Summer 26 Transfer Window - hopes, speculation, rumours etc.

[Smithy]

Bournemouth buy Rayan

We buy Alysson and Madjo for a similar amount.

People seem awfully quick to forget we bought a South American teenager for £15m and sold him for £60-odd two years later.  I imagine there are PLENTY of clubs who looked at us last year and thought, "Why do we keep buying dross for millions when Villa can find a star in the making in the MLS for relative peanuts".

We need to do more of it, obviously, but I do think we need to temper the way we look enviously at other clubs' success with relatively unknown players.  There are plenty of clubs who will go decades without buys as good as Rogers and Duran.

[cdbearsfan]

Good point, well made.

[Tokyo Sexwhale]

As I mentioned previously Bournemouth also could promise starts for the season where we couldn't.

Rayan would be starting for us.

[eamonn]

And if we hadn't sold Duran, presumably we'd have had to sell one of Kamara, Rogers or two of Watkins, Tielemans, Cash, Ginny etc.

[algy]

It is so hard to tell whether this squad is good enough. The final league position and a trophy is a very good indicator. But I can’t help feeling it might also be papering over some very large cracks.

Also, we don’t want to wait until the squad falls off a cliff before making those changes. We should act from a position of strength. So I’d advocate a major overhaul now, whilst there is still some debate.

How can a final league position and winning a trophy be papering over cracks?

You don’t win football matches just by scoring more goals than the other team, don’t you know?