verlaine1979

If we were available for £125m I'd imagine there'd be plenty of people interested. That's a fair amount of upside on an asset that was valued at close to £300m only a few years ago. I can't imagine Gao would accept taking that much of a haircut though. Since we haven't seen any cash taken out of the club to service the debt he incurred, he's probably also paid out multiple tens of millions of loan interest on his borrowing.

Broja will probably do another season on loan in Europe at somewhere like Sevilla where they challenge for honours but don't have a lot of cash. Then Chelsea will either judge him ready for their squad or suitably fattened for the transfer market.

Was Walcott as much of a passenger as he looked on tv? Great win, but bearing in mind how careless we were in possession, feels like a smash and grab.

Tino has played a few good passes here and there, but over the past few games his crossing has looked pretty ordinary. He'll be a top player just with what he's got, but he already looks a step behind James and TAA in that department (and certainly not at the technical level of Bale, who strikes a ball about as well as it can be struck). As such, a very good striker like Broja is going to be worth about twice as much as a very good fullback, assuming both fulfil their respective levels of potential. I can't see Chelsea being interested.

Fair point on the subs appearances - didn't realise he'd started 60% of their games. Finishing was poor yesterday, but he was a handful and got two assists. If his touch is off, his pace and strength still cause problems. That's what I mean about having more weapons.

Whatever Long does, taking Broja off is a bad call. Makes no sense at all with the flow of the game.

First actual attacking move of the game. Superb hit.

Incredible. We had an overload on the left of their box and managed to run all the way back into giving them a goal. Cowardly.

Two points: 1. There's no statistical significance to the difference between Armstrong and Edouard's performance based on these numbers. 2. Being able to gradually introduce your new striker because your other ones are playing well is a GOOD thing. Note the way Leicester are easing Daka in too. Inevitably, when most of your minutes are substitute appearances, it's harder to have as big an influence on games as someone who is starting regularly. Again, this is content that the numbers we've been talking about just don't provide.

He's played a lot fewer minutes than Armstrong (698 vs 1089). Assuming 'goal involvements' is just goals plus assists, he's quite comfortably ahead of AA on a per minute basis, though behind Che. But really I'm just talking about having watched him play a couple of times. To me he just seems like he has more weapons at his disposal, more ways of imposing himself on the game than Armstrong.

I still think Edouard looks like a much better player for the same money.

JWP hasn't always been a leaden-footed defensive midfielder - earlier in his career he swapped in and out with Steven Davis in a position not dissimilar to how Mount plays now (for Chelsea at least - I seem to recall Southgate trying to play him as a winger during the Euros). Aside from his lack of desire (or belief) getting forward, I struggle to understand why JWP couldn't play further forward with Romeu and Diallo behind him - he can certainly strike a ball as well as the likes of Mount or Connor Gallagher.

4-3-3 probably suits our personnel best. JWP, Romeu, Diallo as a base, Tella, Broja, Redmond as the front three. Tella and Redmond wide rather than narrow, JWP learns to show up on the edge of the box.

His stubbornness (or myopia) is definitely now a serious problem. Livramento hasn't offered anything going forward and has been a liability in defense for several games now, but he hasn't even been substituted let alone dropped. Even more absurd is the fact that we'd probably be better balanced right now with KWP on the right and Perraud on the left. KWP has shown no lack of ability to get forward on the left, he just hasn't been able to do anything with it when he gets there as he needs to cut inside every single time. I'd argue that he's far more of an attacking threat at the moment than TL, but Ralph has completely blunted him by refusing to rest an 18 year old who clearly needs it.

We were already 2-0 down and effectively out of the game when he came off. And aside from one snap shot that was easily saved, we'd failed to convert any of our pressure into meaningful chances. Teams at the bottom have to lean into their strengths when they want to turn a game around. That could mean playing rough like Burnley or Stoke of old, or it could mean bombing forward with pace like Palace currently do. Our problem is that, as a squad we are neither strong nor fast. We excel only in mediocrity, hence why we have seen so few fight backs over the past few seasons. JWP sums this up for me - a one-paced plodder incapable of playing on the turn, incapable of imposing himself on the game physically and too timid to impose himself on the game through technique. Once the game starts to get away from us, we have nowhere to go.

Nah, one is an optimist, the other a pedant.

Claudinho at Zenit just put in a very good showing at #10 against Chelsea. Doesn't seem to have too high a price tag either.

I don't see us playing an unusually energetic press compared to many other teams in the league. What I see is us trying to play a press without particularly energetic players. In central midfield in particular, both Romeu and JWP aren't quick to begin with, so the drop off as they tire is more noticeable. Neither are the likes of Elyounoussi, Stuart Armstrong or Redmond among the quickest/most physical in the league. We've got good pressing strikers, but the rest of the team isn't really built for it, and it shows.

Sadly we're terrible, slow, indecisive crap on the break. Making chances by forcing errors is our highest probability route to goal, as we've got no creativity to build and hardly any pace in transition to play on the break.

One other question - xG only counts shots/headers/other attempts on goal, right? I.e. if you're put through on an undefended goal but you fail to control the pass, that wouldn't count towards xG as there'd be no actual attempt on goal.

I just meant that yesterday, when we were started this discussion about xg underperformance for the season, Jimenez had scored 3 league goals and Che had scored 2. One (hugely misleading) way of stating that would have been to say that RJ had scored 50% more goals than CA. I'm not against using data in football, but since the game is so chaotic and unrepeatable, I suspect that it's only useful in player assessment on a timescale measured in seasons rather than games. Which means that on some level, you also have to use qualitative judgement to make up for the deficiencies in data - which I guess is why, having seen both of them play, most people here are pretty confident in their judgement that Jimenez is a vastly more gifted player than Adams.

And yet at the time, Jimenez had scored 50% more goals than Che. You see where I'm going with this?

To clarify, before tonight's games, the xg stats said that Jimenez should've scored 0.39 more goals and Che should've scored 0.17 more goals? Considering the actual goals scored at the time were only 3 and 2 respectively, is that fractional underperformance meaningful?

My point is that Jimenez can ping in a worldie from twenty yard too, but neither of ours have the combination of strength, close control and composure that got him the winner against us. Out of interest, can you think of any unassailably great strikers from the past few years who play as part of a traditional central pair?

I look forward to the day either Che or Armstrong turns a center back pair inside out the way he did scoring the winner against us. Jimenez has the technique to play as a lone striker, while Che and Armstrong look utterly lost without a partner to share responsibility and the ball. It's not even close.