05 Aug 2026 23:28:53
As another poster said Barcola and Mbaye would be lovely but personally I would go for something like:
Konsa or Quansah
Spence
Munoz
Mbaye.
If Gakpo is sold then get Barcola.
Sell Curtis and promote Nyoni.
Just an educated guess reading info on here and from Journalists.
Is it weird that I am more excited by Mbaye? Which probably means it will not happen LOL!
05 Aug 2026 23:39:17
Surely we're gonna attempt to replace Mo Salah?
05 Aug 2026 23:54:24
So we lost Diaz and Salah in the last 12 months and we think Munoz and Mbaye are adequate replacements? Did I miss something?
06 Aug 2026 00:30:33
The thing is, we are not trying to replace like for like. Salah and Diaz are wide forwards who excel in a front 3 with a false 9 dropping deep to give them space to cut in. We need wingers who stay wide and feed the centre forwards.
All this talk of replacing Salah is just nonsense. We don't need to replace him, we need a completely different profile of player.
06 Aug 2026 00:43:47
Chewy, I agree that some petulant teenager (Mbaye), who undoubtedly has skill but is unproven, is not the type of replacement we would have expected for Salah, but Rayan and Diamonde are much the same profile, so it looks like we are taking a punt on an upcoming type.
To be honest, we were never going to replace Salah, though there is nobody out there quite like him.
Barcola for me is a class act, replaces Gakpo with ease, and will definitely add pace and power.
We had to make changes, and hopefully, after this summer window, we can change the recruitment team for the better.
If we were to add Kounde, Zabarnyi and something for the midfield, I think that's a decent window.
Anything less and we are light.
06 Aug 2026 01:24:58
Rayan is less of a punt because he has played in the Premier League and has looked the part. Some great players have completely flopped when they come into the Premier League.
06 Aug 2026 01:36:11
@Chewy and LFC8, I think the plan was that going huge on Isak and Writz last summer would eventually "replace" Mo's Goals and Assists?! This Summer we need a player who can actually play Right Wing.
Dom, Munoz, Rio, Frimpong, Elliott and potentially Mbaye can all play there, to differing success, granted!
I would rather have a centre back, a right back and Mbaye for a little more than Barcola would cost on his own! In my opinion this squad is not good nor balanced enough to play the likes of Chambers at centre back for 10 games on the bounce, for example!
Whereas Isak, Writz and Dom have enough goals in them if we are a more balanced 11!
I like Barcola but at the price he is going to cost he's a luxury, unfortunately! If we were just tweaking the squad with 1 or 2 elite additions, then great, I welcome signing Barcola!
LFC's squad probably isn't short numerically if everyone was fit to start the season, but we are where we are, unfortunately, folks!
06 Aug 2026 06:06:33
We need to forewarn players and at least one more defender. Why not both! The club clearly has funds.
06 Aug 2026 06:14:58
Diogo, Dom's an 8, and 8's where he'll play, that's not going to change. Moving him to the wing would drastically weaken the team and would require bringing in a £100m+ midfielder to take his place. Munoz is only 21 with just 1 season of top-flight football under his belt, for a team that barely avoided relegation, mind you, Rio's only a kid, with just 5 games' worth of professional minutes to his name, Frimpong is absolutely woeful, and if he's on the wing who's gonna be playing RB? Elliot's simply not on the level. As much as I'd like to see him kick on, I've never seen enough from him to convince me he will. He couldn't even get in the team over at Villa.
You can't genuinely tell me that any of those are solid options for a team that's meant to b competing for major trophies.
I agree, a CB and RB are critical, but my concern is that a lack of quality on the wings may well make us a very one-dimensional team, leaving us to once again struggle with a lot of the same issues we had this past year, and don't forget, the lack of quality on the wings was a serious contributing factor for us last season.
I'm not saying buy a winger instead of a CB or anything like that. I do believe the club are working on defensive options and I think we'll see a CB who can play RB or vice versa brought in at the very least.
06 Aug 2026 06:51:34
It's so hard to know what's truly happening behind the scenes so I'm trying to reserve judgement until the end of window.
The rumours are concerning. Replacing Gakpo, who I expect to have a rebound season under Iraola, with an 18 year old kid is a classic Todd Boehly move.
Jacquet was a risk signing. He didn't even have a full season in France's top flight and we paid 60 million.
The squad is constantly shrinking in top senior pros. Yes, we need to move on some 30+ players, but our 28-29 year olds are thin on the ground or bench players. We are becoming a team of boys.
Thank God we have Iraola in my view. He is a massive plus.
Hughes does need to get going now. There is a lot of work that needs doing on this squad and he has decided to shorten his window to a month.
I'm not sure how invested he is either in getting things done knowing he is leaving.
Kounde, Zarbanyi, Nmencha strike me as men in terms of stature and experience. And Gakpo is too. Don't get why we are selling him after one bad season in a terrible system. We need him.
I hope it all falls through personally. In terms of Gakpo, we keep him.
Still, I do trust Iraola to get the best out of what he has. He can't work miracles though. Hughes and his team have a lot to do.
If they don't get it done, Woodfine is not the right man to take over and we need a new DOF.
Time is ticking.
06 Aug 2026 07:16:54
Not seen Rayan play in the PL from memory, but he would also be a punt at 100 mill and 4 months of PL football.
Realistically, whether it was Diomande, Barcola or Rayan at the proves quoted, they would all be punts, but the truth is we are in desperate need of a quality right winger.
Some might not believe it a desperate, and are content with Chiesa, Munoz or one of the other wingers on the opposite side.
06 Aug 2026 08:02:03
Has someone left the tea room?
Only place I can see Quansah doing well.
06 Aug 2026 09:26:24
We were never going to be able to replace Salah. He was (to use an often commonly overused term) a generational talent. You can't just go out and buy what he gave you because he was one of a few players in world football who could deliver numbers like that from the wing.
I believe that buying Wirtz and Isak was the first step in replacing Salah.
We will play differently post-Salah and goals and creativity will be more spread out throughout the team, and our new right-winger will be one that fits in to our new approach rather than a like-for-like replacement. If they can deliver Salah's numbers, then we will be laughing, but, I for one, do not think that they will be expected to come close to Salah's numbers.
06 Aug 2026 11:30:58
Rayan has the equivalent in minutes of 12 full games in the Prem though. That is it. For a team that most likely had one game a week for the few months he was there. And, let's face it, apart from when he was playing against us, how many Bournemouth games would many of us have gone out of our way to watch? For me, Mbaye at £40m would be a better option than paying £100m for Rayan.
What happened to wanting to find the Next Rayan?