McCreadie

More like we should say maybe maybe maybe and wait until deadline day and say no.

So exactly why is it that we all know that there is absolutely no chance of Draxler coming here, or even of us being interested.

I've been asking Arsene the same question for the last 18 years. Ka-boom-tish.

Our current reality begs to differ. If you sell players and in addition don't spend that £150m to replace them or increase the squad size to make it fit for purpose, then that's £150m less that you need to borrow. Or are they just stupid?

What the **** is going on? I wish they would just come out and say it's going to be a tough 5 years as we are going to use player sales to finance the stadium build.

Not feeling like we have it in us to battle a win under those conditions yet. Hopefully, we wont get ourselves into that position to start with...

I properly hate football sometimes

Whenever it happens, I hate the fact that we sell to direct opponents, but it makes them smaller every time we do it. "Here, have one of our cast-offs to improve your team."

Jim White. He's just like Richard Keys, but much cheaper.

How do you square that off with us being top of the "Fees Paid By Premier League Clubs To Football Agents" table, along with City then? That is not it. The reason that we are not signing 8 players in the first week of the window is because we are looking for value of some sort. We have targets and we have valuations for those targets. If we cannot get the player for the valuation (or at least around it), we walk. That has been going on for a good few years now and it is a result of the reckless scattergun approach of the first years under RA. We got taken for a ride so many times and we have had to change the approach to rebuild some sense of respect in transfer dealings. It is happening slowly, we are no longer an easy touch. Inevitably, that means we will miss out on the odd player here and there. I am fine with that. There is a balance to be had and the balance is somewhere between paying £30m for Kante, which was a steal and £100m for Lukaku, which is a complete nonsense. I would imagine that our valuation of Lukaku is around the £70m mark.

This is so much more entertaining than signing anybody.

The current World transfer record is £89.3m. That was paid for the "best" young midfielder in the World. There is no precedent for spending £100m on a striker with no 1st touch that has never played in the CL (Anderlecht dont count). I dont care how many breakaway goals Everton score after being penned in by Watford.

I never buy that argument about "free in 12 months". Nor do I see what difference it makes, because you wont get him for much less than £60m in this window. But Costa and Sanchez, for the same money as Lukaku is clearly better value as they are both better players.

Wrong. That is a £20m gamble compared to a £100m gamble. I would gamble an "Ake" on Costa any day. And just for the record, I dont give a flying one how much we spend, I just want it spent on the best players available for the money.

There are only 6 players in world football that you could not buy for £100m. Do you really think that Lukaku is one of the best 7 players in the World?