David Kelly

I'd like to think there is a way to reintegrate him but I can't see it. I think the most likely scenario at the moment is indeed that we are both losers.

I have been in complete agreement about this for weeks. But, I now can't see any way that he plays for us again. So keeping him only means we still have no strikers to play and don't have the money to spend going forward. Is there any benefit to us to do that as long as we can save face in terms of the price we receive?

I don't think all 3 have to be in place any more. If someone comes in with £150m I think we will accept it. His value is never going to increase now because a) His contract is going to run down further and b) He doesn't want to be here so the chances of his performance improving, in the unlikely scenario he plays any more, are nil. So what do we do? Keep a depreciating asset for the next 3 years who we never get any use from. Or take the maximum value we can get now? I think there is a fair chance we end up without any replacement either way so we may as well have the money. From a sporting point of view the only real impact it will have is on the buying club because, in the short term, we're probably fucked either way. I would say I'm not convinced anyone will come up with that offer though. I think it's likely that Liverpool try again with the same or maybe a slightly improved offer in an attempt to take advantage of us. The statement we've issued makes it pretty clear that isn't acceptable though.

While I don't think he seem to have conducted himself great, it seems that what he has actually done is ask to leave their overseas preseason trip to try and sort out his future and taken Brentford off his social media. I don't think that's quite up to Isak's level of pretending he's injured, fucking off to another country and refusing to play. It would be hypocritical to really call out Isak and not recognise the similarities with Wissa though. Football fans are a fickle lot though and I fully expect Isak to be welcomed back if he were to say he wanted to stay and started scoring goals again. Even if he'd never get the same love he had previously.

I think Osula showed in the preseason games why he wasn't played last season. He's not good enough and Howe knows it. Had we the option I don't think he'd still be here now. Maybe it would have been a loan away but I think he'd have gone.

I was thinking about this before actually. I remember the Cambridge cup game which may have been Trippiers debut. We were still a pretty poor side then but improving but you could see how much we were lacking a striker. We brought in Wood not long after and for all he didn't do great for us, he allowed us to move further up the field and become much more of a goal threat. We are in a similar position now but with a much better team behind. We're kind of at the point where any striker would make a difference but then we also had Wilson (a good striker) to come back from injury. Now we have no one to come back. It would be terrible if we just brought in someone who we don't want just have a striker, but it would be much worse if we brought in no one at all.

Strand Larsen seems to be a very different type of striker to what we've had and others we are said to be after. I fully admit I've not seen loads of him but what I have he looks like the big lump up front type rather than a pacy goal scorer. More like Chris Wood than Isak. It seems unlikely that we would be looking at the likes of Wissa, Jackson and Watkins but also be considering him. You're not going to play the same way to him as you are the others. And I don't think he looks great either.

There's only so far I'd be content with going on allowing the piss to be taken out of us, but there can be absolutely no doubt that be the time we play Leeds we have to do whatever it takes to have either two strikers in or one and Isak somehow reintegrated into the team (clue, it won't be the latter).

Can we afford to be worrying about value for money at this point? We have to have two strikers available by the end of the month.

Signing both Wisa and Jackson is pretty short term thinking given that we'd miss both of them during the AFCON. Not to mention signing Jackson makes us look even more stupid when we've already missed out on the two players Chelsea have signed to replace him.

I don't think striking is ever acceptable in situations like this though. It's an insult to the paying public. There may me some mitigation if such an agreement exists but it also strikes me that if you believe there is one, you could also choose to believe Isak told us months/a year ago that he wanted to leave. One or the other or neither may be true but if Wissa does what Isak has done then he's no better in my eyes and condoning it only makes it more likely to happing again.

I've definitely read in other cases that the club has the option. Like I say, this may not be accurate, and it particularly may be untrue in his case.

I'm certainly happy to hold my hands up if I'm wrong about the contract, social media is definitely a mine of misinformation. And I agree I'd pay a premium to get it done at this point. Wissa doesn't excite but you can be fairly confident that he will score a decent amount of goals for us. And if anyone wasn't paying attention before, Saturday made it even more clear that we are in a desperate position striker wise. The longer this goes on, the more likely it becomes that other clubs will try to take advantage of that.

I don't think you can blame Brentford here. They can see our mess and they've just had their arses handed to them by Forrest. They don't want to lose their best remaining player who has effectively two years left on his contract (from what I've read it's an option they can take up) so why should they allow him to leave cheaply any more than we should with Isak. If he goes on strike there I'd think no more of him than I do of Isak so I'd certainly not be happy seeing him do that.

Much higher chance Wissa would be involved if we signed him because of the sheer lack of options. As any deal for him is further away than the deal for Ramsey there's zero chance of anyone but Gordon starting up front on Saturday.

Dunno, I just read his tweet. Do you really think we've not got some informal agreement not to play him anyway though? I'm sure we'd be happy to agree to that as long as we have Bruno, Tonali, Joelinton and Miley fit.

Unlikely to go through in time to play this weekend according to Hope. Not that I assume anyone thought we'd be playing him against Villa.

That cunt Romano says Ramsey travelling for a medical now.

So do I actually. But it's criminal starting the season without a striker.

You can't start a season with any position where you don't have a starter let alone that position being striker. I can't be positive about a window that has left us in that position. That doesn't mean I see no positives for the future, it just means the window has been poor. For this weekend, even if Wissa training with us now I don't see how we could expect him to start this weekend. He's not played any friendlies this summer for Brentford so even in our dire situation, a few minutes off the bench would be the best we'd be able to expect.

Nah the Georgian left winger.

I'd rather go for the potential in someone like him than Jackson. It might backfire but I can't see Jackson ever being massively successful. If we are wanting to use the money off a massive sale to really kick on then we surely would have to be using it on players who could potentially take us forward than for ones who are a stop gap.

We could have dived in there as soon as it was clear Mbuemo wanted to go there. If we had acted decisively there it would have been Man U waiting for Brentford to sign a replacement rather than us. I can only assume we thought we could sign other priority players who were ahead of Wissa on our list first. We've only went down the Wissa route once we got knocked back.

Maybe not, or maybe after a season he would be ready to go for a better sporting project on say £150k a week. May be a non starter I'm just surprised there's be no talk of it.

Yeah I think a lot of what you say is fair enough. But the striker situation means it's nowhere near a decent window for me. I accept we are going to have to have a striker who isn't as good as Isak but having two players who can make a contribution could possibly cover that or even make us stronger overall. But having no one to start the season is not something we can change now so we're never going to get to the point where this has been a good window.