2023/2024 Forwards Rumours Thread

[qb4ever_2k]

Balogun seems like an interesting idea. I reckon he wouldnt be more expensive than Lukaku in term of annual costs, but we will have to commit finances for years. If he doesn't work out, it will be catastrophic for us. Another question is if the downgrade in quality from Lukaku to Balogun worth the future upside potential. Balogun is only 22 and had better numbers in L1 than Osimhen in his last season there.

 

[Dave54]

He did not do much today, but that was his first game for NT. I feel at least he is better than Correa.

 

[sdvroot]

Balogun 40m, so doubtful deal

 

[RotterdamNerazzurri]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1669462822114189312

https://twitter.com/x/status/1669461253054406656

He seems like a forward with pace and good dribbling. His first touch need a lot of work tho imo.

I do like these kind of investments. But i really don’t know this Balogun guy. How is het rated by Arsenal for example? They don’t really have a worldclass forward line, why doesn’t he get a change there?

 

[IM21]

10M signing fee... wtf

https://twitter.com/x/status/1669780747928870922

 

[IM21]

Pedulla - The attack is a question mark: Firmino is not a target, Retegui could arrive.

 

[wera]

Y u make me sad

 

[vex]

Pedulla - The attack is a question mark: Firmino is not a target, Retegui could arrive.

Yeah, this is a problem... Not many good options, and even ones that are available are sought after by other clubs with more money...
We will probably have to shoot in the dark and bring someone with a huge question mark above his head.

With dzeko leaving as well, I kinda wish lukaku stays tbh, as bad as he can be he still gives some level of certainty...

 

[Ares]

Jesus, my friend, you live under a rock or you`re smoking something goood!
What kind of part of "we are broke", you don`t realise. All these players you maintain will cost us north of 100m, which we don`t have. And we need to trim the cost anyway.
Wake up to the reality, bro!. We are not in the `90 anymore. Moratti is an old fart and Berlusconi kicked the bucket.

I perfectly understand your view, but let me explain a bit.
Scalvini is a solid defensive option and could be an asset for the years to come, so would be smart to take him and fix our defense as an european level, lets assume +30M for him, maybe loan at first year as often done in the past.
SMS is on his last year of contract with Lazio, so his price will be lower than the real market value, making the operation profitable even if we should resell him after a couple of seasons, lets say another 30M.
Hakimi will be feasable only with a Lukaku formula, loan with PSG contribution, looking what is happenening in their HQ recently can be a only a suggestion or maybe not.
Retegui is a real striker, more clinical than Lukaku and more physical than Lautaro, in my opinion a very good option to support our style of play assuming Inzaghi as our coach for the next 2/3 years, other 20M.
For 4 players we are going to spend a 80M budget, while getting rid of Correa, 20M or less, for Retegui with same value, and probably Dumfries, 35M, to make room for Hakimi, probably Brozovic, other 35M, in a swap with SMS at almost same price, to end mercato with minor operations with youngsters and reach the amount necessary for Scalvini.
I don't see impossible to take more functional players while improving our roster, depsite having to say goodbye to other players like Brozo or Denzel, this is how the whole system goes and player trading is a common way to improve competitivity while avoiding make more debts, Marotta showed us that even selling big names is still possible to reach UCL final and win domestic trophies, while when PSG and PL teams spending billions barely win anything, not to mention Barca and their debts.

 

[sdvroot]

I perfectly understand your view, but let me explain a bit.
Scalvini is a solid defensive option and could be an asset for the years to come, so would be smart to take him and fix our defense as an european level, lets assume +30M for him, maybe loan at first year as often done in the past.
SMS is on his last year of contract with Lazio, so his price will be lower than the real market value, making the operation profitable even if we should resell him after a couple of seasons, lets say another 30M.
Hakimi will be feasable only with a Lukaku formula, loan with PSG contribution, looking what is happenening in their HQ recently can be a only a suggestion or maybe not.
Retegui is a real striker, more clinical than Lukaku and more physical than Lautaro, in my opinion a very good option to support our style of play assuming Inzaghi as our coach for the next 2/3 years, other 20M.
For 4 players we are going to spend a 80M budget, while getting rid of Correa, 20M or less, for Retegui with same value, and probably Dumfries, 35M, to make room for Hakimi, probably Brozovic, other 35M, in a swap with SMS at almost same price, to end mercato with minor operations with youngsters and reach the amount necessary for Scalvini.
I don't see impossible to take more functional players while improving our roster, depsite having to say goodbye to other players like Brozo or Denzel, this is how the whole system goes and player trading is a common way to improve competitivity while avoiding make more debts, Marotta showed us that even selling big names is still possible to reach UCL final and win domestic trophies, while when PSG and PL teams spending billions barely win anything, not to mention Barca and their debts.

Even if your calculations in cashflow sales and purchases are 0, they will definitely sink in salaries, as we have a course to reduce costs by this indicator, it brings us minus 60 million annually (last year I think it was less, we managed to reduce it a little to minus 50 million) You don't want to have minus 50 million again at the beginning of the next summer transfer window, do you?

