A CB Rumour Man United + Liverpool Fans SHOULD Be Excited By

First off all, the podcast production line has begun to flow. Episode 2 features Nikos Overheul. Nikos is a former Director of Recruitment at the Vancouver Whitecaps and brings a decade of experience in building football teams to the table.

Nikos and I share some stories around our early days at Brentford, insights into coach and player recruitment, jabber about the Dutch National Team at Euros, and he delivers some insight into the enigma that is Matthijs de Ligt.

This new pod and the one with Ravi Ramineni are available on the RSS feed and Spotify so far. Apple has been a pain in the ass around account linkage, so that’s still a work in progress. Enjoy!

The challenge to you lot - to recommend The Transfer Flow to enough people so that I feel forced to post the picture of me in a top hat - shall stay in effect through the weekend.

I was, in fact, dashingly handsome while also in the midst of a spectacular culture clash.

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I promised an intriguing centreback today and a centreback ye shall receive.

Manchester United are in dire need of centrebacks. Lindelof is linde-off somewhere else. Raphael Varane is var-gone. Slabhead is sort of injured, turns 32 next season, and is still Harry Maguire. He could be vacationing in Greece right this very minute and we all know what happened last time that made the news. Jonny Evans turns 37 next season. Martinez is possibly the best of the bunch, but was out for most of the season.

Almost nothing United have done in the last decade inspires confidence they will successfully recruit a new centreback pairing. BUT… there is a new regime, and with new regimes come hope.

And hope is the thing that kills you, but we’ll save that for England fans as they enter the Euros knockout stages.

ANYWAY… I was wading my way through the rumour slop and came upon someone I thought would actually be a pretty savvy buy for Manchester United and figured I would mention it.

This is very good. Centrebacks with outputs like this where they do everything are a) playing at too low a level for the abilities and b) usually end up being pretty good no matter where they end up.

Originally a product of the Laval academy, with a stint at Lyon as a finishing school, Solet is tall, fast, good on the ball, an above average passer, used to playing in a pressing system and maybe most importantly for our tenuous rumour thread… only has one year left on his contract. The RB group historically sell well, but when a player only has a year left, they are as likely to cash in as anybody.

On the other hand, it’s a centreback - stats never tell the whole story. In this case, they sort of don’t need to. If scouts simply passed him off as “reasonably competent and could continue to improve,” that’s almost enough to trigger serious interest. Salzburg play in a soft league, but the need here is high and the price should be fairly low, so I’m interested to see what happens in Manchester or elsewhere in the Premier League.

Rumours and News

• Daichi Kamada has sealed a move from Lazio to Crystal Palace. He’s kind of a “do everything” midfielder, but his “best” season was last year at Lazio where he played well in a deeper role than he featured in at Frankfurt. It’s only a two-year deal too, which is the right amount as he rolls into his 28-yo season. It feels like Palace are pretty smart now, and they have done a very good job overhauling the squad from a bunch of old British/Irish dudes circa 2016-17.

• Jasper Cillessen, formerly of Ajax and Barcelona) has moved to Las Palmas. When you grow up in a country with shitty weather, sometimes you get to the point where you have definitely made enough money and are happy to keep plying your trade where you can see the sun.

• In a related story, Germany great Mats Hummels is allegedly close to signing for Real Mallorca.

• Talks between Ajax and BIG WOUT WEGHORST are “very advanced.” Part of me is like, “Okay but why?” But another part is happy to see Die Grossen Wouten Train roll into a new town. Especially one where I’m not a fan of that team. Mostly so I can keep typing Wout and saying it out loud for another year or five. Woot!

• Ferran Torres says he is happy at Barcelona, and has no real interest in moving to East London to play for West Ham. This is very much a case of someone convincing a young Spanish player to move to England once already (Manchester), and said player is not going to make the mistake a second time. He’s good though, I liked him for Arsenal two summers ago, and West Ham could probably use someone just like him.

• Would you buy Jadon Sancho for £40M? That’s the question clubs around Europe are facing, with Manchester United desperate happy to offload the England wide player in a cut price deal. It’s complicated though, because Sancho’s wages are very high and most teams outside the Premier League are very poor. Clubs like Juventus are looking at a marketing partnership with Klarna to help them loan now, buy later while offsetting part of the price of the deal.
  
  [That last part might not be true, but it should be. Marketing partnerships are my speciality.]

• Something something, Ashley Young. New deal. Shrug emoji

P.S. I am going to start hiring soon.
I’m going to post openings for an experienced Newsletter Growth Manager and a more junior role around podcasts and social media management soon. If you have great candidates in mind/someone you know that would be interested AND qualified, maybe let them know. Most of my best hires over the years have come via an extensive nerd network, and I’m hoping to continue that over here.

—Ted