27 Aug 2026 12:37:44
Seemingly we are in talks with Fiorentina after they submitted an official bid for Zirkzee.

They want a loan, and have offered a loan fee of €5m. They also want a buy clause and negotiations are underway for this.



Suspect this may well get done as best for all parties. Could well open a space for a replacement. Wonder if there are any surprises behind the scenes. Hope so.

1.) 27 Aug 2026
27 Aug 2026 13:26:00
A guaranteed loan to buy is needed, then it will be classed as a sale under SCR.

2.) 27 Aug 2026
27 Aug 2026 13:41:00
Italian clubs drive me mad.... It's always a bloody loan.

3.) 27 Aug 2026
27 Aug 2026 14:48:28
Hope they have a striker lined up. Going into the season with just Sesko is mad. Especially as he seems to pick up injuries quite a bit.

I know others can play there, but it's not their natural position, and it shows when they play there.

The team and squad need another option for out and out striker.

4.) 27 Aug 2026
27 Aug 2026 16:15:43
Watkins/Mateta.

5.) 27 Aug 2026
27 Aug 2026 16:32:24
Cunha/Mateta.

6.) 27 Aug 2026
27 Aug 2026 17:29:00
Watkins off to Saudi. It's road Mateta, most likely too expensive and honestly not good enough. Ivan Toney maybe.

7.) 27 Aug 2026
27 Aug 2026 18:07:55
Ivan Toney won't come back because tax implications. Mateta would be best we can hope for.

8.) 27 Aug 2026
27 Aug 2026 19:37:29
I've no objection to Zirkzee moving, and I'm delighted it frees up space to get a cf in to help Sesko and challenge him for a starting spot.
I've not seen us really linked with anybody all summer with any credibility to it.


Whomever it is can't do any worse than Zirkzee, it's hard to know what profile they will go for.
I've no idea at all who they will target.

9.) 27 Aug 2026
27 Aug 2026 22:08:47
Hasn't Tony earned enough? If he comes back to the Premier League, it would help him in terms of his England place. Watkins has probably harmed his own chances by going.

I would welcome a motivated Tony.

10.) 28 Aug 2026
28 Aug 2026 10:21:38
I love the idea that there is a queue of clubs fighting over signing Zirkzee. What an underwhelming player he's been. I don't even know what position to tag him with.

11.) 28 Aug 2026
28 Aug 2026 10:52:20
Mateta looks like the most likely, and he wants out of Palace, and would be a good second option to Sesko. Seems to be some noise around the lad at Freiburg, but don't know anything about him.



However, the way we have moved this summer, it could be we are working on someone that is not being discussed, so we will have to see going into the window close.

12.) 28 Aug 2026
28 Aug 2026 10:41:08
It's a tricky one, in an ideal world we'd sign a more experienced striker to rotate/challenge Sesko up front.

The problem is that it's pretty slim pickings.

Oli Watkins would probably have been the best option, but is going to Saudi for a large fee.

Ivan Toney could be an interesting option, but much like Henderson he would be forced to pay a large tax bill on his return to the UK. I believe Henderson spent a season with Ajax in the Netherlands to avoid that. Even if we could get him for a reasonable price, his wages would be excessive, especially for the role we need.

Jean-Phillpe Mateta on paper looks like a sensible choice, EPL proven, in his final year and Palace would accept a reasonable fee for him. However, his move to AC Milan broke down due to concerns that came up in his medical. Given that we pulled the plug in the Ederson deal for similar reasons, I wonder whether he is someone the club would seriously look at.

Viktor Osimhen is probably the premier option, but will cost a fortune both in fee and wages, has had injury concerns in the past, and would demand to be first choice. Which would limit Sesko's game time.

A name we haven't been linked with but who I personally think could be a good option is Marcus Thuram from Inter Milan. Strong, and quick, I don't think he'd have a issue adapting to the EPL. Has a history of also playing out wide, and can be a centre forward who creates for his teammates. At 29, is a great age to come in and challenge Sesko for a few years, but isn't necessarily going to expect to be first choice (more accepting of fighting for his place, as he has at Inter). Inter have also just brought back Pio Esposito who will push Thuram for a starting spot.

However, as we can see if we are looking for a striker who is 26-30 years old, the options are pretty slim, and certainly not ideal.

I wonder if the club might look at signing a younger, hungry, up and coming player to push/compete with Sesko. Someone who hasn't yet quite had a breakout season, and as such could be available for a reasonable fee. The kind of player who if he doesn't quite make it to the level we need that we could sell them in a couple of years for a similar fee or even a profit.

Some options could be:

Samu Aghehowa maybe from Porto (although I doubt he'd be cheap enough), Matias Fernandez-Pardo from Lille, Igor Matanovic from Freiberg, Marc Guiu from Chelsea, or Nicolo Tresoldi from Club Brugge.

I wonder if the club might go down that route to replace Zirkzee.

