2026 Summer Transfer Window Thread

Peter Baxendale Thomas said:
Jesus Christ
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I know

At this point it will probably be right as well

Fuck knows what is going on but this window does seem to be going badly wrong.

I was chilled out until this week but we've never gone this late to land at least some targets we've never publically wrangled this much over so little.

Potentially two key signings lost over relative pennies in the end
 
Pope John XXIII said:
I know

At this point it will probably be right as well

Fuck knows what is going on but this window does seem to be going badly wrong.

I was chilled out until this week but we've never gone this late to land at least some targets we've never publically wrangled this much over so little.

Potentially two key signings lost over relative pennies in the end
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This is the source - https://maisfutebol.iol.pt/sporting...para-o-nottingham-forest-caiu#google_vignette

Translates as:

Negotiations between Sporting and Nottingham Forest regarding Ousmane Diomande have collapsed, according to information obtained by Maisfutebol.

A major disagreement between the clubs' leadership led to the deal falling through; notably, the transfer was being discussed at a valuation of around €40 million.

At this stage, only a significant turnaround in relations would allow Diomande to move to Nottingham Forest during the current summer transfer window.

Due to the talks with the English club, Ousmane Diomande missed all of Sporting's pre-season friendly matches. Unless the situation changes, the Ivorian defender—who is under contract until June 2030—could soon be available to Rui Borges again.
 
Strett said:
He was 28 only a week ago, so for me he's in his prime.
We have a top coach and ambition unbounded. When do we start acting like the club we want to be, rather than the club we are trying to move on from?

Not all transfers have to make money. I would prefer we paid £55m for Reindeers, than £55m for Bergvall.
Sometimes you get lucky mining for gold, sometimes you have to buy the gold as you see its value.

I'd be proper excited with this signing.
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If we are paying that sort of money I would want them to be younger and/or better than Reijnders. I rate him as a player but he is overpriced at that amount.
 
Tijjani Reijnders' Man City career could be over after just one season, with Nottingham Forest emerging as the leading contenders to sign the Dutch midfielder this summer.

Reijnders arrived at the Etihad for £46.3million last summer as Pep Guardiola reshaped his midfield following the departures of Kevin De Bruyne and Ilkay Gundogan, with Rayan Cherki also brought in as part of the same rebuild. It never quite clicked. Across 47 appearances in all competitions, only 19 of his 28 Premier League outings came from the start, and reports suggest the 28-year-old felt increasingly marginalised under Guardiola as last season wore on.

Now, with City reportedly open to offers in the region of £50million and Forest said to be preparing a club-record £55million bid, the Netherlands international looks set for a Premier League move rather than an exit from England altogether. Enzo Maresca has talked up his role since taking charge, but interest is gathering pace and City may see this as smart business.

Reijnders' seven assists last season were the sixth-highest in the City squad, while his seven goals sat just four behind second top scorer Antoine Semenyo. He also ranked third at the club for fast breaks, behind only Erling Haaland and Cherki.

His pass completion rate of 90.38% shows he's comfortable retaining possession under pressure, and his corner delivery (24.32% accuracy) was a genuine weapon last season, even if his open-play crossing (18.52%) still needs sharpening. Defensively he's no slouch either, 94 ball recoveries and a 40.7% success rate in one-on-one duels are solid if unspectacular returns for a midfielder of his type.

Glasner's preferred 4-4-2 system, a departure from Forest's 4-2-3-1 last season, could actually suit Reijnders better than Guardiola's setup did. Whether deployed in a double pivot or as a No.10 alongside Morgan Gibbs-White, his ability to carry the ball through midfield and arrive late in the box, he managed 76 touches in the opposition penalty area last season from an xG of 4.5, outscoring that figure with five goals, gives Forest a different attacking dimension. Glasner has a track record of getting the best out of players who look unpolished elsewhere, and Reijnders, still searching for the form that made him one of Serie A's most exciting midfielders at Milan, looks a strong candidate for that treatment.

Why Would Tijjani Reijnders Leave Man City?
The simplest explanation is game time. Reijnders was signed as a box-to-box midfielder who thrives on carrying the ball forward from deep, a trait that had made him one of the standout performers in Serie A before his move to England. At City, though, he was increasingly used further forward, often playing off Haaland rather than in the deeper, more expressive role that suited him at Milan.

As the season progressed, Guardiola settled on a midfield balance built around Rodri and Bernardo Silva providing control, Nico O'Reilly offering late box-crashing runs, and Cherki supplying creativity as the more advanced No.10. That left little room for Reijnders, who found himself squeezed out of a settled system.

Add in City's signing of Elliot Anderson and their pursuit of Bouaddi, and the picture becomes clearer: City are stacked in central midfield, and a player who has managed only one genuinely prolific goalscoring season in his career, the campaign before he joined City, represents a sellable asset at the right price. A fee north of £50million would be viewed as good business, even if it raises fresh questions about how well Reijnders was actually utilised during his solitary season at the Etihad.
 
The lack of urgency is just maddening.

So far we’ve sold our best player and brought in a 29 year old utility player on a free who’s done his ACL twice.

We have brought in a top level manager, granted, which is huge. But EM is currently failing spectacularly to back him.

And this a manager with a history of starting slowly (no wins in the first 5 type form even in a side that had Eze, Wharton, Mateta, Olise etc) coupled with an owner who can get very twitchy when exactly that kind of run of form happens.

However the rest of the window plays out, I bloody hope the big man realises that he’s given Glasner fuck all to work with and he should fully expect a wait of several months before we see an upturn.

If we are relying on a random flurry of deadline day signings to carry us through, it could well take an entire season or more to bed them in.
 
Pope John XXIII said:
Yes, we have been through this many times and the point is fundamentally flawed

Moreover, the whole point, when looked at objectively, makes no sense.

You can absolutely argue that clubs tend to make poor transfer decisions in January. That is a fair point and the brevity of the window can lead to that, alongside clubs being reluctant to let players go

But in recent years we have literally seen impact.

Last season West Ham completely turned their season around in January, from dead and buried to going down with the highest points total in a decade, because of the signings of Disasi and Taty

Forest in 2023 signed three key players- Navas, Felipe and Wood. Wood made a huge long term rather than short term impact due to injury, but without the other two we would have been relegated.

A casual glance through the January transfers shows that most clubs did virtually no business anyway

Of those that did, you cannot reasonably argue that Semenyo at Man City did not make an immediate impact, given he scored plenty of goals (including a cup final winner) and neither can you say that of Guehi

Connor Gallagher certainly made an impact at Spurs and played a key part towards the end of the season in keeping them up

Rayan came into Bournemouth and scored 5 PL goals in 12 starts, with 7 overall contributions. That's an instant impact.

Nilson Angulo at Sunderland was only 22 and managed 500 minutes from right midfield- hard to tell impact I guess

Oscar Bobb, Tammy Abraham (2 goals) and the two at Palace are the only 8 figure transfers that window that clearly more was expected from and didn't make an impact, alongside Pablo at West Ham- which was an outright dodgy piece of business anyway

It's an easy canard to throw around but not especially backed by the facts of the last window
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In fairness, and support for your point (which you won't read as you have blocked me because I pointed out that you argue with everyone and are the problem), Wood's signing which was loan to buy was also important because it stopped Everton from having him.
 
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