And So It Begins...

We are so back, baby. No, not Variance Betting, which was a tidy little +1.5 units on the weekend and +7k on small bets for the season.

No, I mean that as the weather warms, the days get to be a sane length, and we enter April… the silly season (un)officially begins. Which means you will find this beloved newsletter transitions from insightful analysis on your least favourite teams (but never your own team, whomst we have a bias against), and into the snarkathon but also legitimate-WAY-ahead-of-the-curve analysis that is the Rumour Mill.

tl;dr We gon’ talk a lot about transfers from now until September.

Given most of you started following us during a period outside the big transfer window, it might be useful to clue everyone in on some rules and guidelines.

• In case you are unfamiliar with us, we’re pretty good at evaluating transfers. Kim and I have both worked in and around football for over a decade now, and we’ve done the actual work to build teams on the men’s and women’s sides, from the scruffiest of competitions up to the Champions’ League.
  
  We’ll tell you early and often what’s really dumb behaviour, what’s neutral-but-probably unhelpful, and which transfers we love, love, love (Yankuba Minteh, Joao Neves, Dean Huijsen) for any and all teams that matter.

• Barcelona are broke. Not like broke, broke, because Frenkie de Jong is finally moving on this summer, but they probably shouldn’t have been allowed to register Dani Olmo in the winter window based on La Liga’s financial rules. (Disclaimer: IANAL)
  
  Which MEANS… every time you see their name mentioned as a suitor for a big player, probably ignore it. They have been a terribly-run club for a long time, but they do have a GREAT academy and a great coach, so there you are.

  
  If they start making excellent sales then they could free up a lot of space across their budget, but that hasn’t actually been a thing up till now.

• Manchester United are ALSO weirdly broke because their billionaires have decided the club should be that way. We’re not going to wade into the politics of it, but they should have a decent pot of money available to spend… they just don’t seem to act like it. Maybe it’s a way to drive the “Man United premium” down to reasonable levels, or maybe the entirety of their budget is now allocated to their new circus tent.
  
  Whatever the case, they need a metric fuckton of help, and everyone knows it so the Mill will be very busy connecting any and all players to life in Manchester.

• Chelsea are not broke, but they need to sell a LOT of dudes this summer. This is because they have too many dudes, period, and dudes are expensive. The problem here is that when everyone knows you have too many dudes and need to sell lots of dudes, it drives down the price across the whole basket of dudeliness.
  
  That’s just basic dude economics.
  
  Chelsea have definitely been getting smarter behind the scenes and made some shrewd hires on the analytics side (sup, Javi!), but whether they listen to them, or whether they have someone out there flogging all of their surplus goods across this continent and the next remains to be seen.

• Half of the Premier League is a little iffy on budgets for PSR reasons. Which strikes us as both weird (PL clubs are all totes rich, boys and ghouls) and something MOST OF the owners are trying to intentionally negotiate to make their football teams less painful to run. “No no, we can’t spend all of our money… because the rules that we were involved in crafting say so.”

• There’s somewhere between a 2 and a 3x premium on Premier League prices versus what they go for anywhere else in the world. I wonder if that gap will shrink a bit this summer as the PL is shrewder on pricing, but there’s no confidence it will. Partly because PL clubs are competing amongst themselves for most of these obvious targets.

• Agents are very much agenting. Which is fine, because it’s their job, but that doesn’t mean we have to believe them. Hence when we see someone constantly mentioned as a target for clubs various and sundry, who doesn’t actually seem to make sense… we’ll probably flag it. Obvious entities are Gyokeres (always noisily for sale), any player later in their career and looking for one last juicy payday (Kingsley Coman comes to mind), Zirkzee’s agent last summer, and seemingly more every day.
  
  Also… nothing to do with us, but it’s kind of a thing if you are paying attention:

News and Rumours

• Hugo Ekitike is definitely going to be one of the big names on the rumour mill this summer. There’s some risk involved because he’s still a touch young and raw, but he also seems to be real good. Price is currently unknown, but everyone knows about him.

• Matheus Cunha is definitely leaving Wolves this summer. He’s on our list for a slightly deeper dive in the coming weeks.

• Hugo Larsson is a 20-year-old midfielder playing for Eintracht Frankfurt, who are hoping to prise £50m out of Man City in return for the young Swede. While I’m impressed at his playing time in a real league thus far, I’m a little less excited about his production versus that price.

• Southampton put a £100m price on Tyler Dibling, which seems… optimistic(?) and an obvious attempt to move the needle on the early pricing rumours of nearer £40m. He’s only signed through 2027, which means the Saints don’t actually have max leverage on a move, and also that he probably is moving this summer. This one will be tasty.

• “Real Madrid are targeting Bruno Fernandes in a BIG money move rumoured to be close to €90m.” So uh… first of all, Bruno had a bunch of rumours last summer because his agent was trying to get him a beefy extension. Bruno would definitely like to play for a team that is not currently in the bottom half of their table. And RM know they don’t need to pay anywhere near €90m for the 30-year-old Portuguese. My guess is he’s under 50% for an actual move this summer.

• Enzo Fernandez has been a rumoured target for Atletico Madrid for at least six months now, and he’s the perfect fit for their midfield profile. The rumour from Spain on Sunday was £25m plus Pablo Barrios, which at least fits the joyfully weird habit from last season of partial fee + swap deals whenever Chelsea’s name is mentioned.
  
  I don’t really think Chelsea should sell him, but I’m not sure Maresca knows what to do with his profile if Caicedo is the only true DM in the structure.

• Because of how it was reported, I believe Zubimendi already has a deal with Arsenal that is definitely going to happen in the summer. But the rumour mill seems to want to inject a little uncertainty into the move, maybe so they can get Andrea Berta’s name out there for some reason.

• Six teams are allegedly “expressing their interest” in Lille striker Jonathan David, who will be a free agent this summer. Free agent is the opposite of what his actual agent will be, as that gentleman is getting PAID for making sure David got his Bosman this summer, and helping place all these rumours and drive up the wage package + signing bonus wherever he lands.

• Jarrad Branthwaite to Man United is back, because of course it is.

• And finally, to wrap this edition of the oh-so-fresh rumours section…
  
  Udinese striker Lorenzo Lucca is reportedly being tracked by Forest, Arsenal, and Liverpool according to an Italian rag.
  
  We’ll let you draw your own conclusions from the output below, but my experience opinion is: Absolutely not.
  
  —TK

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