Dr Gloom

i've moved from denial to anger in the grief process. if isak doesn't want to play for us we can show him the door and he can fuck off. if we can get £150m it fixes our psr problems in the short to medium term plus if we get wissa and sesko we could arguably be in a better position than we were with isak and wilson. isak is world class on his day, but he isn't always fit, he lacks physicality, occasionally goes missing and has been known to fluffs one-on-ones when he has too much time to think about it. i don't want to lose isak. sesko isn't PL proven, but is Isak really worth twice as much as him? time will tell i suppose. I'm also assuming we replace him with sesko. not sure which other CFs are available who could fill the gap but it looks like sekso is potentially available. it also looks like i've moved from anger to bargaining in the time it's taken me to compose this post.

I agree. The problem is that by the time we our third lowball bid plays out in public, Man U or Chelsea will swoop in with the asking price.

if they want £60-70m plus add one you can guarantee we go in with £50-55m.

chelsea FTW they haven't got enough strikers, yeah

yeah, I think so. they could have taken PSR on more aggressively, taken the piss with commercial deals or made more progress with the stadium. But they haven’t been tested like this.

Time to hit the nuclear button. This is the first real test of the Saudi’s ambition. They’re not known for being pushed around but the voices online saying they’ve lost interest are growing. It’ll be interesting to see how they react because they’ve played very, very nice so far. In a way few of us expected tbh

If I were the chairman I’d sell him to Saudi for £300m then loan him back to us with them paying his wages for the duration of his contract. If you can’t beat the cheating cunts, join them.

remember just over a week ago when we were buzzing about signing ekitike to play alongside isak?

This is the news we all feared. I’m genuinely gutted if it’s true and he’s forcing the issue. We’re half way through the window. It’s going to take some effort to salvage it from here. Arsenal spent several years trying to sign a new striker

Welcome back mate!

i genuinely didn't think he would push for a move this summer or that the club would countenance it. i always felt there was a sense of inevitability about him going next summer, particularly if we missed out on CL again. we don't yet know if this is him pushing for an improved deal or an exit this summer. i hope it's the former. it doesn't look great either way, particularly as liverpool have already signed the lad who might have been his replacement. have they really got enough money leftover to sign isak too? and would we really let him go without a proper replacement at the start of a CL season? it would be a mike ashley move as it's hard to see who we would replace him with now. all the best CFs in europe have already moved on, time in the window is running out and every selling club would know we have an isak-sized fee to reinvest.

I have trusted the process until this point and I hope I’m wrong but this doesn’t smell good

I’ve only watched ekitike a few times but he’s definitely a lot like Isak/Henry. A versatile CF who roams out wide, drops deep to get on the ball and dribble. Not exactly a target man

I was under the impression Ekitike wasn’t a traditional number 9 and could play across the front line and at number 10, a bit like Wissa. Seems the profile of player we are targeting. I have no idea if we wanted to sign Ekitike’s to play solely as a CF but if those are his career performances to date perhaps we dId

yeah, more of an ekitike type in the sense that he can cover multiple positions

We’ve been linked with Nkunku for £40m too. I’d take a chance on him as an alternative to Wissa. There’s definitely a player there even if he hasn’t done it at Chelsea

don't try to get any songs going unless you want to prompt looks of disdain and disapproval

We have so many moronic supporters on social media, I've stopped reading the comments, they're so cringe. It's about time we bought a player ready for the present day. I'm all for getting in lads with potential for eddie to develop but we're about to start a CL campaign with a squad woefully short of quality in depth. Wissa is five years younger than Callum Wilson and an obvious upgrade. He can slot straight in and we could get four-five seasons of him at his peak. If he's available for £30m or thereabouts, it's a no-brainer. I hope we get him.

Watch Spurs swoop and give brentford the money they want.

i wish him all the worst

he was way off his levels last season - a shadow of the player who helped us to then played in the champions league. i still think there's a player in there and he is worth holding onto unless we get a crazy £30m+ bid as it would leave us two light in CM. on the plus side he's got plenty of pace, can play out wide as well as CM, has linked up well with isak and joelinton in the past and adds a different dimension to our midfield if we're chasing a game with how he can progress the ball. on the other hand, he's not a like-for-like replacement and last season our midfield looked disjointed after he came on - plus he is no longer contributing with goals and assists. i think he's a confidence player and needs minutes but he's unlikely to start many games, at least at the beginning of the season. he's bound to get a chance at some stage with all the extra fixtures so i'd give him one more season. maybe flog in january if he isn't making an impact and someone comes in for him

wow, that’s seriously impressive. How do you find your joints running that amount at your age? I dialled back on the running a couple of years back for that reason and now just play 5 a side

There are loads of players in Chelsea’s squad that Howe could improve

me too