goodrobotusses

Not just obvious stepping-stone clubs like United. Haaland has one in his City contract.

I wouldn't be surprised if, on top of big wages, Yoro's people negotiate a release clause in his United contract that will become active 2-3 years down the line.

I don't think the fee was going to be an issue. I doubt even Madrid are/were going to offer him the wages United are supposedly offering, not as a first contract for a teenage defender. I think we would have only ever offered him "realistic" wages, meaning the only way he would have been coming to us was if Madrid decided not to pursue and if he said no to United regardless of the deal they offered him. It's tempting to get annoyed by all this, but I can't get too rattled about a teenage defender, knowing we've pretty much always operated like this under FSG/Edwards, setting a price on a player internally and dropping out when the external price gets too high. Haha, I'm traumatised by the word "mangé". My wife's Montenegrin aunt doesn't speak English so exhorts me to eat at dinner by yelling "Mangé! Mangé!" in my direction, thinking I'm more likely to understand if she's not telling me in Serbo-Croatian.

We still need a CB for sure. A 33-year-old VvD, injury-prone Konate and Gomez, and a developing Quansah as our options is too great a risk in what could be another long season. (I'm assuming here that van den Berg is, a) going, and b) not good enough.) If one of Konate or Gomez had a guaranteed availability rate (and Gomez were always as consistent as last season or 19-20), I'd still want us looking for a long-term VvD replacement, but overall be comfortable with our options, knowing Quansah would get game time to develop but not potentially be forced into playing the entire season.

On the mooted United salary offer to Yoro, just done a bit of cursory research, and this is roughly what our non-VvD/TAA defenders are earning: Robertson, £5.2m a year Gomez, £4.4m a year Konate, £3.6m a year Not making excuses if we have fluffed the Yoro thing, but the knock-on effect on other, older members of the squad were we to match United's alleged contract offer (£5.9m-£7.5m) wouldn't be nothing.

He's just shy of 6ft, heard on a podcast earlier that he only wins something like one in every two aerial duels.

That German Sky Sports lad suggests United have offered Yoro around £113k-£145k per week gross depending on bonuses. Can argue that's the going rate for star potential, but still a lot for an 18 year old CB.

If they sign them both, and they have offered Yoro massive wages for an 18 year old, that's a hell of a lot to spend on players who can reasonably expect their deals to be bumped up with time. De Ligt has had Raiola/Pimenta-facilitated moves to Juve and Bayern and is already on €15m a year at 24. Hasn't even always been a guaranteed starter at Bayern.

Haha, oops, I've embarrassed myself claiming that United are probably embarrassing themselves sticking a bid in for Yoro when he only wants Madrid. Either Sir Jim and United's new boys are cannier operators than assumed/hoped, our new/old lot have dropped the ball, or United have simply offered him such an insane wedge for an 18 year old that the player has decided Madrid isn't such a priority after all.

Perhaps, but the reputable journalists seem to think he's a special case. If he's that good, he might even play right away alongside VvD while at the same time being his long-term replacement.

After Caicedo, don't think we're bidding for a player who hasn't verbally agreed to come to us. If the Madrid thing falls through, and he's interested in coming to us, we'd put a bid in. United are almost certainly just embarrassing themselves.

Potter and Howe seem to be the names being mentioned most. Apparently Howe would have to take a pay cut if he wanted the job, so even though he's the better candidate, I reckon it'll be Potter, who will probably crash and burn. Potter's teams play nice football and all, but they also seem allergic to putting the thing in the f***ing net, plus he'll get no training time to work on all those pretty formations and patterns of play that get you 0-0, 1-1 and 0-1 results. Think he has been mentioned too. FA insider and has done well with the U21s.

Hair straightener?

No messing with the reds next season…

Haha, yeah, if we give them a swap deal involving Joe Gomez there would be no difference in pronunciation.

This is a player I knew nothing about, but having just watched a couple if YouTube clips, including one of him at Flamengo, I now know next to nothing about him. However, what I will say – knowing that YouTube clips never focus only on the good bits – is that I saw a player winning the ball back loads, beating attempts to press him in close quarters and then launching attacks either by driving forward with the ball or spraying it out to the wings. I also read that he's someone we've been tracking since his days in Brazil and he even spoke about liking LFC back in 2022. Interesting. We'd definitely have to sell Joe Gomez if we bought him though.

You can just about hear the coach explain that the glasses function a bit like blinkers, meaning the players have to turn their heads more to scan for team-mates and opponents.

Another pre-season vid. Nothing earth-shattering. Slot gets involved in the rondos and looks like the keepers are doing some possession work with the new keeper coach.

Second Bundesliga player this summer after Kimmich to have these "I want to go to one of the following clubs" stories put out by the German media. All a bit presumptuous.

Couple of thoughts on this: Slot's fitness guy is a disciple of the same theory (periodisation) as Raymond the Fitness Egg. Hopefully he doesn't have a Twitter account. This all sounds good in theory, but the proof will be in the pudding of a 20-team league that is way more intense than the Eredivisie and three cup competitions we can reasonably expect to go deep in.

Think he's the Netherlands' all-time top scorer yet I don't think I've ever seen him have a good game. He must have done, I think I just keep missing them.

He's a multifunctional kind of player. Can eat a banana in one go.

Game probably of less relevance by this point, but Darwin also missed a couple of pretty presentable chances at 0-0:

"I can smell your biome, Mo. Give me your turds."

Burnt by Caicedo. Yeah but the goal he scored vs Bayern in last season's Super Cup was magnificent. He can miss 30 games a season if he scores one of them, Thiago vs Porto style.