finances. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1548917012021145606.html

That's an accurate description. Ronaldo will get his share of goals but others have to sacrifice their own games in order to get him into positions to score. This was an issue that started in his last couple of seasons at Real Madrid where Benzema had to sacrifice his own goal scoring to do the link-up and play making to cater to Ronaldo. Benzema was a 25-30+ goal a season striker but only scored around 30 goals over the last two seasons that Ronaldo was at the club. Soon as he left, Benzema promptly went back to scoring 30+ goals a season. And it's only gotten worse since then as Ronaldo has declined even further. As the Italian press used to say when he was at Juve: Ronaldo is the solution to the problems he creates.

I think we might be stuck with Ronaldo unfortunately. The only silver lining would be that that he's only got 1 year left on his contract. Maybe PSG will come to the rescue. I doubt Bayern are interested. Everyone at Bayern (Kahn, Brazzo and Nagelsmann) have all come out and rubbished reports linking the club to Ronaldo. Pretty sure their plan is to play Mane up top. If reports are accurate then it seems they prefer to take a chance on a potential future star in Mathys Tel.

I'll wait for reliable journalists to report on it before believing that. I doubt we look to sign a CF unless Ronaldo leaves and that's not a given since it appears no top clubs want him.

This is the problem with having a weak structure above the manager so that United have just ended up chasing Ten Hag's targets with no alternatives lined up. Our plan for CB was Lisandro Martinez or bust so we ended up overpaying and our plan for midfield is de Jong or bust so we have no alternatives and will persist even though there are serious complications with his deferred wages in addition to the player preferring to stay at Barca. Our plan for a forward was Antony or bust but Ajax have put an even bigger 'fuck off' price on him and it doesn't look like we have any alternatives there either. Nothing has changed – we've just replaced one set of clowns with another.

Liverpool are among the wealthiest clubs in the world. Of course they could spend €100-120m (or more) on Bellingham if they really wanted to.

Also depends on whether or not Lewandowski really hits a decline within the next 3 years. If he doesn't fall off a cliff then it'll probably be worth it for Barca because he is a top class CF.

Barca have managed to significantly reduce their wage bill and will have to keep that in check going forward (which Laporta said is a priority not to be handing out bloated contracts the way Bartomeu did). They've raised over €550m from selling 25% of their TV rights for up to 25 years (but they do have an option to buy back those rights and this is much better than the CVC deal) and they've restructured around €140m of short term debt at a much more favourable interest rate. Barca are having to jump through hoops to register players because LaLiga's FFP is stricter than UEFA's FFP and much stricter than any financial controls that exist in the PL. Barca generate upwards of €800m in revenue so as long as Laporta doesn't pull a Bartomeu, the club is not in danger of going out of business anytime soon.

I highly doubt City will sell Silva.

Playing him on the left might be the plan. Sancho has played on the right in both pre-season games and has been our best attacker. Eriksen lacks the raw pace of Rashford or Elanga but is a much better creator than either. That could be useful when facing low blocks because neither Rashford nor Elanga have the guile needed to break down parked busses and their pace is not much of an asset in those cases either. eta. Eriksen can play on the right too. Right midfield was his primary position for a time at Spurs with Alli at #10, Son on the left and Kane up top.

Newcastle do have some FFP restrictions so they will not be able to spend in the manner that Chelsea or City did in the early years following their respective takeovers. However, Newcastle do have a decent transfer budget at their disposal. The Athletic did a piece a couple of months back saying that Newcastle would be able to spend around £80m + player sales. So it's not FFP restrictions that prevent Newcastle from bidding for Raum – Newcastle have already signed a LB in Matt Target. Also, the Newcastle journos have reported that the priorities are CB and forwards. Botman has already signed and per Luke Edwards, the club were in talks for Moussa Diaby and Alexander Isak but have abandoned those pursuits due to the transfer fees and wages being demanded.

That's just typical Bailly. This is nothing new. He's a wildly inconsistent player who can be brilliant one moment and a complete disaster in the next. Over these two games though, Bailly looks to be the CB who has adapted to Ten Hag's system the best which is not all that encouraging.

There were reports that Arsenal were intending to use Lisandro Martinez as a LB – the fact that they've moved on to Zinchenko appears to support those reports. In that case, I'm not sure why Arsenal were even looking at Martinez in the first place – he's a CB who occasionally plays as a DM. Would've been a waste of money for Arsenal to sign him for a position that he's only ever played in a handful of times in his career and not recently.

Injury prone luxury player who only shows up for maybe a third of a season and is demanding big wages. I think some players have gotten a wake-up call. There are a few players who thought that they could score themselves bumper contracts as free agents but it isn't working out that way. Inter seem to have cooled on Dybala, Lingard isn't getting the offers he must've hoped for and Dembele looks like he is going to have to accept Barca's contract proposal with significantly reduced wages because nobody has made him any offers even though his contract ran out on 30 June. Ronaldo must've also thought that top clubs would be tripping over themselves to sign him but he's gotten a rude awakening as well.

Not sure but I think it was Gravenberch who took his place and he's already gone to Bayern.

Looks like this De Jong transfer is finally dead in the water. Hopefully we actually have alternatives lined up but it's more likely that our plan was De Jong or bust.

It's not reliable. United and Barca agreed on a fee over a week ago (€65m + €20m in add-ons) as reported by multiple reliable sources for both clubs. The transfer is being held up by deferred wages owed to De Jong. Murtough and Arnold have travelled to Barcelona to try and reach a resolution.

Rooney set to be appointed as new manager of DC United.