TAA, Xavi Simons, Ollie Watkins rumours

Occasionally I’m going to talk to you about growing The Transfer Flow and Variance Incorporated in public. You may know us as a daily, beloved newsletter. And you would be correct. We know this to be true because we produce content five days a week and you lot open us at an absurd rate for newsletters. So we feel like we’re doing things right so far. We’re going to pass 2500 newsletter subscribers this week, which is pretty good when starting from 0 six weeks ago, while spinning up all the content and structure around the place at the same time.

Growth so far has been completely organic, and without significant partner outreach (there’s a lot of that yet to come). We’re on course to hit 10K subs by end of year fully organically, but I’ll be posting a role in the coming week that will be completely focused on growth marketing. Candidates for this role will need to understand the newsletter ecosystem, and especially paid growth via Meta ads and Twitter. The pay range will be £50-60K depending on experience, as well as an annual bonus and profit sharing after year 1.

The last company I built went from 0-£10M ARR in 7 years. This is a far more relaxed project for me than StatsBomb, but I still have high expectations for what we’ll become in 3-5 years and it’s useful to join fast-growing companies early. If you know someone talented who might be interested in a role like this, send them my way.

Why do I think we can be big? Well, first of all Fabrizio Romano has like 20 MILLION followers on Twitter and he just, you know, posts stuff. Some might be true, some might not be. He finds things out early and off it goes. Respect to him for finding success and also generating some of our own content, but there’s almost no value add to most of that output — people love it because it’s transfers.

Even if you assume most of that audience is pornbots, his Youtube channel as 2 million followers, so we know that there is massive interest in this space.

We are not Romano. We have done the work of evaluating the transfers and literally changed how the football industry searches for talent. There isn’t anyone who has our level of credibility in the area of transfers commenting publicly on what does and does not make sense. (And in some cases, sourcing stories and targets entirely from scratch.)

I have worked in football. In fact, I keep turning down football job offers this summer largely because I believe this area of fandom in incredibly underserved and I want to see what happens when someone* with real insight steps (back) into the void.

(* Or many someones, given Ravi, Kim, Nikos and many of our future guests have also worked in football.)

The other massive thing we have in our favour is the complete shambles that is European football media. Almost all of the traditional papers are owned for political reasons, which has contributed to a significant decrease in the quality of written content across the board. The old journos that are still around can’t seem to be bothered to keep up with modern events, so that leaves a lot of space for insightful voices to flourish, provided they can be found.

Speaking of being found… We are also a podcast! A podcast that is available on as many providers and hosts as we are aware of, including Spotify and Apple Music.

And, we are also… a YouTube channel? Now some of you might think that’s entirely too much exposure. The older, curmudgeonly side of me sort of agrees with this. But the reality of the world where this makes sense is multi-fold.

First of all, Youtube is now the biggest podcast platform by a solid margin .

Second of all, we decided to start recording video versions of the podcast to help with discovery and growth on the video social platforms (IG/TT), but one of the huge benefits here is that you also get to see our smiling faces. Big up to Rishi Gandhi for joining our team and piloting that area of the business.

And third of all is… Patrick’s chest hair. (Note to self: start paying attention to what you wear on podcast days.) If you watch on Youtube, you’ll also get to see me start talking with my hands when I get excited.

All I’m saying is don’t be surprised if you pop on Youtube at the end of the summer and I look exactly like this.

The pods touch on similar content to what you read here, but they contain different contributors, different takes, and different jokes. The point is to let all of you connect with us wherever it works best. We’ve spun up new social media accounts, largely to help new people find us beyond the desert of modern day Twitter.

Instagram: TheTransferFlow
TikTok: @TheTransferFlow

Anywho… minus the gambling angles to come once the season starts, this is what we are. We’re a content engine churning out the smartest transfer takes and football analysis on the internet. A bit like early StatsBomb, but in a lot of new formats. We can be found in your inbox, and on social media, and on all the podcast venues people care about.

Thank you for joining us so early. We are just getting started.

—TK
[email protected]

News and Rumors

• A good “media has an agenda” story for you: French outlets report Bayern Munich and RB Leipzig would agree to a package potentially rising to €90m for PSG midfielder Xavi Simons. German outlets report that they’d never pay that much. Gotta love negotiating through the press.

• Real Madrid are weighing up a bid for Trent Alexander-Arnold, who has a year left on his deal at Liverpool. The number Bild previously quoted as getting Bayern to talk about selling Alphonso Davies, a very similar player in a very similar situation, was around £50m. Liverpool’s appetite for a sale probably depends on Trent’s willingness to talk new contract.

• Chelsea women have signed Lucy Bronze on a free transfer from Barcelona. She’s probably lost a bit of pace and isn’t the runaway best right back in the world anymore, but she’s still an elite ball-playing fullback and could do a lot to enhance Chelsea’s build-up.

• Everyone enjoyed the friendship that Cole Palmer and Ollie Watkins struck up during the Euros, and apparently 🥶 would like to take it to the next level. He’s pushing for Watkins to join him at Chelsea, though no one seems to know if Chelsea are actually interested in paying the astronomical fee that would probably cost them.

• But if you’re following the transfer breadcrumbs… Aston Villa might attempt to rival Barcelona for the signature of €63m release clause haver Nico Williams… AS AN OLLIE WATKINS REPLACEMENT?

• As an apology to all the Aston Villa fans I’ve just annoyed: Your club is close to signing star midfielder Amadou Onana from Everton.

• Atlético Madrid want to sign Julian Alvarez from Manchester City. It sounds like City want €70m for him, which Atléti don’t have at the moment. They’d like to do a loan-to-buy deal with a decent loan fee up front and a much lower than €70m mandatory purchase next summer, which might suit City well for PSR purposes if they don’t feel the need to do any extensive rebuilding this window.

• Nottingham Forest might have pulled off a bit of a coup scooping up Nikola Milenkovic. The 195cm/6’5” CB is a proper big lad who does proper big lad shit. 5 aerial wins per 90, 86% win rate. Totally decent passer and tackler too. Great deal for £12m.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, we’d appreciate it if you would forward it to a friend. If you’re that friend, welcome! You can subscribe to The Transfer Flow here. We also have a podcast where we go in depth on transfer news and rumours every week. We’re on YouTube here, and you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify by searching for “The Transfer Flow Podcast.”