Given where values are this summer. I think this is a great price for a a young premier league starter.

I love this guy. Love. We needed an athlete because that's a deficiency of both Kobbie and Tielemans. Baleba is to me the most athletic young midfielder in the EPL. I recognize last year was a bad year. He could be a flop. But… what an athlete.

As a signing with risk but a huge upside…. Love. (I hope I don't jinx him lol).

Dre_00 said:

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On the one hand, if they get it done for 60+5, if feels like an overpay for a guy who had a bad season last year. On the other hand, it feels like a great deal given what other similarly aged players have gone for in that position this summer.

Would be a sizable discount to the price Brighton are rumored to have put on Baleba.

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Not sure how anyone could look at the market this summer and his experience and age and conclude that was an overpay.

Very talented young midfielder with a ton of EPL experience. Great signing.

Bring left back (still emergency) and I'll be very happy with the window.

Dre_00 said:

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On the one hand, if they get it done for 60+5, if feels like an overpay for a guy who had a bad season last year. On the other hand, it feels like a great deal given what other similarly aged players have gone for in that position this summer.

Would be a sizable discount to the price Brighton are rumored to have put on Baleba.

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I truly think there was discussions had between all parties that Baleba thought his move to United last season was a done deal. When it didn't happen, he allowed young emotions and the increased scrutiny (partly due to the B&HA 100mm valuation) to interfere with his on field performance especially in the early part of the season. United still pursuing him lends credence to that.

BTW, now that I read the article 60+5 is our offer. They haven't accepted it yet. If it takes 5M or so more it won't really change my view that much.

I think anything south of 70-75 is a great deal considering the current market.

I don't disagree with those saying that it would be a good signing. Merely pointing out that it's not a slam dunk given his form last season. Even if there's sound logic to explain it. But you're not going to get a zero to low risk signing at that age for that price.

FabRom is now doing a bit of a reversal. After piggybacking on Ornstein's story, he have it the "Here We Go Soon". Now he's saying that there has bene no contact between the clubs and Brighton intend to keep Baleba. In theory, both can be true...Brighton intend to keep him as they still haven't received a formal offer from United. But it does conflict with Ornstein's reporting.

I do think Brighton's stance is interesting if Baleba really is jonesing for a move to United and only United. First report was that he's been angling for a move to United for a year now. So much so that it affected his form for Brighton. If that's true, it's going to be harder for Brighton to stick to their price. Why would you stick to your price again one year after doing so took 20m in value off your asset because he didn't perform as well. If that happens a second time, their valuation will absolutely tank and they'll have turned down first 80m and then 60m for a player who rarely even played a full 90 minutes in two seasons.

I hope you didn't construe my comment as directed specifically at you, but more those who would feel he's overpriced. I know you were playing a bit of devil's advocate in your comments.

For Brighton it makes all the sense in the world to sell him this summer. He will be a year older and if he has another season like last then they face a scenario where his value plummets.

Time for games is over, transfer window is about to close. If Brighton get too cute then United will have to move on, because they need to fill 2 holes and are running out of opportunities.

I wouldn't consider anything Romano posts as reliable these days.

Thunder18 said:

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I wouldn't consider anything Romano posts as reliable these days.

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I was about to say. I trust Ornstein more when it comes to United. Fabs has some sort of either anti-United bias or is getting paid by someone that wants there to be some negativity around United.

Tier 1 (Highest Quality Sources)

Simon Stone (BBC)
Simon Peach (Press Association)
Craig Norwood (Club Photographer).
James Ducker (The Telegraph/Numbers may be suspect)
Gaston Edul (T1 Argentina)
Henry Winter (The Times Chief of Football)
Mohamed Bouhafsi (France)
Paul Joyce (The Times/Liverpool/Everton)
Kristof Terreur (The Guardian)
David Ornstein (The Athletic)
Arancha Rodriguez (Real Madrid/Spain)
Sam Lee (The Athletic)
Romeo Agresti (Juventus news)
John Percy (The Telegraph/Midlands Clubs)
Alan Nixon (for youth, and League clubs news)
Laurie Whitwell (The Athletic)
BBC (United Kingdom)

This is per the Red Devils subreddit so again take with a grain of salt but those guys definitely stay on top of which reporters' track records and sources have proven to be reliable and accurate over the years. Romano was Tier 2 or 3 before his reporting was banned entirely from the subreddit a year or so back

All good Aston

I've not noticed anything egregious in regards to Romano and United. I don't follow him super closely, but he does seem to be a bit ahead on at least some transfers.

That said, they don't call Ornstein the Ornacle for nothing.

An expected source of transfer income has popped up.

Willy Kambwala appears close to signing with Como. United has a buy back and sell-on clause. I can't find any reference to the sell-on clause amount except a BBC article quoting it as "sizable". But I doubt it will be sizable enough to matter much as the transfer fee is likely to be pretty small. Still, maybe United get a couple of million out of it.

I would note that, excluding the option year, Baleba only has two years left on his contract, so next year he will be down to one (with an option year, but a lot of those have provisions a club doesn't like to trigger; note on Mbeumo that Brentford talked a lot about the option but never actually triggered it, for example). Normally this would be the year to sell if your goal was getting transfer fee value. He'd have to improve his form in another year at Brighton just to maintain a 60-65M value.

