Summer transfer window 2026

I don't see why we'd change the model we have operated under Marinakis since he arrived of buying players who our football department think will improve the squad, improve in the squad, and ultimately return a profit, regardless of the manager's preferences or predilections. The manager clearly has input that is listened to when it fits with that strategy e.g. Cooper with MGW and Neco, and by the sounds of it Glasner with Diomande, but we don't buy for managers q.v. Nuno and Traore, and we aren’t going to start dumping and buying players en masse to suit the new manager's style. Glasner will have to make the squad he's given work, or he'll be fucked off for one who will.

I think it's a good sign that Syrianos has replaced Edu, we seem to do best when he leads recruitment.

If you recruit a manger who plays a back 3 with wing backs and you haven't got the players in the squad to play a back three and wing backs and you don't buy players to be able to play a back three and wing backs then there is a very high possibility of failure I'd say.

Saying the manager just needs to make the best of what he's got when his success has been based on a totally different system is surely madness (and I'm not saying that's not what has happened as we are run by a mad man).

Has Glasner always played that way? Will he always? Is he incapable of anything else? Is our squad completely unsuited to it? Will we have gaping holes if we try?

It seems to me like tactical rigidity and inflexibility is largely a thing of the past, and that most of our players have a good degree of adaptability. I really don't expect any kind of wholesale changes in order to support the new manager's preferred tactical starting point, nor do I expect any players to suddenly find themselves completely redundant (bar maybe the ones that already were).

I’d like to hope that Glasner is a bit more pragmatic, has more than one approach to a game, can work out what the strengths and weaknesses are in the squad he inherited and maybe gradually bring players in who can eventually adapt to what he ultimately wants. Unless we’ve just employed Ruben Amorim in disguise?

This might well be the case but we started his very first game in charge with a back three and wing backs presumably because this is his prefered formation rather than his assessment of our squad strengths and we appear to be trying to sign another centre half who he has wanted to sign for a while. I'd be very surprised if we didn't have an approach to signing players which sought to strengthen our ability to play with wing backs.

he played 4231 up to a point but has played 343 for (I think) the last few seasons. According to Palace fans, he spoke about being flexible when he started and then played 343 in every game, regardless of who was available.

I like Taiwo, Igor, and Wood enormously, but I'd still put an elite striker as top priority along with Bergvall*.
Is that Kalimuendo? Almost certainly not.

I'm also thrilled by the prospect of a system that not only gets McAtee playing well, but also includes MGW. Didn't see that coming.

*Yeah, I'm completely sold on him, but would accept an equivalent.

I'll be surprised if McAtee starts more than ten games this season tbh. Hopefully wrong.

Not gonna argue with that. I just like it when people achieve their potential.

I think there's a very good chance he starts more than that. I think there's also a very good chance that some or all of those starts are not for us.

Sporting announced the signing of Ibrahima Ba, widely presumed to be the replacement for Diomande.

It's pretty impossible to make a judgment on what McAtee will do next season, but if there was ever a good player there it's unlikely he has changed into a bad one in 12 months. He was on a par with Rogers, Palmer, Delap, Lavia, Trafford, Bobb in the city academy and I think he may have made more first team appearances under Pep than most of those, not to mention starring for a poor premier league Sheffield United team while on loan. He was starting to look handy under Vitor, before that had shown some signs under Dyche (Porto) and he could be forgiven for a patchy season given the club had a patchy season. So he may be on the up. My great concern with him is he doesn't look strong enough, but I recognise that the truth is if it were as simple as that he wouldn't even have made it through the academy at City, be of interest to Chelsea, Leverkusen, Dortmund, Brentford and he's bigger than Foden and Lewis.

Sangare, Nico Williams even Chris Wood demonstrate you can look a bit underwhelming in season 1 and still be pretty indispensable by season 2 or 3 of you survive and stick at it. He could go either way or he could just go but if he did yet turn out to be top notch it wouldn't necessarily be indicative of a glitch in the matrix.

Schlager confirmed.

Newcastle have just paid £40M for a player with 11 senior appearances, only one of which was a full 90.