verlaine1979

And my point is that being one of our most creative players is an incredibly low bar at the moment.

As someone alluded to above, rigid application of this philosophy would mean no room for Le Tissier in our team. We're fairly blunt and predictable in the attacking third - for me it's still an open question whether we have the right balance between organization and creativity (though I concede that our squad is short on creativity, so the imbalance is pretty much enforced by default until we strengthen).

Sometimes you can tell. Anyone who watched Aubameyang in the 2012 competition could see he was going to the top.

Attracting a player like Delle Ali, even if it's just on loan, could potentially have a positive effect on perceptions of the club for other targets down the road.

If only that were true. As for Alli, at his best he was a Le Tiss-style dribbler. Never seemed to be moving all that fast, but extremely good close control. Would back him to take the ball around an opponent above all of those three.

Diallo for Redmond, please.

Get Redmond off at half time. Become a complete liability last fifteen.

Eh, it's not like this is ancient history. There are plenty of people still around who will have known what was said at the time and what wasn't. Can only assume that if the club is considering this, it's because they know that a full, public accounting of everything that happened would be even more damaging.

Nah.

Has there ever been anything to suggest that the deal agreed with Atletico for Alderweireld was anything beyond a guaranteed price if the player decided he wanted to join? It always seemed quite open and shut to me that the player just didn't want to sign permanently and wasn't contractually obliged to.

Hopefully. I think the Haaland/Sancho example at Dortmund might have convinced a few that two years at a club that will definitely play you every week before you hit 22/23 is better for your career trajectory. Think Hudson-Odoi in particular has set his development back quite a way by not leaving Chelsea for regular football.

Carvalho looks like exactly what we need, which almost guarantees that we won't actually get him.

Jacob Ramsey looks annoyingly good for Villa. Seen him twice and he just has so much more ability to impact a game than Redmond or Tella (or any of our other attacking midfielders). When you see a 20 year old kid like that imposing himself on a game against United, you realise just how limited our youth players have been in recent years.

Our final ball has been dire today. Redmond and Tella unable to link up with anyone.

We look better in the press and build up, but their play around the box is light years ahead of ours.

Get another Salisu? Bednarek and both of our current first choice GKs have their flaws exposed because of the style we play. We really need all of the back five to be comfortable passing the ball around at the back, and Bednarek pretty much sh*ts himself every time he has to pass the ball more than about five yards.

I can't see it. After Morata, Werner and Lukaku all struggled after headline moves, I can't see Haaland's people risking a career setback there.

Lambert, JRod, Ings, Broja. Broja hasn't 'earned' it the way the other three have, but top tier pace, top tier strength and top tier finishing are vanishingly rare in the same player (at a club like ours, at least).

Diallo superb today, as others have said. Even without the own goal it would've been a near MOTM performance - got through so much work alongside Romeu and JWP.

When was the last time we had a striker who played like that? Far too much build up went through Ings to consider him that kind of player. Moreover, when was the last time we had a central attacking midfielder who could support a player like that? It's not like we have Madison or Tielemans cooling up through balls.

Perhaps, but as the game wore on there was so much space against the back line that Diallo, Long, Elyounoussi and others all had moments. You'd imagine if Armstrong actually had the technique to push on he'd have stood out against such stretched opposition, even slightly out of position. Instead, he was completely anonymous.

Absolutely woeful tonight. If Shane Long can impose himself on a game, Armstrong should be able to.

Hopefully we've now got enough cash to speculate in the market for young players with potential alongside the likes of Dortmund and Leipzig. There's always a high failure rate with speculation, and you need enough of a buffer to absorb the (hopefully still comparatively small) cost of those players that don't work out, which we haven't had up to know. Could be exciting times if we've got the cash, confidence and competence to lean into that model fully.

Wonder if they'll have a Scandinavian club on their shopping list, or will be leaving that linkup to Brentford/Midgetland?

Owners can put in 35m a season for three years without triggering ffp. If you're worth 1bn, you might balk at putting an additional 10% of your net worth on the line. If you're a sovereign wealth fund worth hundreds of billions, it probably means less.