Transfers in/out & rumours 2024

On this ... They announced it at almost exactly midnight on 1 July. Feels quite deliberate. Presumably to put it into the next accounting window.

Although Newcastle need it to be the other way around. So presumably not. In which case, why midnight?

According to the url, the post is dated 30th June (and presumably there's an audit log that confirms that). Gives some proof in case the PL question whether it was actually completed in the 23/24 financial year.

Regarding the timing of annoucments, shouldn't we have heard about Mangala and Moussa by now?

And likely bollocks. I've heard £2M and the win is that we have cleared him off the wage bill without a hit to our own position, which is a decent win and a more realistic one.

The reality seems to be that we have plumped for Anderson as an opportunity that wasn't expected and only occurred because of Newcastle's financial position. They didn't want to sell him, he's a highly thought of prospect, and we have paid a sizeable fee of which a chunk is probably phased or linked to objectives. We have met our own PSR needs by selling Mangala and Niakhate for impressive fees to Lyon and the costs for Anderson will not impact that due to signing right at the end of the accounting period.

Assuming it has all worked to balance our books, it feels like a good couple of weeks business even in that less sensational framing.

Yeah. One of the Newcastle beat writers said was £4-5M.

Which would be fine except for the 35M elephant in the room.

There were plenty of people scoffing at us paying the same for MGW.

We overpaid for MGW. It just turned out that he was worth it.

Which means that we didn’t overpay for him.

We have no idea how good he is, he was well thought of. Gareth wanted him to declare for England so he must have thought there was potential.

We have made some good decisions and some bad.

Was £10m plus a lot for a defender who had only played a few games in Brazil?

I also wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a quid pro quo down the line with Newcastle.

I prefer to look on the positive side. We definitely had the better bargaining position on this deal, so there must have been a good reason we were willing to pay that much.

More that we took a huge risk, and didn’t leave all that much room for financial upside… as demonstrated by the fact that he’s an unattractive sale from an FFP point of view because the base cost was so high.

If we’d paid £40m for Murillo I assume everyone would agree we’d overpaid… even though he’s worth more than that. It’s the same principle.

Or maybe he isn't just a financial asset, but also a playing asset that helped us avoid relegation twice, with the consequent increased income.

Similar to Cole Palmer.
Anderson is, imo, not at that level. But he's got more potential than most signings I'd expect us to make. £20M would have been an excellent price all round, even £25M. The difference looks like PSR gamesmanship.

My toon supporting colleague reckons he's the best they've brought through since Gazza.

Pre-injury, I've been told the same.