Ex Lion Tamer

Someone will probably correct me on this but I feel very few Premier League clubs manage to bring through young goalkeepers because they mature so late and end up leaving to get experience in lower leagues.

Can someone explain to me why three at the back isn't working anymore when it basically turned around our session last year, and England used it so successfully in the world cup? I'm not trying to be provocative as I saw how much of a difference the change made today

The market has inflated a lot since then, and it was a tribunal fee because Ings was out of contract - these are always low

It's best not to go for top players, we might not get them and then fans are disappointed.

Back when we tried giving the youngsters chance

Yeah GK is a bit of an odd one. Either the club have insisted on bringing Gunn in due to his potential or Hughes simply doesn't think Forster is good enough to be back up. If the latter then I back that. My worry is that the club think they've got a bargain in Armstrong who will bring the best out of the strikers, but maybe he's just not that good

Turns out that if you decide to do transfer business early in the window, then you might be quoted a high transfer free for a player you are after and either have to wait or go elsewhere

This isn't to say that we are necessarily in a good position and done the right thing, but I think what has happened is that Pellegrino identified the need for a striker and the club backed him. Hughes believes that he can get more out of our existing strikers and wants our resources spent elsewhere, and the club have backed him on that.

You have to factor in wages though. It seems like most clubs who get promoted and do well go on a downward curve eventually. Swansea have gone now. We're struggling. If Bournemouth and Burnley lose Howe and Dyche they'll go the same way. It's very hard to maintain things when you lose the core team that got promoted

I'd be wanting to play first team football and get back into to the England squad

Working for me

Oh.

Any streams then?

Every day is National Sh**e Day on this forum

The black line is Lander and the orange one is an index of Chinese companies. So Lander is only really returning to the position it was in in 2015, however, the wider market has been much more steady over that time. I don't know why Lander got so pumped up in the last few years, but this could just be a correction.

I think Lemina will come good but if we were to sell him and use the money to buy a goalscoring striker or pacy winger, then our squad could be more balanced. Not sure we need Lemina, Romeu and Hoj as relatively deep lying players in front of a 3 man defence

There was also that time when he came back into the team and suddenly the team kept a load of clean sheets on the trot. I'm not sure it can entirely be put down to having a great defence in front of him. Something's clearly gone wrong though obviously

Obviously he should never have been given that contract but there is a positive spin on this in that we've decided to invest money in making sure the squad is good enough. In the past we might have kept hold of him as second choice because of the size of his wages. Instead we've taken the tough decision that he isn't good enough, and if that means paying money to a player who doesn't play, then so be it. Better to have two quality keepers than end up with Forster coming in at a vital point of the season. My big fear was that Mr Gao wasn't going to invest in the team, but although its not exactly been huge investment and we can argue that it is VVD money that should be spent, we have a net spend this summer and ditching Forster is part of that investment

That's not actually what the article says

I suspect the scouting team was overruled in order to give support to Mope

I'm pretty sure the ITK word has been that we are looking for a striker

Barcelona B play in the Spanish second division so it's not dissimilar to signing someone with potential from the Championship

To be fair, Kane would have had a free header if he hadn't been hauled down

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jun/20/england-changed-shape-world-cup-2018-steve-holland-tactics If you read this article, it talks about how Gary Neville and Cesar Azpilicueta have both played successfully in a back three, and England are now doing the same with Kyle Walker. All three are under 6ft

We can't keep every player until 25 though, we always have to make a judgement about whether they will continue to develop. Some players just don't. I'm undecided on Targett but lack of pace can be a pretty limiting factor in making the step up to the Premier League.