As much as I love the marketing around Gyokeres (his agents have done a fantastic job boosting his profile for being a relatively unsuccessful striker in his early 20s and poaching the ever-living-fuck out of clubs in Portugal, plus his Bane celebration face mask shit), I do think he'd be more...
They'll probably make more money participating, getting 1-2 wins, and advancing to the 16 and QF than they'd get in a year of the Brazilian league.
A lot of the smaller, non-European leagues should rightfully be treating this competition as a massive means to producing revenue AND showcase...
I think we'll be signing both.
We're loaning him again so that the pricetag is pushed out another year for us to really get our finances under control. If Vlahovic is sold or not, next year his insane wages are gone. Thats a massive boon to our transfer market summer 2026. This is a delay...
They've basically all but confirmed they're redeeming him. The discussion with Porto right now is can we get a discount or not.
I think there is ZERO chance we don't redeem him, we're just seeing if there is room on the price or a way to spread payments or whatever.
I think we loan them again, not because we don't want them, but because it delays the purchasing timeline one more year. We've tightened and strengthened our finances significantly and one more year will make that only more so true.
I'm fine with that.
This is transfer season. Somebody hears whispers we even LIKE a certain player and they invent stories of offers, wage demands, timelines, etc.
Any people here, twitter, reddit, etc, get worked up over this massive BS clickbait.