12 Aug 2026 08:23:53
Do any of the Eds or ITK's know if we looked again at Angelo Stiller? Only 25 and according to ITKspace on a fairly recent post he was looking to get a move to the Premier League and was disappointed that no one has moved for him yet.
Not really seen much of him but it sounds like he wouldn't be hugely expensive? Apparently the release clause is around £42 Million.
Chelsea had him as a possible replacement should Enzo go and united were looking at him.
All opinions welcome.
12 Aug 2026 08:52:39
He seems to get linked with the PL every transfer window, especially with Utd, but nothing ever comes of it.
12 Aug 2026 09:06:55
Why Him? (One for film buffs)
12 Aug 2026 09:08:02
I've seen him play a few times, and though he does seem like a very good player, it's hard to judge anyone in the Bundesliga right now. It's never been so weak. Other than Bayern, every other side is an absolute shambles. Even Bayern are miles off the levels they've reached in previous years, and they basically just rely on outscoring their opposition in an end to end basketball match.
Look at how easily Villa rolled over Freiburg in the Europa League final. In the Champions League, we battered Frankfurt 5-1 in one of our worst periods of form in the last 60 years. Leverkusen and Dortmund came 16th and 17th in last season's Champions League Group stage. Frankfurt were 33rd.
After Bayern, the rest of the league is pretty much the same level as the Portuguese league or the Eredivisie now, in my opinion.
We really saw the stark contrast in level through the medium of Wirtz, Frimpong and Ekitike. It took them all half a season to be able to last more than 60 minutes at the intensity of the Premier League. Wirtz and Frimpong still hadn't really got to grips with the pace and physicality of the league by the time the season ended, talented as they may be.
Personally, I'd be steering well clear of Bundesliga players. Luis Diaz and Harry Kane have gone over there and nigh on trebled their goal outputs. We should learn our lesson. The players are overpriced and overrated. We're just lucky Wirtz is only 22 and has time to adapt to a proper standard of football.
12 Aug 2026 09:30:43
That's why I don't rate Olise. He wasn't anything special in the PL, but pulling up trees in the Bundesliga like Serge Gnabry, Jaden Sancho.
12 Aug 2026 09:33:49
Wirtz?
12 Aug 2026 09:37:22
Great film, Rome! First thing I watched with Bryan Cranston after Breaking Bad!
12 Aug 2026 09:40:18
Haaland did ok in Germany and has struggled in England.
Hardly ever touches the ball that lad.
12 Aug 2026 09:43:21
I detect you're a film buff, Mr. Craine.
Every other league is like that bar a team or two in each league. France bar PSG (we also hammered Marseille away), the whole Italian, Dutch and Portuguese leagues. Spain bar the big two. The only way you can be sure you're getting players ready for the Premier League is by buying from the Premier League. And even that's not foolproof, and can obviously be very expensive.
12 Aug 2026 10:18:59
Olise was brilliant in last couple of seasons at Palace, and he consistently did it in the Champions League too. World class player, no doubt about that.
12 Aug 2026 10:29:34
JK23, Haaland left Germany 4 years ago. That's a long time in football and completely irrelevant to the current state of the Bundesliga. There will always be exceptions to the rule, anyway.
I stand by my views; Bundesliga signings are a risk right now. They burned us last summer and we now have a £100-116m attacking midfielder who so far many would consider a flop, and a £30m right back who most of our own fans already want to replace.
Not to mention the £79m striker who suffered a potentially career altering soft tissue injury, which could arguably be attributed to struggling to cope with the physical demands of a long Premier League season. What part of that £225m investment makes you want to go back and shop there? I hope my post doesn't come off wrong, as I'm genuinely asking what makes you believe the league is still strong.
12 Aug 2026 10:30:08
Kane has trebled his output? Which Kane did you watch in the Premier League? Properly does my head in how underrated he is.
12 Aug 2026 10:43:56
There are so few guarantees with transfer business, it's probably important to focus as much on the player as it is the place they come from.
Watched a piece on sporting greats recently, like Pele and Gretzky. Conclusion was analytics and metrics can be really flawed, and should be a smallish part of any assessment, and things like academy programmes are too structured to allow lots of players to reach their full potential.
What they all had in common was work ethic even on days off, focus on self improvement almost to the point of obsession, creativity on the pitch or court, nurturing coaches when they were younger, players had usually played multiple sports before focusing on one, and ability to see the whole picture when they were playing.
Not every player we buy needs to be a great, but at least if they have some of the right characteristics it's a good start. Got me thinking, Munoz seems like a good example of someone we could develop even though he came from a modest club in Spain, whereas someone like Barcola I'm not sure about despite the profile.
12 Aug 2026 10:49:15
Every signing is a risk.
12 Aug 2026 11:00:47
Kloppthelot, I mean, obviously it was a throw away comment and I hadn't actually looked up the exact ratios! I apologise, though, for my tongue in cheek comment. I was not meaning to imply that Kane or Diaz are bad players.
I thought I'd have a look, though, to see the actual increases are off the back of your comment. Diaz went from averaging 7 league goals a season at Liverpool over 4 seasons to scoring 15 last season in Germany (over 2x as many as his average in the Prem).
Kane, if you take his last 5 seasons in the Prem, he was averaging 21 league goals a season. In the Bundesliga, over the last 3 seasons, he's averaged 33 league goals (over 1.5x his average in the Prem despite being well into his twilight years now).
In case you were interested.
12 Aug 2026 11:03:40
Kane got 30 Premier League goals in his last season at Spurs. Got 36 league goals for Bayern this season.
12 Aug 2026 11:23:35
In fairness on Diaz also, one of them four seasons he only joined in January and in another he was missing for months after getting injured vs Arsenal and only played 17 times. Only played 30 league games in the first two of them four seasons, less than the 32 he played for Bayern in one season alone in 25/26.
