Ex Lion Tamer

ITKs are telling us we're in financial trouble, but now we're offering favourable terms for Paintsil 🤔

I like JWP, don't get me wrong, but that golf celebration is lame and embarrassing IMO

Hate goal music. Would be interesting to have a poll on this

Although his contract expires next summer, Swansea have just said there's an option for a further 12 months. That changes everything to be honest - I'm not sure we can get this deal done now. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/66580284#:~:text=The England Under-21 defender,for a further 12 months.

It's also great that we're signing players who 1) fit Martin's passing style, and 2) are more vocal than what we've had before. There is a strategy here which, whether or not it works, has been thought through pretty carefully

Are they underwhelming though? Holgate and Fraser have a ton of Premier League games under their belts. They ought to do well at this level and will be the envy of most teams. Charles looks quality. Downes has already excelled in this league in the past. Manning has looked a bit shaky, granted, and we need a top striker if Che leaves

To be fair, I remember reading a year ago that that we were planning to invest heavily at first to get the pipeline going and then become self-sustaining. I had hoped the spending might continue this summer but apparently not. The spending of the last year has got people thinking Solak is going to invest billions but that was never the case. Basically it's always been Gao but with big upfront spending, a more detailed strategy and a multi club model. What you can say is that we are still investing heavily in a couple of young players with big potential resale value - Charles and hopefully Wood. Getting the older players to complement them means looking at the loan market it appears. The interesting question is which bracket a striker (Che's replacement) will fall into

Proof is in the pudding obviously but we have an opportunity to replace Che with someone who can actually make the step up to the Premier League if we get promoted

Feels like people have forgotten what league we're in again. Fraser is a quality signing at this level

If Leeds have outbid us for Piroe then it's worth bearing in mind how badly they've managed their affairs in recent years, losing players for low fees this summer due to reckless contractual conditions. It's not an automatic that we should have matched them

Interesting that we've gone from assuming that we can't buy players until we sell, to assuming we're buying players because we intend to sell

Plus it's hard to see Rasmus sticking around for a cynical money making exercise. He needs visible success to fuel his management guru / Ted talk shtick

An unnamed club has bid for Nathan Wood and it may well be us

Makes me think he is on his way and we're trying to manage fan opinion?

I know some people have a low opinion of our board but they (the board) would have to be raving lunatics to look at the sales of Lavia and Tino and think, "right, the thing to do now isn't to invest in new young talent, but to try to get back the money we spent last year".

Charles is an investment where we're likely to get our money back with interest, so it's easy to justify the outlay. Plus Lavia was heavily in demand so his departure was pretty likely. Piroe is 24 and reaching his peak so his sell-on value is much more uncertain, and we may still not get an acceptable bid for Adams. So harder to push the button until we need to

Hopefully we've given Everton/Che a deadline to agree a move which leaves time for us to find a replacement. Otherwise he stays

Both players are out of contract next summer and Swansea can't afford to let them go for free. It's a waiting game but we're holding the lube

Selling players when they want to leave helps us to attract other top young players

I think this possibility is underpriced. It may well be that Che is quite happy to wait and run down his contract but the club want him out to realise some value

Had a great season in the Scottish Premiership last season but fairly dry the previous two (including one in the Belgian league where Onuachu scored a hatful). Interesting one.

Would be Che would be a better finisher if he had more confidence, not less

In fairness, if your team is losing every week then your main job is to try to keep up morale and be positive. If your team is mostly winning and scoring freely then you can afford to call out the odd bad half

This is right. It all happened quite fast but KWP had to hold back and cover the far post and needed Bednarek to recognise that the player was coming into his area