13.) 28 Aug 2026
28 Aug 2026 13:12:34
Am I alone in being absolutely mystified, along with being massively annoyed, at how terrible, and I do mean utterly incompetent and terrible, Man Utd are at player sales.

Delap gets sold by Chelsea for £50m despite being utterly s**** and scoring only two goals all season, including only one in the league in 28 games, and yet we are selling for half that amount for Zirkzee who is absolutely proven in Italy and scored twice as many league goals in 4 fewer games. And yet again, a bloody loan. Unbelievably s*** negotiators and terrible comms to agents, media, and rumour mills. We are absolutely atrocious at sales, the worst selling club across Europe by a country mile. Ineos have done a good, not great but good job of resetting the expectations of selling clubs, but wow, when it comes to getting rid of the players we don't want, we are useless.

Rijjnders was a crap purchase by City and yet they get £55m for him, Newcastle just blapped £55m on Njco Gonzales who has done nothing whilst at City and yet leaves for a £5m profit. Nicolas Jackson gets sold for £65m despite bombing in the Premier League and being out on three loans. What the hell is wrong with these people? And don't even start with wages because Zirkzee is on peanuts compared to Delap, Jackson or Gonzales — 50k less than Delap, same money as Gonzales and 25k less than Jackson. We cannot keep selling assets so badly just because we don't want to keep them. It doesn't cause issues for anyone else, so why do we accept this inept approach to sales?

14.) 28 Aug 2026
28 Aug 2026 14:05:50
Either way we need a striker and left back as minimum.

15.) 28 Aug 2026
28 Aug 2026 18:32:39
The Delap one I would give a little bit of a pass on. The only reason he was so cheap last summer was due to a clause in his contract, otherwise he'd have been a 50m player last summer.



He's young, homegrown, and English to boot. I can see why he went for how much he did this summer. He's certainly worth more than what Chelsea paid for him, even with his poor season last time out.

16.) 28 Aug 2026
28 Aug 2026 23:28:36
But what do you put the rest of it down to, Shappy? It's just farcical how we don't get good value, and to be fair it goes back to Fergie's days. Madrid couldn't believe how cheap we were, happy to sell Beckham for.

Stam was sold for peanuts, so were Ince and Hughes, and also van Nistelrooy. We just seek to cause our own headaches when players become unwanted.

17.) 30 Aug 2026
30 Aug 2026 11:06:53
Captain, from our perspective we tend to buy players on the way up or at their peak. Which tends to mean we spend large fees and we pay big wages.

Whereas, we typically sell players when they are on the way down, or when they've fallen out with the club/manager.

Buying and selling football players is heavily impacted by perspective and opinion. While they also have factor in the total cost and the potential reward/value of the deal.

Signing a player who is potentially on a downward trajectory, and will cost a lot in terms of wages is a bigger risk, to offset that risk you can't be paying big transfer fees as well.

As a club we have also had a tendency (more so over the last decade) of holding on to players for too long hoping they will come good. One of the things I really liked about Omar Barrada when he was first linked to the CEO role was one of his quotes from his time at City. Where he basically says that new signings should be given no more than two seasons to prove themselves. One year to settle, but if you aren't doing what the club want/expect in your second season then it's time for the club to move you on before you lose too much value; while also opening up space in the squad for the club to bring in a new player who will offer more on the pitch.

Clubs like Chelsea are an anomaly compared to other clubs of a similar size. They have a transfer model that includes buying up a lot of high potential young players, keeping some at the club who could provide value that season and loaning out the others to continue their development. They also tend to sign these players at the 10-30m price bracket. Then the ones that fill a need at the club are kept, and the others are sold. It's a fairly unique strategy, which so far has had mixed success in terms of money made, and even less success on the pitch.

If you look at the majority of the players we have sold, we have sold them because we wanted them gone. Whether that is Ince, Beckham or Stam who had all rubbed up Sir Alex the wrong way, or RvN who the club felt was likely to start to decline and he had fallen out with Ronaldo.

Speaking of which, we didn't want to sell Ronaldo and he went for 80m. Which proves the point.

All that said, I'm not entirely sure that all of the deals we are seeing currently are 100% genuine. I feel like there are some shady under the table agreements in place to help clubs manipulate their club finances to circumvent all the new FFP type rules.

I think their was some questions raised when Newcastle sold Elliott Anderson to Nottingham Forest for what seemed like an inflated fee at the time given his age and experience, while Newcastle also paid a similarly high fee for Vlachodimos as a back up keeper. I think the idea was that Anderson's high fee would count entirely as profit, while the fee paid for Vlachodimos would be spread over several years. Or something like that anyway.

So there does seem to be some odd business happening, and some questionable fees being paid.

That said there is also an element of the EPL clubs becoming much wealthier than most European clubs, and as such the EPL market is becoming inflated. Clubs from the continent are charging more because they know EPL clubs have more money, which increases the risk of signing non-EPL proven players, leading to clubs preferring to make key signings from within the EPL, but of course those players fees are increasing because those EPL clubs have less need to sell than their European counterparts.