Ex Lion Tamer

Yes that's exactly what it is. Why is that problem?

XG may or may not be useful but when people get so angry about it, it makes me think this is more about some sort of personal insecurity

I've defended Adams on the basis of him playing alongside a goalscoring striker but if we're moving to one up front then i think he needs to be a bench player

Is it possible that Jones got Luton vastly over achieving because he's actually quite a good manager?

It's this sort of thing which makes me think KWP is a good egg who wouldn't leave us in the middle of a relegation battle

He has rejected us

It was a slightly flippant comment but in fairness my original post was "since Neil McCann", which rules out most of these. The Scottish league has gone down a lot in quality since the 80s and earlier when you could easily pick up quality players. Nowadays a player has to be really excelling to be good enough for the Premier League. Wanyama and Van Dijk were outstanding prospects. Armstrong got 15 goals in a season. Davis got 13 assists and 5 goals. Maeda is nowhere near this. Neither was Aribo. Also you missed Skacel 😀

Southampton have been overrating players from the Scottish league since Neil McCann

The legacy of Stuart Ripley is that wingers who played for Blackburn give me bad vibes

Rangers fans warned us that Aribo can go missing, and he was only £7m for a reason. He only scored 8 and assisted 6 last season in a weak league. Compare that to Moi's 8 and 4 for Celtic previously. I think a lot of people got over-excited based on the fact that he can deliver some flashes of sublime skill

The best back threes have a full back in there - it's something we're lacking at the moment

They'll be hoping he's a smooth operator in front of goal

If we can get a goalscoring striker then we might start getting points out of some of these games

We signed a bunch of players early in the window this summer, including some big talents who were sought after by other clubs. We also missed out on some ambitious targets. It's not really fair to cherrypick the failures. Fans are the first to complain if we sign average players and aren't ambitious

Tella couldn't get into our team last season and a half season in the Championship isn't going to change that. Give him a full season at Burnley and see where he is next summer

I can't think of any clubs which have sustained it longer than us without massive investment. Look at Wolves, Leicester, Bournemouth, Burnley, Swansea, Bolton, Pompey. All now on the downward spiral. We've actually had a really good run in the Premier League which might now come to an end or perhaps we can survive and continue for a while longer

Boxing Day does tend to throw up some bad performances. Not saying I'm totally confident but let's see how we do against Fulham

I'd guess they are only willing to spend big on players that will be have a good sell on value and there simply isn't anyone available in that bracket in Jan

Better than we have IF he can replicate his best form

I will be accused of being a Manji alias again but I do buy into the argument that it was Semmens who cocked up the striker signing, not SR. Of course there have been other mistakes but that specific one has cost us big time. This season was always going to be a struggle with so many young players but if we could stay up then we would have something to build on. Not getting in a striker, which SR had big funds set aside for, has killed the plan at the first hurdle

That's exactly the point of the stat. It's showing you how good the team is at creating chances and taking out other factors like whether the strikers had an off day, whether they were up against a goalie having a worldie etc

If I remember rightly, the word was that they'll sell if they succeed in getting a replacement. I think they'd subsidise Wood's wages if it saves them money overall

He was playing so poorly in the Turkish league that he had to be taken off in the 28th minute and you want to sign him?

We finished 8th that season so not a great comparison. I could easily see this season being like 98/99 where we sign a striker who fires the goals to keep us up

Man City sold Lavia to us on the assumption they'd be able to buy him back when/if he is ready to play first team football for them. That's a minimum of a season with us, probably two. They won't want him going to a rival, even if they can flip a quick profit. And they won't want to have to buy him back at a premium this soon to prevent us selling him on. The City talent pipeline is still strong and we'd be mad to cut ourselves off from future deals