CB Fry

I'm sure Sepp Blatter had a directive about that.

Quite fancy the England Number 7 playing tonight. Thoughts?

You've decided to announce to the forum that you are going to cancel your subscription to The Athletic for what turns out to be no reason at all, so you tell me.

So you are cancelling your Athletic subscription because you are absolutely delighted with that article. Clear.

Odd. Not sure what is there to get that upset about.

Romero was just a(nother) pointless forum obsession. Just the absolutely zero appearances last season. Zero. But he played 15 times in 12/13 season or something so get him in get him in get him in. FFS. Todays story is welcome as the previous Athletic positioning when McCarthy signed his extension was that next summer the club were targeting a young keeper to challenge McCarthy and replace eventually, another Gunn type if you will. That sounded insane to me, but this story suggests that we are doing what we should be doing: signing an immediate number one for McCarthy to challenge. Not an expert on this guy but I guess Crocker knows him well and it does feel we should be able to work on this in January ahead of the summer if needed.

Interesting that you are intentionally ignoring the stats from the 2020-21 season- you know last season, the one that's just happened, not 2013. Zero appearances. Zero. Does last season not count as "recent history"?

Personally I think its pretty lazy to label him as a "yes man" based on fuck all really, apart from people just not liking him, him not having a witty or sparkly personality like Koeman or Strachan and turgid football. To me he always came across to me as someone that didn't take any shit. He had a method and he stuck to it. Unless people's idea of a "yes man" involves the idea that the club specifically told him to try and score as few goals as possible in the last ten games of the season and he went along with it.

I'm sticking to 17-20. I think it perfectly possible for A Armstrong and Livramento to be outstanding but we can still be in the relegation mix because defensively weak from centre mid to goalie and we are bottlers. Maybe optimistically we might scrape 16th. I think our first team is weaker than last year and the "we've got a bigger squad" thing i think is being over played, especially with our goalkeepers and CBs. I'd rather have a better team.

I don't think anyone would describe the FDF as left wing.

Just seems to be one of those forum obsessions we get from window to window. I doubt the club were ever interested in paying a fee and a four year deal for a 29 year old in a position where we already have a 29 year old. And from his perspective he's not going to come to "compete" with an established player in his position at a bottom six Prem club at his career stage. He has gone to a Champions League club lets remember. I'm sure we were looking at DCMs but in the realms of the 21 year old Wanyama or Hojberg types.

I applause patience of those writing such considered and detailed replies to this contrary, I've-seen-something-on-Facebook idiot. But it looks like he now has claimed to have won the argument so fair play to him, congratulations 👏 👏 👏 👏

Great posts Sydney Saint.

Feels unlikely- the defensive midfielder thing us not a cast-iron cock up like the Caceres situation. It's something we can cope with (S Armstrong can cover etc). We'd need injuries to two of Romeu, JWP and Diallo for it really be a problem, and to be honest if we have that kind of injury crisis then we're screwed anyway.

This is what I come on this thread for.

And you have to consider that we have off-shored huge amounts of industrial production to China: they make pretty much everything. So it would be justifiable to reallocate some those emissions to the UK per capita.

Because the "I've dun my research on Facebook and crank websites that just reaffirm what I already think" brigade are worthy of mockery. I'll comment on what I like when I like. Thanks for the love 👍 😘 ❤

The club have briefed to Sheldon and Blackmore in the last 24 hours that we would have signed a defensive midfielder if the opportunity was there. So does this mean we were prepared to go into the red, or maybe we do have £10m or so in the kitty for another signing?

Well, we have been told via Blackmore/Sheldon that we would have moved for a "number 6" (in real money a number 4 defensive midfielder) if the right opportunity came up. So I don't think its accurate that we don't have any money left, from what has been briefed out. Doesn't mean its a lot or that we will spend in Jan. But if we are 19th then I think we probably will do something. If we are 14th with no injuries probably not.

Pretty stupid comment. By the same token we could have signed a large black pudding with a face drawn on and hand tied to a broom handle as our Danny Ings replacement and some on this forum would be saying "let's give him a chance, I can't believe you people are knee jerk writing him off already without seeing him play, its a disgrace,this is exactly what happened to Mane, call yourselves a supporter etc etc etc"

I wouldn’t hold out any hope that I am ever going to read any of the old shit you post up. We all know what you think, so it makes it easy for me.

The Athletic write up is unfailingly positive this morning. "A bloody good window" indeed.

I think both things can be true. Armstrong is as good a replacement as we were ever going to get, and perfectly capable of scoring 12-15 goals and I think he will. But Ings did offer more in the way of creativity/something out of nothing which with the best will in the world Armstrong doesn't have that yet and he won't this season. In the rest of the side we have pace but not huge amounts of creativity, and with Ings gone much less creativity than last year. So I think it is fair comment to say that Armstrong is s good signing but also that we will still miss Ings ability to create something out of nothing and change games. We haven't replaced that (and I don't think anyone thought we would). Peter Crouch was a great signings and scored 16 goals and a good replacement for Beattie but that wasn't enough to keep us up. So I think S-Clarke is saying our inability (maybe impossibility) to replace that side of Ings game should have meant more focus on our other main weakness, which is in defence and conceding goals. Using the same three games we've already conceded six so it remains a significant area of concern. Bafflingly the club have not appeared to see it as a worry so did the bare minimum.

Utter bollocks generally is wrong, that's kinda the thing about utter bollocks.

To me it feels like we have done the absolute minimum and not much more. Replacing Ings and Bertrand well, and Tino is a great prospect. Beyond that we have not addressed our fundamental flaws of defensive and mental frailty and on pitch leadership. All could have been resolved by signing an appropriate front line, first choice central defender. We did it with Virgil and Lovren (and tried it with £16-8m spent on Hoedt and then Vestergaard). We brought in decent funds and cut the wage bill, so money was there. It remains baffling to me that we went for a back up rather than front line CB. Secondly if Romeu gets injured, we're fucked. Lastly the goalies are shit. So we go into this half of the season with the spine of a jellyfish from CM to GK. Armstrong is going to need to score a hell of a lot of goals to keep us up.