verlaine1979

He was already close to the top of our price range when B'mouth bought him I think. Wasn't he about 15m a few years ago?

For the illiterate, the point isn't whether the Palace goal was a good or bad finish. It's whether it shows that he's a good finisher. And the answer is, it doesn't. He's a terrible finisher, as the last five games or so have demonstrated over and over.

I want him to be a decent finisher, but he isn't. Putting one in from 2 yards with the outside of his boot doesn't erase the host of much simpler chances he's wasted over the past few games.

Nice goal, jammy finish. He got it because he went with the outside of his right, which is something he does because he can't use his left, not because he knows its a delicate wand of a foot. Che isn't a good finisher, as the numerous one on ones he's scuffed straight at the keeper or wide of the post amply demonstrate. And at almost 25 years old, he's not going to improve now. He's good enough for second choice, and nowhere near good enough as first. So it'll depend on what we find ourselves needing this summer.

That was a good ball, admittedly, but it's more his composure and the speed with which he finds and executes the short pass when we're trying to retain possession and shift the opposition around. So often you see him get the ball, take an age to turn and look, and then have no choice but to play a hurried ball to one of Vest, KWP or the keeper that invariably puts them under pressure. Salisu looks a lot more confident on the ball, and for that alone I think we'd be a more effective team with him swapped in for Bednarek.

I'd happily lose Bednarek over the summer. We already have a rubbish central defence, so I'd prefer it if we just recruited a crap CB who can pass and doesn't massively hinder our attempts to play out from the back. Obviously a good defender who can do that would be ideal, but tempering expectations.

Lucky - if he'd gone with his left (as most would in that position) he'd probably have missed. Finally, his refusal to use his left foot pays off!

In the games where I thought he was doing okay early on, he was playing more centrally. He'd pick the ball up, move forward a few yards and the move would break down. I gave him the benefit of the doubt because of course most moves driving through the middle of the pitch get smothered. But now he's spending more time out wide and I realise he'd just doing the same thing. He runs in straight lines in the hope that this will be enough to take him past a defender, and 99% of the time it isn't, so he gets robbed and the move breaks down. He's so predictable he gets his pocket picked almost every single time.

Not all 15m strikers scuff the ball as badly has he does. He's got the technique of a 5m striker, though his hold up play is good.

Adams just doesn't strike the ball well. If he's not hitting it as hard as he can in a straight line, he doesn't connect properly. Was obvious from watching his Birmingham highlights.

In the most recent financial statement, 78.8m is listed as an amount falling due in 2025. Another loan is specifically called out as a 'revolving facility', so I'm assuming the MSD loan isn't that.

Isn't it a loan secured against pretty much every asset the club owns? I can't remember the exact details, but I think repayment of the principal doesn't start for a few years, but interest payments have kicked in already.

You buy the club if there's an upside to owning the club. Villa were the example you gave previously, who were bought when they were in the championship, providing plenty of upside. We're already in the premier league, we're priced high for a business carrying 80m of debt, and we've got no high probability routes to increase revenue. If Gao drops his price by about half, we might get a private equity buyer coming in. But they are only going to be interested in us as a kind of distressed asset where the upside is all in the discount (which is pretty much what da grosa was saying in the first place).

They don't. It's just nonsense. There are so many grim, under-developed bits of the city that I suspect the council would bite the hand of anyone who agreed to clear them of industrial contaminants, let alone build mixed used developments on them. They're not holding any property developers to ransom over ownership of saints.

It wasn't Jonny Evans marshalling his troops like it was D Day that won Leicester the game - it was (among other things) the fact that their players could all pass and control the ball without needing five minutes and a satellite image of the pitch to make up their minds. They had Tielemans on the pitch and Maddison on the bench, while our best hope was that Armstrong would create something with his determined but very much one-paced running. To borrow Cantona's phrase about Deschamps, we're a team of water carriers with Danny Ings up front.

We're not fast or physical enough to be a top pressing side - we did well at the start of the season when teams weren't expecting that from us. As it is, we're a slow, small side, so teams with decent technique or physicality find it pretty easy to play around our press.

Apart from KWP and Djenepo, we don't have any pace to break with.

Haaland had a release clause. Not surprising for a player whose career is so clearly being engineered for the big time. Likewise see his comparatively small Dortmund release clause.

Yup - the days of Salzburg et al letting a player with 20+ goals a season go for peanuts are over, ditto for getting the best players from Holland and Belgium. People were seriously talking about Upamecano only a window or two ago, and look where he actually moved to. We have to get more creative with our scouting, but at the moment I'm not sure we have the infrastructure to do that.

We're such an unathletic team. The players we do have who are quick over the turf tend to be pretty slight (KWP and Diallo), our CBs must be as slow a pair as any in the premier league, and we don't really have anyone (aside possibly from Romeu and Adams) who I'd actually categorise as strong. Everyone else in the side just fits into a mediocre middle-ground of not being particularly fast or particularly strong. The rest of the league now seems to have figured out that as long as they don't dally on the ball during transition from defense to midfield, giving us a chance to press and counter, we can't defend and we can't lay a glove on them creatively.

You know your team is lacking in creativity when you're relying on a lanky centre back to be your chief playmaker.

Getting not just battered but outplayed by an Allardyce team. It's almost funny.

The attempted placed finish at the end of the Burnley game shows you why most of the time he just tries to hit it as hard as he can. He's got good aspects to his game, and his goal return is obviously better than many of his counterparts on other teams. Still, he'd be a frustrating first choice if that's what we end up with after Ings leaves.

You would think that if there's a chance of Jankewitz being worth real money one day, the club's business model pretty much demands that we try to retain him and get maximum value from his development. For all the calamity of his league debut, I still think he looks like the most physically and technically promising youth player we've produced since Shaw. Based on glimpses, admittedly, and not a particularly high bar to be compared against, but still. Hope he gets a proper chance before we let him go.

C'mon, scoring against League 1 Pompey and Championship B'mouth is hardly going to earn him a spot on the banner. He was good in that first leg against Liverpool, but other than that, tearing it up against lower league opposition is exactly what you'd expect a propaganda footballer like Redmond to do.