 

[andrei]

It would be ideal if we could get these players. But I don`t buy by any means the numbers. Correa is not worth 20m. the dude barely played in 2 years and has already a bad reputation. I don`t see anyone giving 20m for a 29yo player who in the last 2 years was shit. And don`t forget, we cannot sell him without his accept. And he will not accept a transfer where he will earn less that now. So, more or less impossible for the 20m you wish. Brozo won`t fetch 35m. Still a good player but 31yo with big salary. Not too many options. Dumfries also 35m? Good luck with that!

SMS with 30m fee and 6m net salary is aprox 17m annual cost. Scalvini cost will be lower but not too much. PSG will have probably other options more attractive than to pay Hakimi to be here. Sorry mate, it would be super, but nearly impossible.

 

[brehme1989]

Retegui doesn't seem like a bad option but it feels like his ceiling is some sort of top-half team situation.

 

[Ares]

Even if your calculations in cashflow sales and purchases are 0, they will definitely sink in salaries, as we have a course to reduce costs by this indicator, it brings us minus 60 million annually (last year I think it was less, we managed to reduce it a little to minus 50 million) You don't want to have minus 50 million again at the beginning of the next summer transfer window, do you?

To fix that you should not pay any big wage at all, sorry but Inter is not Napoli and this is not going to happen, big clubs will always sing big names otherwise they will lose their sponsors very quickly, as we have experimented on ourselfs in the recent past.
The minus 50M is there because we miss revenues that EPL and few other big clubs in Europe can get, we are living on the edge of a financial default as many other clubs and if you want to fix it there's only one way unfortunately: keep investing on strategic and valuable assets, till the point that sport results will increase the revenues and match your expenses.
This is why no matter how broke we are, we can get loans from founds and investors, because the value of the team is higher than the amount we ask for.
If you start signing less valuable players you'll came out struggling reaching UCL spot and losing attractivness to big names, thus reducing further sponsors support and club value in general.
What Suning has done until 2020 has been investing beyond possibilities, and now they are getting trophies and good contracts from sponsors, while reaching a 1.2 billion of value.
Please remember that Thohir sold the club to Zhang for around 500M, after purchasing it from Moratti for around 350M.
If we keep up with good results the value will keep rising, but since investors don't evaluate a club just on its results but also for the assets it has inside, we shall keep big names no matter how much we lose every year.
When the time will come, Zhang will sell the club and be sure they are not going to lose any money doing so.
Lots of companies have huge debts with financial operator such as banks and so, but as long as they can operate big numbers on the market they are valuable assets for those investors, all is related on the company value.

 

[CafeCordoba]

This is forward rumors thread.

 

[Ares]

It would be ideal if we could get these players. But I don`t buy by any means the numbers. Correa is not worth 20m. the dude barely played in 2 years and has already a bad reputation. I don`t see anyone giving 20m for a 29yo player who in the last 2 years was shit. And don`t forget, we cannot sell him without his accept. And he will not accept a transfer where he will earn less that now. So, more or less impossible for the 20m you wish. Brozo won`t fetch 35m. Still a good player but 31yo with big salary. Not too many options. Dumfries also 35m? Good luck with that!

SMS with 30m fee and 6m net salary is aprox 17m annual cost. Scalvini cost will be lower but not too much. PSG will have probably other options more attractive than to pay Hakimi to be here. Sorry mate, it would be super, but nearly impossible.

Maybe the numbers are too optimistic, you can still reducing them by 20% and you'll see we are not far from our goal.
Further than that, please consider that there's still the possibility that we are keeping other names in our portfolio, such as Koulibaly instead of Scalvini for example, that will cost less while being good players for us.
Also, mercato is always a bit crazy, don't forget that EPL is on completely different standards and players like Rice or Maguire have reached values that are absurd while being just good players, Man City struggled against us proving that there's no direct relation between club value and sportive performance, so Dumfries could be definitely being evaluated 35M for teams like Chelsea or Newcastle.

 

[CafeCordoba]

Seriously, stop this talk about overall costs. There are other threads for this discussion.

 

[Ares]

This is forward rumors thread.

I'm sorry, went a bit off topic

 

[Dave54]

He seems like a forward with pace and good dribbling. His first touch need a lot of work tho imo.

I do like these kind of investments. But i really don’t know this Balogun guy. How is het rated by Arsenal for example? They don’t really have a worldclass forward line, why doesn’t he get a change there?

He was loaned to Reims, League 1. Scored 21 goals and 3 assists in 37 games. Reims finished 11 in the table. So in that respect, he did great.

 

[satubito]

Balogun looked great tonight playing for the US. Don't know how we are gonna a pull it off. Hope we try and get him.

 

[Capo]

Isn’t it obvious?

No money = No forwards.

Lukaku is our only option, and will be heavily reduced because is he will stonewall Chelsea.

Dzeko, Correa will fuck off.

So the only question who is cheap enough to replace them. And circa 20M > and with net salary for 3/4M