Alanh

The Dutch posters on here all said that Clasie would take a year to get up to speed in the Prem and he said himself that he needed to get stronger after playing a few matches and seeing what was required physically. I think he has improved steadily since Christmas and assuming he gets an injury free pre season then hopefully he can start to have more impact on matches next season. I like his instinct to pass the ball forward early. JWP, for his other attributes, tends to need time to pick a pass and seems to choose the more conservative option of a sideways ball more often than Clasie. To answer the original question, I think a Romeu and Clasie pairing would be weaker than VW and Clasie, but might develop into a strong enough partnership if given games together.

No one would have predicted this time last year that Jose would implode at Chelsea so there's no telling what might happen at any of the big clubs and whether their new managers hit the ground running. They all have excellent pedigree, but Pep and Conte are new to the Prem so may take a bit of time to adjust.

If Poch wins the League with Spurs this season he will be elevated into the league of top level managers and big clubs like Man U will start to consider him. I think he would be an excellent fit for ManU given the quality of kids that they have in their academy and the style of football that their fans want to see. He'd also be very good at Real Madrid, although they like to buy galacticos who might be less willing to put in the hard work that Poch demands. Barca is a possibility depending on whether he is considered a 'rival' given his history with Espanyol. I thin Koeman will stay for next season and will sign a new contract if we can assure him that we will continue to invest.

We might struggle playing 12 against most teams. I'd say it's extremely unlikely we'll get Depay after the wages he will be getting at Utd. Wijnaldum is not a replacement for Wanyama - totally different sort of midfielder.

That kind of blows pimpin4rizeal's theory out of the water then. Can anyone show an example of a player moving to a mid table club for £25M or more?

Lukaku is just about the only example of a player moving to a non 'top 6' club for north of £25M ever. He's also similar to Bertrand in that he saw what life at a big 6 club is like when you aren't playing and decided to move to get matches. We do quite well in picking up players like that with Bertrand and Romeu fitting that model. There must be others out there though. We can definitely get more value from abroad and have proved that by buying Pelle, Tadic, Mane, VvD and Wanyama. The issue is that if we were to try and get a £25M valued player he would more than likely also be on the radar of clubs much bigger than us, and his wage offers from those clubs would be substantially more than we would offer.

I see that we have drifted away from the concept of constructive suggestions as requested in the OP!

The loss of Morgan has been the biggest issue we have faced in the last two seasons. He allowed us to control midfield and with it retain possession, build attacks at the pace we wanted and recover possession when we lost it. Hi influence helped protect the defence and gave attackers the freedom to be creative given our confidence in getting the ball back if they lost it. Clasie might become the replacement for Morgan in time, Romeu won't as he is there to replace / stand in for Wanyama (who incidentally looks a shadow of the player he was last season precisely because he isn't playing next to Morgan). One of the consequences of us not controlling possession in midfield is the long lump forward to Pelle which we have seen about twice as much this season as last. As far a constructive solutions goes - look around for another player who might be close to a straight Morgan replacement. I don't know who that is so it might have to be a case of giving Clasie time to develop into that player and in the meantime play a different system.

Why don't you take a shirt that currently fits him along to one of the stores and measure it against a shirt off the shelf?

I haven't read through the whole thread so apologise if this has already been mentioned but the key thing that we learnt from last night is that RK hasn't realised yet that Pelle can't get the better of Skrtel. We would arguably have been better off with a small fast front three who may have provided more movement. The downside to that is that we would have had to keep the ball away from Caulker as his two default passes last night were back to the keeper or a long hoof to Pelle.

Thanks, like I said I've blanked out some of it.

First goal was out of his reach - very slight chance Second was at point blank range - I'd be amazed at any prem keeper saving that Third - coming through a crowd of players with a deflection just ahead of him - no chance Fourth - Ibe fires in low and hard - difficult for a big keeper to get down that quickly, but more chance than with the first three Fifth - point blank header - no chance just like the second Sixth - can't remember as I've blanked it out All in all he shouldn't be taking more than his share of the blame after that game. I would prefer to criticize how exposed he was by our defensive performance and by RK's tactics (3 at the back, taking off Cedric).

I missed our fourth against Newcastle last season - Morgan finishing a 40 odd pass move. Saw it on MOTD later though.

If I can time it so that I exit the stadium bowl on the final whistle, from my seat in the middle of a Kingsland block, then I will save 30 minutes on my journey home compared to waiting in my seat until the final whistle. After just about every game that's a time saving worth making.

My thoughts are that you've looked at the situation through red and white striped glasses. I don't think you have given Lallana, Shaw, Schneiderlin and Clyne (from your list) enough time to demonstrate either progression or regression. We obviously had the best years from Lambert and Lovren looks like he just had an excellent season with us and has now reverted to type. I think Oxo and Walcott are better players now for Arsenal than they were for us, but that's mainly down to the first team experience that they have had in the several years since they left.

We have to get through the 3Q round at the end of July / beginning of August before we know for certain that we will have a play off round match to play ahead of the Watford game.

Away for the first game please, for entirely personal holiday related reasons! Don't care against whom as will be able to watch on TV from sunnier climes.

Fair point, and every transfer is a gamble to some extent, but CA is much less of a gamble that Ramirez or Osvaldo as he's got experience in the Prem. He's also worked his way up through the leagues and proved he can score at every level. I'm pretty sure that if it goes through the fee will end up being undisclosed anyway so we'll just have to trust that the club know what they are doing with their budgets.

Unlikely we'll go there with only one holding midfielder. I'm pretty sure we'll see Vic and a partner in the middle, ideally Morgan but if not Reed or Toby, then Davis or JWP ahead of them. Back 5 and front 3 pick themselves after Saturday (Yoshida in for Toby of he is moved forward to holding mid and we know that Kelvin is getting a game).

Superb. Hope they carry the style of communication on into the real kit reveal rather than having a collection of players all looking moodily into the middle distance.

I was advised to do Highway 1 from south to north - you get better views that way. Swingers is a cool diner in Santa Monica. The sushi in Chinatown in San Francisco is excellent. Don't spend too much time at Fisherman's Wharf in SF, but do spend time in the Haight-Ashbury district - loads of good independent shops and restaurants.

I don't think we ever had a realistic chance of top 4. We don't have the quality of player or size of squad to relentlessly grind out wins throughout the season or cope with injuries without a dip in form. As I have said before 7th would feel a bit disappointing to me given that we made 8th last year and Everton have effectively given up their spot in the top 7 with their relatively poor season. 6th would be a really good season as we would finish above Liverpool or Spurs. 5th would be amazing and a tremendous achievement for everyone at the club. I think we'll win four more games, lose two and draw two. Not sure which position 65 points will get us to - it probably depends on what the result against Spurs is, but it will be a great season nonetheless.

If you've got a budget of circa £8K you can have pretty much the choice of the current hatchbacks. On some brands you'll have to settle for older or higher mileage examples, but you should be able to find something fairly easily. I've recently been looking at Alfa Guiliettas, Golf Mk6s and Leons. You can easily get one of them for less that £8K, you then need to decide whether you want petrol or diesel and how many miles you are happy for it to have done.

you could make an argument that Man U could use all of Schneiderlin, Clyne and Toby as mentioned above as the most likely departees this summer. They could end up writing a cheque almost as big as Liverpool did last summer

I thought that the playing advantage decisions were correct and that it was us who squandered the opportunity. It's a judgement call so everyone is going to have a different opinion but I wouldn't criticize the ref for that one. On the 'handing the ball back' incident, I also thought that we should have been given possession, either by taking it back to Forster, or by giving it to Palace, who then were instructed to pass it to us.