So it's more like 29 goals in 3 seasons worth of games as opposed to 4, which would average out at about 10. He got, as you say, 15 for Bayern last year. He was always going to score more playing in a weaker league for the most dominant team by far. But in the grand scheme of things it's not that much more.
12 Aug 2026 11:23:44
Florian, he also had 17, 18, 23 and 17 league goals in the other 4 of his last 5 seasons in the Prem. In the Bundesliga he's done 36, 26 and 36 league goals in the last 3 years. It's pretty obvious there that his output has increased. The peak output is up, the minimum output is up, and the average is up.
All that despite being 30-33 years old for his 3 seasons in the Bundesliga.
If you want us to shop in the Bundesliga again, that's your prerogative, but I think I'm well within my rights to be skeptical.
12 Aug 2026 11:40:16
Handy that you stopped at Kane's last 5 years when, in the two before that, he got 30 and 29 league goals, after having got 25 the year before that. ? Look, MK, the Bundesliga bar Bayern is obviously much weaker than the Prem.
But it's no weaker compared to England than France, Spain and Italy are, barring one, and in Spain's case two teams in each of them leagues.
12 Aug 2026 11:54:32
Flo, how far do you want me to go back? I thought 5 seasons was a good sample size! If I go back all the way, he only got 3 in his first season. Also, if you do go back before 2018, the Premier League was also weak back when Kane had those 29 and 30 goal seasons you mentioned. Leicester won the league one of those years and Chelsea won it the next with Alonso and Moses in their starting XI.
That was a very bad period, with very few Prem teams competing on a European front. Liverpool, Arsenal, City and United were all in a lull, which left Spurs, Leicester and Chelsea to mop up.
Even if you include his whole Prem career, his peak, minimum and average are all still higher though, so it's a moot point really.
12 Aug 2026 11:55:43
Mk, aren't you a big advocate for Barcola, though, who by all means is in a weaker league.
Doesn't the scepticism come across for this potentially record breaking transfer or is it only Bundesliga specific.
12 Aug 2026 12:12:54
Our best buys of the last decade or so have been Mo and Ali from Italian clubs, VVD Southampton, and Diaz, probably next best from Port.
12 Aug 2026 12:43:02
JK23, I don't think the French league is anywhere near as weak as the Bundesliga, but it is of course subjective.
French sides just seem to be much stronger right now, and the players who've come over to the Prem from the French league have consistently been performing for about 5 or 6 years now. Even last season with Cherki and Kroupi Jr being prime examples. The pace and intensity in Ligue 1 is the closest to the Premier League in Europe, in my opinion. The closest match in terms of quality is still La Liga though.
Italian football lacks pace and quality right now, whilst German football is lacking in physicality and intensity.
French football has surpassed them both in my opinion and is now somewhere close to the standards of La Liga. The Premier League still seems to be well clear overall. I'd really rather be shopping in France or Spain because it's much easier to gauge the ability of a player if he is playing against good opposition most weeks.
You could even argue that my views are reflected on the International stage, with Germany and Italy being complete non-entities now for nearly 10 years.
12 Aug 2026 11:43:28
Mk no worries your post didn't come across any way bad mate.
I didn't say the Bundesliga was strong. It's quite obvious to even Stevie Wonder that the PL is the most competitive in the world because it has the most money to spend. I just don't think that the other leagues are farmers leagues with farmers playing in them.
Roughly 70% of the Premier League is made up of these players who were once in a farmers league so they can't be that bad or high of a risk.
With 30% of the league I'd actually argue that English players are more or a risk because they're certainly in the minority.
12 Aug 2026 12:53:36
Mk, I did send another friendlier reply, mate, but it's not been posted.
Truth is, 70% of the league is made up of non English footballers, so I'd argue that all these players contribute to making the PL what it is, whilst weakening the leagues they leave.
12 Aug 2026 13:00:18
Genuine question, MK - where would you like us to buy from?
Plenty of players come from Spain and fail in Prem.
Same for Germany, Italy, France, Netherlands, Brazil.
You can't say you wouldn't buy from league X because it's a weaker league when every single league is weaker.
You're essentially saying we should only buy from the Prem. Even that's not bullet proof because a player might do well for a club that builds around him and then terrible when he moves to a different club (the never ending stream of duds we've bought from Southampton is a good example).
12 Aug 2026 13:02:46
Surely, if you're going to compare Kane's output, playing for Spurs vs Bayern has to be taken into account as well?
12 Aug 2026 13:53:31
I'm not saying that at all, Nevada, so apologies if that's how it's coming across.
What I'm trying to say is that right now I think it is going to take longer for players from the Bundesliga or Italy to adapt (in general, not in every case). In the modern game, where patience is a rare thing, I think we'll see a lot of players from Serie A and the Bundesliga getting bombed out the league back to mainland Europe because they didn't hit the ground running.
I also think it's much harder to assess how good a player is when they're playing in Italy or Germany, where they're not challenged as much by the level of opposition. Thus, I think it will be more likely teams make mistakes when signing players from those leagues, as the leagues still carry a "top 5" reputation despite being significantly weaker (in my opinion) than England, Spain and France.
Nowhere in this thread have I said we shouldn't sign any players from Germany or Italy because they won't cut it. All I've said is that I'd prefer we shop in France or Spain (because it's harder to accurately assess players in Italy and Germany), and then attempted to justify why I have that preference at this current point in time. 10 years ago, I probably would've said that France was the weakest of the 5 and we should be more diligent and cautious when signing players from there, but the dynamic seems to have shifted. Again, only my opinion. It's very hard to compare entire leagues to one another.