Frenkie de Jong | The last muppeting lap

Frenkie to United?

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Orc said:
Did you just pull this out of your ass? Chelsea have comfortably the largest following of the London clubs globally now if you look at social media numbers (Instagram, Twitter). Don’t know how else you’d determine that scientifically.

We are obviously not a bigger club than United. We are a more attractive club to many players, though. That’s not to say all players.
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I wouldn't disagree with anything you said there but I suppose what people are trying to get at is that the quote is very likely fake
 
So after hoping all summer that he sorts out the wages issue & leaves Barca we have to now hope that he can’t leave Barca
 
It was quite clear back in July that this was not going to happen. Arnold and Murtugh conveniently pictured in Barcelona to show the world how 'hard' that they were trying, then the very next day we agree a fee for Martinez. The club will not spend the money for a number of reasons and have been leading a lot of fans on all summer. Now signing Rabiot confirms all this for me.
 
Berbaclass said:
Till the bitter end.

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:lol:
 
Oh Jesus! Not criminality!! I guess nobody will be signing De Jong since he'll be languishing in prison.

Seriously though I think we need to forget this transfer now as Muppets. It's not happening sadly. I really did think he would be huge for us but we're suddenly in for budget panic-buy midfielders seemingly out of the blue and it's been quite clear for a while that he wants to stay at Barca... For some reason.
 
You get literally blown up by the mods for posting memes in any other transfer thread but this one. So...

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It seems clear to me that they only real chance we had/have of signing Frenkie was if we (a) got a free run at him and (b) he would accept leaving. I don't believe Utd would have negotiated for 13 weeks if FdJ had have said no straightaway to EtH. What I think more likely to have happened is that FdJ told EtH that he would be open to joining Utd if he were to leave Barcelona. But being open to joining doesn't mean we'd be his first choice. We may be a big club with a manager who has a very good working relationship with Frenkie. But other clubs are roughly as big as us in terms of stature, can offer similar wages, and have CL (I don't buy not wanting to move to Manchester, plenty of big players have moved to City these last few years and don't most of these players live in Cheshire anyway?). Sure, Frenkie would be open to moving to Utd but he'd prefer somewhere like Chelsea/Bayern. So we're left with this situation that whilst there was/is the possibility of a deal genuinely being done, it was contingent on bother big clubs not entering the scene. And that's assuming he even leaves! He has a contract, Barcelona have no leverage in this situation, they can't make him move despite their need to sell him. I'm coming to believe that if does leave, it will be either later in the month or in January, I don't see him changing his mind this week anyway. A few weeks/months sitting on the bench might change his mind although as I said, why would we be the front-runners in this deal?
 
Judas said:
How has it possibly come to this, if it's true, that we've been led up the garden path all summer.

I feel like our transfer activity over the last 48 hours has made anything possible with this board though.
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I think the agent has been telling us what HE wants to happen and presenting it as the players wish, hoping he could convince De Jong. I dont think anything suggests the player wants to come here even if he eventually decides to leave. I hope i'm wrong and we sign him next week but IMO the Rabiot deal is plan B. If it was independent of the De Jong situation then surely it would happened weeks ago.
 
Orc said:
Did you just pull this out of your ass? Chelsea have comfortably the largest following of the London clubs globally now if you look at social media numbers (Instagram, Twitter). Don’t know how else you’d determine that scientifically.

We are obviously not a bigger club than United. We are a more attractive club to many players, though. That’s not to say all players.
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Well yes - more attractive to him due to the state we are in and him probably wanting Champions league footy etc which we look a mile away from at the minute.
As for being the 4th best supported in London being pulled out of my arse well if you look at an average attendence list its a cold hard fact. It was the case when i was a kid in late80s/early 90s too - Chelsea were one of the smaller London clubs traditionally. Last season you averaged 36k in a stadium of 41k so similar to Leeds.
If you set stall by twitter followers fair enough but i dont see it as the same as match going support. How many would be left if you had no success for a few years?
 
Cloud7 said:
A lot of the remaining hope for this transfer seems to boil down to basically "Surely we can't be that incompetent that we would still be pursuing this when it seems to be dead" and honestly that really comes down to putting a lot of faith in this club
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And after today, you’d have to be totally tunnel visioned to put all your eggs in the clubs’ competency basket.
 
Brownie85 said:
Wow Barca are an absolute mess.

Funny how they find these criminality issues days before they're due to register their players and can't find the money to do so
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Ornstein said FDJ was written to on 15th July, that’s 3 weeks ago. He’s known for a minimum of 3 weeks that he may be involved somehow in legal proceedings. Obviously we don’t know the nature of the illegality, but it perfectly explains FDJ’s silence. So he does not worsen the situation accidentally he will have been advised to stay quiet. Anything that states he doesn’t like Manchester, he prefers one place to another, that he has told team mates this and that or anything like that is absolute hearsay.

Barca are trying everything they can to force him out without paying and it’s a disgusting way to treat an employee. I think Frenkie is maintaining an amazing amount of decorum and grace through this ordeal.
I believe he will leave Barca, and I think despite all the noise the lure of ten Hag will swing it in our favour. I certainly hope it will.
 
Focusmate said:
Well yes - more attractive to him due to the state we are in and him probably wanting Champions league footy etc which we look a mile away from at the minute.
As for being the 4th best supported in London being pulled out of my arse well if you look at an average attendence list its a cold hard fact. It was the case when i was a kid in late80s/early 90s too - Chelsea were one of the smaller London clubs traditionally. Last season you averaged 36k in a stadium of 41k so similar to Leeds.
If you set stall by twitter followers fair enough but i dont see it as the same as match going support. How many would be left if you had no success for a few years?
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Stadium attendance is perhaps the dumbest and most nonsensical way of determining the following a club has.
 
Judas said:
How has it possibly come to this, if it's true, that we've been led up the garden path all summer.

I feel like our transfer activity over the last 48 hours has made anything possible with this board though.
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It was pretty obvious from the beginning that FDJ had zero interest in joining the club, Barcelona's situation made ETH and the inept board believe that they could eventually convince him, saw this coming since June, now we've wasted time on a player who never had any intention of going to United instead of going for targets that would've worked better for us. It's clear the transfer strategy this summer is do whatever ETH says.
 
Delano said:
That's reasonable though, happens everywhere! :wenger:

What an absolute mess of a saga, truly the most unique one i've seen.

You know you're fecked when a player would rather play for "Cell Block B" than United.
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:lol: :lol:
 
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