Good Friday morning, TSFers! We’ve made it through another week and our reward, as ever, is the weekend. In addition to the football action (the last weekend before an international break — so dumb to have one of those three weeks into the season), the college football season starts in earnest. Technically, it started last week in Ireland (Iowa State 24 – Kansas State 21), but there’s a full slate of game this weekend. There are some doozies too, if you’re into that kind of thing.
The transfer window
closes on Monday, September 1st at 7 pm BST (2 pm ET). Yesterday, Newcastle signed Stuttgart striker Nick Woltemade for £65m + £4.3M in add-ons, which is…a lot of money for a player who had four good months of football. That’s an oversimplification of the German attacker — he’s a fine player that could turn out to be quite good but he’d be a late-bloomer. He doesn’t have much of a senior football track record to go off. The move likely clears the way for Alexander Isak to move, presumably to Liverpool. I think I want that move to happen because the last thing Liverpool need is another attacker. They have serious issues in midfield and defense and spending £150M on a striker seems like a poor allocation of resources. But what do I know.
I woke up this morning to the news that Tottenham are buying Xavi Simons from RB Leipzig for £60M. It’s an annoying good fit for Spurs. They need a creative attacker and he fits the bill. We’ll see if he’s got enough facilitator / distributor in him to really fit the hole in their roster.
Chelsea were also in on Simons (because who aren’t they in on) but opted to buy Alejandro Garnacho for £40M with a 10% sell-on clause in the contract. When Ruben Amorim is inevitably sacked sometime in the next 12 months, I feel as if whoever replaces him is really going to wish he had a young, pacey, dribble-y attacker like Garnacho in the fold. It looks like Manchester United might save themselves from…themselves and not sell Kobbie Mainoo, despite the rumors linking him with a move away. The player has reportedly asked for a loan move to get playing time but was told to stay and fight for minutes. That club is a mess.
Any other rumors / signings caught your eye?
