I do wonder if there are any players at Everton we would be interested in to make up the numbers in part exchange.

Venky's have supposedly set the price at £20m plus add-ons, so he's not going for less than it no matter what clubs offer.

What we have paid in the past doesn't help us at all now. We do need more players and I still think 6 at least are required. We also need Venky's to approve deals in a few hours instead of weeks and Waggott to increase turnover. I still can't believe they turned down the Bet365 sponsorship this year and went for what they did as the difference is probably the wage of 2 new players.. In all honesty I would like us all to sit down and see the clubs real accounts because I think we'd be shocked what we have been paying for over the last 12 years and the income we've declined.

We do pay loan fees for players and Clarkson was a particularly good deal as we had to pay Liverpool an early termination fee etc as well.

Yep around £10m which includes transfer fees, loan fees and signon bonuses as well as any agent fees. It's precisely £3.5m more than Mowbray spent in total last summer. So is a balancing act.

That is what the reports on Saturday were saying and he would be announced on Monday.

Sounds more like he doesn't know and the club are telling him nothing.

Depends if JPvH will sign the new contract. If he won't they will sell.

This is Venky's they don't care. If a club meets their £20m valuation he is sold otherwise they are ok with him leaving for free next summer. Any other club the writer of the article would be correct but here normal practices don't exist.

I think the issue is not GB but the speed at which it takes to get approval from Venky's. With the Brittain deal, GB and the Barnsley CEO provisionally agreed the deal and personal terms were agreed with Brittain in a day. It then took GB 2 weeks to get permission to complete the deal. The thank you in the press release was for honouring the provisional deal and not selling to anyone else in that time. We are just not nimble enough and the decision making process is just extreme.

At a normal club alarm bells would be raised, with us it seems to be Venky's not caring about the cash. Up until they show interest and understand what a trading club is we have no chance. All this talk of turning into Brentford misses the point that up until their promotion Brentford were a trading club and all of their fans bought into this. All their players had a price and if a club came in the player would be sold so long as the club made a profit on them, they also made sure players had at least 2-3 years remaining to maximize the selling price. With us we buy them and let them go for free, their must be some Indian tax benefit that we don't know about because otherwise very rich people normally learn from their mistakes and change course quickly.

He has signed a new long-term contract with Brighton before going to Sunderland. I think he is now on substantially more than £5k

Agreed but they have spent getting on for £7m doing that and you have already ridiculed the £9-10m budget. So far we have spent around £3m, I am hoping the £10m is right because if not and you are correct SVDB will be our transfer business completed and we'll have signed 4 players and have gaping holes everywhere.

They have to be the right players and fit into our budget. At the moment that feels like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Well if we sign Styles, Bowler and Van Den Berg that is our budget gone for the season. I think they need at least 2 more players on top so at the moment they are trying to balance the requirements of needing 5-6 more players with £7m and pretty much all players we need are in the £3-5m bracket.

Seems we can afford the transfers ( offers been accepted for Dembele, the MK Dons lad who went to Celtic etc) just a very strict wage budget we won't stretch.

We have to be at 90% total wage budget by next season. Loans you can do higher wage budget because not here next season but by the looks of it we can do 6 players at £10k a week. Do £20k for 1 and you can only sign 5 etc. Its a fine balancing act

They put a new system in place and did hire a good manager for this season. Their issue is if they like you they are very loyal.

Venky's want Premier League football. Several Indian consortiums have looked at clubs in the past year including Chelsea and Leeds. The amount of abuse, mocking etc if that happens in Indian media for them will be huge. Only way to stop that is if we go up or look like we will. Also in the past 2 seasons we've spent close to £10m on loans so not a trivial amount as you seem to think.

Special request will be van Hecke and LB and Striker will have to be funded by the remaining budget

The 2 Vans will use all of the remaining £6m so can see a request for additional funds for a LB and a striker being submitted. It seems everyone signed so far is on £10k or so. Getting quality in within the wage budget will be difficult.

I can't see it being Van Hecke, so only other player we have been linked to is Bowler. We'll have to see what happens in next couple of weeks

Yep and did a very good job as well.

I expect so. We are probably not willing to guarantee the number of appearances they are after.

So the Liverpool lad is going to Sunderland for guaranteed first team action.