I think this rumour is nonsense personally. Likely a case of a journalist looking at a players profile, former club and throwing it out there for clickbait.
Is Gino using the good old plastic cup and string? I wonder if a 50k amount has been vibrated down the line?
If he ends up being the fabled mythical perfect-attituded (Charleroi-associated, of course) sword-in-the-stone No. 9 we've been tirelessly, painstakingly searching for all summer, I'll be a tad disappointed, I think.
Can’t be surely ? Burnsy said he thought link was nonsense so can’t have been who he was referring to. Maybe he’s the backup?
I'll be honest, even if that is the case, I won't be a great fan of the way they've gone about it, with all this stupid 'holding out for a hero' bite-age we've been repeatedly fed. It's very 'us' even if so, although we have no evidence that it is the case as it stands. Hope Burnsy is right and the Lev is wrong, once again.
If Nicholson is who we are after, we can safely assume that we’re about the 7th player down the list.
To be fair to Burnsy, my mate at the club has told me the recruitment is completely bonkers at times (can’t be much of a surprise to us). He’s seen players arrive when there wasn’t even a single mention beforehand and he’s seen players being shown around, lots of handshakes etc and then they’re never seen again.
Further to this, I was told by more than one person (that would know) that Nicholson was nonsense. At this point, I wouldn’t put it past the club not knowing who he was, seeing his name in The Athletic because AL googled for ‘Charleroi No 9’ and then they went from there. I do genuinely believe the club are so far down the rabbit hole though when it comes to this premise of ‘we have to do things different/shop in different markets’. Say it enough, and then it’s all you do!
Genuinely, how good is the Russian league? I don't imagine it's improved in stature in light of world events mind you
How is it a Mogi deal? As far as I can see Nicholson isn't represented by Bayat at all. Is it just because he used to play for Charleroi (and hence maybe a sell on)? Seems a tenuous link to Bayat at best..
Absolutely doesn't mean Bayat isn't involved, but it seems unlikely Charleroi will get a sell-on fee considering Spartak bought him for €8m according to Transfermarkt...
Wasn’t there some link to Bayat from Leventhal or someone like that recently? When he was first linked to us, if I remember correctly (which I probably don’t) there were talks of it being a Mogi deal.
Can't find anything on that, no mention of Bayat in the Athletic articles when we first linked or ALs tweets. Think people have just presumed Bayats involved due to him previously playing for Charleroi.
Well, here's Opta's top 10, based on each league's teams' collective power rankings: Note who is there, and who is not... They're currently 26th in UEFA's country coefficient, although that will also have been affected by their European ban, as the asterisk explains on the site itself:
Fair enough. Guess it was all just Twitter talk. Although, would it really shock you if Bayat was involved with signing a player from Russia?
Judging by their European qualification spots in the last season unaffected by the ban, they were ranked between 13th and 15th, on a par with where the Serbian, Norwegian and Ukrainian leagues are now (granted, that only tells you how the best teams have been performing in Europe)
Morals and whether he's actually good enough to improve us aside (I'd prefer we look elsewhere on both counts!), is this transfer feasible? Would it be possible with sanctions on the Russian state in place? I can't remember the exact details, but I seem to remember at the start of the 'special operation' players could cancel their contracts and move abroad for nothing, not sure if that avenue is still open
Fair, I asked on Twitter and the response that I got was that if the player joined before FIFA banished Russia and hasn't signed a new deal since, the rule still stands (he signed a four and a half year deal in December 2021 so I would imagine he'd be eligible under this ruling!). If I remember though, those players were technically signed on loan or something? That might be what Leventhal is alluding to
‘At best’? That makes it sound like a real leap when I could easily understand anyone coming to the conclusion Bayat is involved. Seems ridiculous to talk it down with the obvious links.
We've done deals where Bayat hasn't been the agent of the player signed, yet he's still involved, it's absolutely not a stretch to suggest he could be involved in this deal
