We Bang.

We crossed 1000 subs from scratch in under 48 hours.

I devoured a lot of content about content before deciding to come back into the business, and one of the more notable industry experts said, “If you get 10000 organic subs in the first 12 months, you’ll have an absolute banger of a newsletter business.”

I’m fairly confident we bang.

Another upside to being back has been old club-side friends popping onto my WhatsApp (the football industry runs on WhatsApp), partly to say they are happy about the new content, and partly to either refute/confirm that their team is actually in for certain players. Or even better, to leak about who their competition is making a move for.

No messages from anyone at Manchester United yet, though… I guess yesterday’s post didn’t make it to That Part of Twitter.

Anyway, If you like this stuff, share with your friends and get them on the list and on @thetransferflow socials. It will help us to pour money into additional content streams, new functionality, and looking better, faster.

And if you need me, either reply to the email or follow me @mixedknuts
—Ted

It’s a slightly shorter post today as I’m trying to set up all the widgets to release a new podcast to the world tomorrow with former VP of Analytics at the Seattle Sounders, Ravi Ramineni.

I ended up down a Jamal Musiala rabbit hole yesterday. Partly due to a random Arsenal rumour, but more to do with some Euros betting prep. I feel like I’m higher on Germany than the betting markets right now, but I’m also tres rusty, so wanted to do more research.

ANYWAY… Musiala just turned 21 in February and well and truly made The Leap this season at Bayern. It’s not particularly controversial, but I have come to the conclusion that Musiala might be the best attacker in his age cohort in world football.

There are some minor caveats. Bayern are a super-team, which can inflate attacker performance. The Bundesliga as a whole is weaker than it used to be, o buyer beware. And the shots he creates for teammates skew a little too far from goal to get full credit for awesome creative passing, but he’s doing it in real volume.

On the other hand, he is miserable to defend against in and around the box. He has a combination of great feet, close control, quick change of direction, and a hesitation dribble that make it impossible for defenders to really get ahold of what he’s doing at any one time.

And, he’s just 21.

Before any Premier league fan gets TOO excited though, Bayern have historically done incredibly well at keeping their best academy kids in Germany for the long term. BUT… Musiala spent eight years in the Chelsea academy during his youth, so maybe an eventual exit back to England is potentially in the cards.

Rumours and News
Remember the rule, kids… during transfer season, No one. Knows. Anything.

• Bayern haven’t quite signed Jonathan Tah yet, but are also allegedly in the market for Joe Gomez (JoeGo Bonito). Gomez is a versatile, generally useful defender, but he’s also 27 with a fairly concerning injury record. His contract is through to 2027, so it feels like one where Liverpool only sell if they have a better option already in place.

• I feel like AC Milan have the best transfer rumours right now - they are all over the shop/world in the way I usually expect Brighton to be. The BBC has them interested in Aston Villa’s Matty Cash, who despite a name that sounds like it comes from a Guy Ritchie film set in the outskirts of South London, actually plays for the Polish National Team. [Note: He was a Forest academy player, so the name thing checks out.] Cash turns 27 this summer and Villa apparently want £30M, so this link feels dubious.

• Oh, and Milan also signed Paulo Fonseca as their new Head Coach. Going to go on record as a fan of this one, so that everyone can pillory me later if it doesn’t work out.

• Liverpool GK and part-time male model Alisson saw Jordan Henderson’s adventure in the Saudi league and allegedly turned down a presumably enormous offer to make the same mistakes.

• Arsenal “could potentially step up interest in Zirkzee” given they missed out on Sesko. They could potentially DO ANYTHING or also nothing at all. Zirkzee at least feels more likely than a Gyokeres move for age and competition quality reasons alone.

• Manchester United are supposedly being given only £50M in the summer transfer window, which is utterly bananas as a concept given a) how much Ratcliffe just paid them to buy into the club (some of which would have assuredly been tagged for transfers), and b) the unbelievably large holes that exist in that squad. But I guess nonsense gets clicks, so sure, why not?
  
  United do kind of need someone to take Jadon Sancho off their hands now though, especially given they chose to keep ETH.

• “The agent of Aston Villa midfielder has been in touch with Barcelona sporting director Deco as the Brazil international assesses his summer options. ” everyone.” - There, I fixed it for future copy for the rest of the summer.
  
  I would skip the Luiz updates from here out, but they are too enjoyably absurd not to include. Speaking of absurd, I just got sad I was not around the last two summers to comment on the “Barcelona Levers” debacles.