I kind of think they will probably do a deal rather than taking a risk on another year, but anything is possible. If they are confident they can turn him around, they might keep, but it would be a sizable risk because next year would be nearly must sale.

Holy hell. 75M pounds sterling for freaking Savinho… makes that Baleba price range look better…

No financial irregularities here…

🚨⚪️ BREAKING: Tottenham reach verbal agreement with Manchester City to sign Savinho, here we go!

Club to club verbal agreement in place tonight with Sávio set to travel for medical at #THFC.

Fee will be over £75m, details to follow.

Separate talks for Omar Marmoush continue. pic.twitter.com/QlbwCrXdUC

— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) August 20, 2026

Meanwhile, Marcus Rashford had a 40M release clause most of the summer that everyone ignored… Who would you rather have? Just saying…

Edit: let's put it another way… remember how much Antony sucked here? Boy, do I. Imagine selling him to someone else for 75M AFTER he sucked…

Spurs are spending money they don't have in hopes of getting the money for next season to pay the bills. If they don't make Europe they will be in a bad place.

Savinho is still young (22) but yeah this is a huge overpay. It's insane that this will be City's biggest ever sale and yet totally rational that Spurs are the ones funding it for a guy with 2 league goals in 2 seasons.

Spurs are likely to have a net spend of 200m+ this summer and will still be long shots for a top 5 finish. They'll be much better than last season of course, but unless they pull a Man City in regards to PSR, these overpays this summer are going to cap their ceiling/potential in future seasons.

there is some serious financial shenangi...engineering going on between man dhabi and tottenham.

but as far as Tottenham's budget outside of that, they are starting to really see the fruits of owning their own new stadium. it's why INEOS is pushing so hard to get a new stadium for United.

Quote:

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How is football-related revenue calculated?
In relation to SCR, football-related revenue relates to a club's total earnings from football operations. It encompasses both the income that clubs generate themselves and the revenues distributed by the League and other football competitions.
For example, club-generated revenues come from sources including commercial revenues, matchday revenues and net profits from non-football events hosted at their stadiums, such as concerts.
Revenues generated by the League and other football competitions include central payments to clubs (merit money), facility fees and income from domestic, European and international cup tournaments like the FA Cup, EFL Cup, UEFA Club Competitions and the FIFA Club World Cup.

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Not the best sources ever, but Ben Jacobs and Alex Crook are saying 70M+ package with a sell on (suckers… our sell ons are worth Jack unless he is CR7… or Dan James lol).

Edit: Per Fab 65M and 5M add ons. Ok in this market to me.

I'm just shocked that this was kept quiet until 2 days or so before being finalized. Would I like it to have been done 2 months ago? Sure. But this whole transfer window had been handled pretty well.

Now go get a LB.

65 plus 5 in add ons.

Not often you see Brighton back down on a valuation they've put on a player. It says something that they insisted on 100m+ last summer, rumored to want 80m+ at the start of this summer, and eventually landed at 65+5.

Assuming this does happen, credit to United for how they handled this. Old United would have probably paid 100m+ a year ago. This United played the long game and waited Brighton out until the table had turned a bit and United held the better hand. The questions about last season are there but the risk/reward/fee combo is very favorable to United in my opinion.

Now do we have enough money left to go get a first team LB?

BTW, still feels weird to watch United make smart moves in the transfer market. I imagine it's like flying in a private jet for the first time with a bunch of others who do it all the time. It's a great experience but you have no idea how anything works or what the protocol is so you're slightly stressed out all the time.

I don't know if a "first team" left back is even possible this year, but we better get one we are comfortable starting because ol' Luke Shaw isn't playing ~50 games, I don't care what happened last year; lightning doesn't strike the same place twice.

Great signing, now just a serviceable LB and we are good to go.

Given the names we're being linked with at LB (i.e. the Jorge Salinas's of the world) , how do you feel about Mr. Dalot filling the position? United may have another rabbit in their hat but if I had to bet, their plan right now is Shaw and Dalot/Dorgu covering.

If we had to do a fill in thing, I'd rather do Maz on left who looked ok there in the WC; I tend to get mad at Dalot when he's on the left. (In fairness that can happen on the right as well).

But then we have no subs for either side; people talk about selling Amass, but if we don't get a left back… we only have 3 full backs on the roster, and two have concerning injury histories.

Basically, even if we can't get Mr. Right (for the left), we need to get Mr. Right Now; don't worry, we still need to buy another next year probably.

Maz can play LB, he did a good job there for Morocco

At the end of the 26/27 season...

Baleba will be 23
Santos will be 23
Mainoo will be 22

Smart to bring in Tielemans for a number of reasons not least of which is his experience in the short term, but the three above could easily be fixtures at United for a long time if their development goes according to plan.

Opening day.

Man Utd: Lammens; Mazraoui, Maguire, Heaven, Shaw; Santos, Tielemans; Mbeumo, Fernandes, Dorgu; Cunha.

Subs: Darlow, Dalot, Martnez, Yoro, Mainoo, Lacey, Rashford, eko, Zirkzee.

Good chance by Mbeumo

Poo