[SIGNED perm] William Troost-ekong

How many loan players are you allowed nowadays? And when we upset the Holloway and the media we essentially closed the ‘international loans don’t count’ rule.

 

Sounds like just the dud Pozzo squad filler then.

 

Oh well that's just lovely. So glad we've been bankrolling them for the last few years with our TV money going across there in mysterious player trading fees, now they're not prepared to move a player across to us that actually might improve the squad.

 

Yeah, they should be grateful for us, or else they'd be *checks notes* slumming it out in the Europa League!

 

To be fair surely its in Udinese's best interest that we get back to the Premier League as the TV money has basically been bankrolling them over the last couple of years.

 

Fact is presumably they’d be in Serie B without our “solidarity” payments over the years.

 

Good article on him here about his time in private school in Bishops Stortford.
https://www.bishopsstortfordindepen...ey-from-bishop-s-stortford-to-russia-9054642/

Can we not swap him for Pereyra? He wants out back to Italy.

 

I've seen him play a few times for Nigeria and in 2 matches for Udinese, looked decent. Good presence in the box, attacked the ball well defending set pieces.

Would be happy with this signing, strong, tall, experienced qnd fairly mobile centre back.
A huge upgrade on Mapps.

 

Unfortunately Pereyra looks like being their de Paul replacement (poor them, even though Pereyra could do well back there again, I doubt he does as well as de Paul!)

Yeah, Nigeria captain with Serie A experience in the Championship? Sign me up! Probably wouldn't be the man to help progress us if we were still in the Premier League, but in the Championship, he'd surely be good

 

Pereyra doesn't suit the speed of the English game, Spain or Italy better for him

 

So would I. But sounds like we will only get the other bloke who couldn’t break into a Serie B side.

 

Leventhal’s tweet said ‘less keen to lose him’ which I didn’t take to mean ‘no chance’.

I interpreted it as meaning there’s negotiation to be done.

If it doesn’t come off, it shows we are at least looking to sign more than one centre back this summer, so presumably we’d then look elsewhere. .

 

I'm sure they will happily swap him for Pereyra

 

Gino agrees to clean Papa Pozzo's car and this deal is done IMO

 

Hope this goes through. The only player I've seen us linked with that looks like an obvious improvement on what we've got.

 

Which is the reason it won’t happen. Have we ever taken one of their first team players against their will?

 

No idea. I doubt the first batch of loanee's had ever heard of Watford. Maybe we should ask Holebas to put in a good word?

 

Yes but they weren't first team players for Udinese.

 

Heaven must be missing an angel?

 

Fair point. We'll see. We're mostly making assumptions on unreliable news reports. Every chance he ends up playing for us next season imo.

 

Tavares' songs done to death on the other thread I'm afraid.

 

Which thread...looks like I’ve missed that one.

 

Can't remember whodunnit now.

EDIT - last page of the danny welbeck thread....

 

Whilst they must have scouted them at some stage before they moved to Udinese, it really doesn’t say a lot for our ability to scout a decent CB when we are heavily linked with 2 that the owners already have rights to.

I just think the club are completely uninterested in putting any effort into finding quality CB’s for us - that’s not to say either of these 2 linked won’t come up trumps. But I do think it’s a sign of laziness or inability to source a fresh name.

 

It could just be that we're skint and they'd require significantly less of an outlay.

 

Of course it COULD be that...but I’d be very surprised if we were skint (yet) after 5 years in the PL.

It’s a strange one. Troost-Ekong sounds better than what we have but it’s not a certainty. Just my opinion but I take it as a sign of more lazy/incapable scouting of defenders.

 

A swap deal on the cards with Pererya going to Udinese

https://messaggeroveneto.gelocal.it...a-potrebbe-partire-ekong-1.39222331?ref=twfmv

 

Our new Director of Football joined us from Udinese so surely its natural and logical that his first moves will be to stick with players he is most familiar with and that we can get a little bit easier than from a non Pozzo club.

There’s a global pandemic right now and a huge recession too. We don’t have a bottomless wallet to go out and invest in new players. We are a Championship club now too.

We have been linked with players from outside the Pozzo pool too. Only this morning we were linked with a very promising Everton defender.

I just don’t get all the negativity sometimes. Let’s judge the window once it’s over. Not the world of rumour and counter rumour as played out on social media. We will know soon enough who is leaving and who is joining, and only then can we really make a proper assessment.

 

Who?

 

You mean Lewis Gibson? Where did you see that link? I pointed out a few days ago that he was another client of Tavares.

I doubt we'd sign both T-E and Gibson, in addition to Sierralta, unless we were planning to replace all of our main CBs from last season (which I wouldn't be adverse to).

 

Talking of Gibson, surprising we haven’t been linked with Ben Gibson again.

 

Talking of Gibsons, does anyone know if Nigel Gibbs has a son?

 

Angella was wasn't he?

 

Yeah but he's called Gibbsson and we only consider players called Gibson. He was gutted.

 

I think Malts is talking about Jarrad Branthwaite. Supposedly reliable sources on Twitter have said we have insisted on taking him on loan if we are to allow Doucoure to head to Everton.