Daily Discussion - 13 September 2024

0 days since I was unwillingly reminded of Wilshere

I've not really heard much about it, but what in the world happened with Victor Osimhen? I'm not particularly tuned into Italian footy news, but from my perspective it seems like they overplayed their hand a bit.

Arsenal and Chelsea had both been linked for a while. Chelsea are a basket case that will buy anything, and everyone and their grandmother knows that Arsenal need an out-and-out striker for at least 2 seasons. The news over the summer continually suggested that there was a bidding war between the two, but that seems to have been entirely club/agent-generated, because we heard absolutely nothing from Arsenal and Chelsea kept saying they needed to make a sale to buy him (imagine that).

My take is that this basically priced everyone else out, and every other club pursued other opportunities. Meanwhile, Chelsea didn't end up selling enough, and apparently we met with Napoli very early in the summer and absolutely refused to pay his 130M asking price. By the time Napoli started lowering their asking price, we had moved on to other targets.

The point of this whole stream-of-consciousness nonsense is me wondering whether there's something wrong with Osimhen. I hope not, for his sake, and the fact that he fired his agents before getting a loan to Galatasaray indicates that there was agent fuckery involved. With a 75M euro break clause, I'm pretty sure that we're not going to go in for him at this point, but I hope beyond hope that we haven't missed out on him because of a series of unfortunate events, because we could really use peak Osimhen right now.

Press conference nonsense because apparently today, I feel like an insomniac.

• Contract: "I’m really happy and excited. It shows the alignment between the club and the coaching staff. We enjoy working together and we have higher ambitions that we want to fulfil."
• Opposition: Solanke and van de Ven will probably be fit, Bissouma, Richarlison and Lankshear will probably not.
• Player injuries:

1. Odegaard: More tests, a lot can happen in 48 hours (reading between lines: probably not unless he Karate Kids Odegaard's leg)
2. Merino: Better, but a slow process
3. Jesus: Available pending tomorrow's session
4. Calafiori: See Jesus

• Re: next two PL matches' impact on the title race: "...we cannot be like this. We’re going to run out of oxygen. I want to prepare the next day. We’re going to go to Spurs and have an unbelievable game."

So according to this article, my thoughts are somewhat validated about Osimhen. We inquired early, Napoli asked for 100+, we said fuck that, and we never went back. I'm not mad at Edu there, but I'm furious with Napoli and Osimhen's agent for fucking this transfer up so spectacularly. Granted, you never know with the Romanos of this world shilling for everyone, but Osimhen was being mentioned every two seconds this summer, and if we missed signing a striker of his quality for such a stupid reason.... well, I hope we do well with Havertz and Jesus this season.