verlaine1979

If we can't afford Gakpo, why not go for someone else on the dutch goals/assists list? We were linked with Karlsson a few weeks ago, and he seems more gettable. Unlikely that we've gone from the bargain basement last summer to buying PSV's best player this year.

Bazunu, Lavia and Aribo were all in the press for ages before they happened. We don't do our business in the shadows, we just buy lots of players from clubs that don't have dedicated media correspondents. If we're in for someone from a big club or from the UK, 9 times out of 10 it gets reported in advance.

Kvaratskhelia looks a bit of a steal for Napoli. Just seen the two goals he scored at the weekend - very different but both superb. Only cost them about 10m euros.

Have you actually seen ABK? He's a giant.

Sheesh, amen. Paper thin at FB, painfully low on creativity in attacking midfield and our only "proven" striker hits the keeper 9 times out of 10. Lavia, ABK and Bazunu look like good signings who are already settling in well, but they weren't so much strengthening the squad as plugging gaping bloody wounds in our first team.

Scuffed it, apparently

On the face of it, they seem to have recruited pretty well. Lots of players with experience of English football. As long as they're not fielding an unusual formation, why wouldn't good players be able to slot into place? It's presumably a financial gamble, but there's nothing that doesn't make sense about recruiting a squad full of decent players to replace a squad full of players you know aren't good enough.

Should've made it clear I'm talking about players plotting careers towards Barca, Real, Bayern, PSG and the like. Those clubs don't tend to shop in lower level PL, for whatever reason whereas they buy from mid-Tier France, Italy and Spain all the time.

These players also know they are more likely to get picked up by a big club from Sevilla or Villareal than they are from Saints. Bottom half PL is probably better for your short term bank balance, but unlikely (with given exceptions) to be better for your career if you're young and ambitious.

Doesn't look like the promoted teams have come here to roll over, and the likes of Leeds and Brighton looking a lot more solid than many expected. Relegation places could be very tight this year.

Hojland looks like a giant at 19. Would certainly give our endless crosses someone to aim at finally.

Amazed at how awful Nunez first touch is at times.

Odd that we've chosen a formation that somehow both leaves us weak down the middle AND down the flanks.

Here's what I find odd about Ralph. Not once, at any point in his tenure at the club, have we really had a squad with the athleticism to play the kind of 4-2-2-2 he loves. But what we have had is a squad recruited over a number of years to play some variant of 4-3-3/4-2-3-1/4-3-2-1 etc. etc. which would have given us more midfield coverage with very little cost to our attack since our attackers are prety woeful and feeding off scraps anyway. But when he's deviated from his preferred system, it isn't to default to the tried and true tactics employed by most of the rest of elite European football, it's to play a five at the back system that we DEFINITELY don't have the squad for, on account of only having one decent CB (until ABK proves himself). I'm mystified. I like a lot of what he brought to the club originally, but fear his stubbornness over resisting a relatively simple transition back to a familiar formation is going to end up costing him, and probably us.

Can't see Everton going down - they're light up top (and still will be even if they get Adams) but their defense and midfield both have plenty of quality to keep it tight for a season.

Was Gallagher the last player we loaned to the championship? Most seem to have been L1 at best over recent seasons apart from the first team members leaving the country on loan.

Right, yeah, didn't mean to to suggest Bayern or the like would still be in for him. Just that his stock *should* still be much, much higher than Saints (Dortmund sounds about right tbh). But Leicester also a lot more likely to appeal too.

16 points from 18 games would be just under 34 points over the season and (in all likelihood) relegation. Definitely not good enough.

Not even a sniff of a chance that CHO comes here. He's still only 21, had Bayern bidding for him two years ago. If he winds up here he needs to fire his representatives immediately.

£40m was the price I saw bandied about earlier in the window, as he's higher rated than Sinistera and most of the other young AM talents in the league.

True - I think it was in the run up to the third that we were trying to build a slow attack down the left, a pass wide went square rather than forward, was cut out and they were immediately on the counter. So much of our passing is in front of the defense rather than ahead of it or through it. Lack of movement is to blame for a lot of it, and it certainly doesn't help playing with only two players committed to the attack as in Ralph's preferred formations.

I'm curious as to why the club's best passer and top goal-scorer isn't suited to playing in a more advanced role since we now have an abundance of talent in the water-carrying department? The likes of Sneijder and Eriksen show you don't need pace to play it if your passing and vision are good enough. When he started out he wasn't exactly a harrying midfield machine, but he adapted to that. Why wouldn't his technique and capability adapt again (especially as passing clearly isn't a new skill he has to learn)? I'm open to being convinced otherwise, but on the basis of getting the best out of the squad we have, I'd much rather see JWP pushed forward than Romeu (who looked a bit clueless today alongside Lavia and Ward-Prowse).

We don't have one decent striker, let alone two at the moment to play in a pair. A 2/3 or 3/2 midfield would at least get more of our better players playing in their best positions. At the very least, I'd expect S Armstrong and Aribo to chip in with maybe 8-10 goals between them playing as part of an attacking midfield three. I'll concede that JWPs position is controversial, but we've got three competent defensive midfielders in Romeu, Lavia and Diallo, but no one who can pick a pass in the middle of the attacking third. At the very least he showed today that he might be able to pop up regularly on the edge of the box like a cut-price Lampard in his prime.

Seems weird that this is the formation our recruitment most readily fits and yet to my knowledge we've not tried it once since Ralph took over. Bazunu, Perraud, Salisu, ABK, KWP, Romeu, Lavia, Aribo, JWP, S Armstrong, (a striker). Would seem to play to the strengths of our squad, make our middle much harder to play through than it currently is, and get our captain and best player closer to the goal. Even our less-able squad players would fit into it more easily, with the likes of Redmond and Elyounoussi only having to take on the responsibility of operating as one of a three, rather than 50% of our attacking midfield. Can't handle any more disjointed 5 at the back or underpowered 4-2-2-2 without the athletes to play it.

I really like Arsenal's recruitment over the past couple of windows. All they're lacking is a dominant central midfielder and depth up front.