verlaine1979

You're always enormously pleased with yourself to point out that you believe people are misusing the word 'investment' when it comes to buying football players. But since we all understand the context here (in which an owner is putting more money into the thing he owns) why don't you just quit with the odious pedantry, as it doesn't add anything to anyone's understanding of the situation.

Our wage bill is more than double that. Last accounts put it at £113m I think.

He's got a point. We couldn't have planned for Ings going on a best-in-career scoring streak, and if you take away even a couple of his goals over the run, we're probably six points worse off and dicing it down with Villa. We've put in some fantastic team performances recently, but Ings' form and fitness have been miraculous.

Of course, because the most salient fact about Osvaldo's time here was his egotism. Got it. Lemina had some great games for us and some shoddy ones, and overall didn't play enough because of constant injury. I can't help but conclude that a lot of the opprobrium aimed at him has more to do with non-footballing factors. If unforgivably bad games were the main criteria, the guardians of moral sensibility on this forum would already have torn Shane Long limb from limb.

Sure, Lemina is a bit flashy, but the comparison with a violent nutter like Osvaldo is way off.

Either that, or you're just guessing about the management structure and resources at Bayern.

Less than a season in and he's now listed on the Bayern Website as Assistant Coach - Analytics, third in the list of First Team Coaches after the Manager and another Assistant Coach. So he's basically gone from assistant manager at Tesco to Assistant Manager at Harrods.

It wasn't a 'mistake' it was a reckless piece of overconfidence compounded by the complete lack of energy he displayed in trying to get back towards the ball. If Tosun had forced a save and the ball had bounced back out into the box, Vest would still have been jogging back towards the D with a rueful look on his face. No excuse for that.

Long is just so, so sh*t.

Who said the changes were immediate and total? All I'm saying is that the 0-9 was liberating. He obviously didn't feel quite liberated enough to try out a new approach against City in the next game (who would be quite likely to d**k us however we lined up, thus undermining any attempted change), but the changes began in the next game against Everton and by the Arsenal match we were starting with a back four and pressing much more aggressively through the attack and midfield.

Yup - big money players only get that way when big clubs pay big money for them (duh). There's plenty of talent out there, you just have to know what you're looking for.

I still think he's potless and that this will ultimately hurt us in a league where almost all other owners are prepared to put in funds.

I suspect if someone comes in and offers us the chance to double our money on Ings, the club will take it. Just based on the board's prior proclivities, his age and injury record. That said, I doubt the clubs that could afford him would take him, so I think he'll probably stay.

Eh, I don't know what's so difficult to understand. In a game of (generally) fine margins, there is a bias towards towards continuity/inaction as significant change is as likely to yield outsized negative results as an outsized positive ones. However, in the case of the 0-9 the margin wasn't fine at all, so continuity was categorically proven to be the imprudent course of action.

As of the last published accounts (to Jun 2018), Wages were £85m and had dropped from the previous year against a reduced turnover of £152m. Despite the drop in turnover, the club still posted a profit of £35m. A new tv deal has kicked in since, so presumably turnover will be receiving a boost this season, while I'd put money on the wage bill being even lower these days.

As do many players vastly more accomplished. All this proves is that PFA categories have failed to keep up with trends in the game.

Those are exceptional players, better in their 30s than most players ever are. Still, in all three cases, their best goalscoring seasons were in the age window I mentioned (though Vardy could possibly exceed his best season if he keeps going this year).

Five at the back has been a safety net for our last couple of managers, but since we don't have world-beaters in midfield or attack (though Ings is making a decent case atm) the security was illusory. Being brave enough to ditch one of the CBs and compete further up the field has made a huge difference, though without Ings' purple patch, I doubt the formation change alone would've made quite such a profound difference. Fine margins n'all that.

Jones looks a real talent - the goal was fantastic, but is passing is great too. Lots of intelligent, inventive one-touch stuff.

Eh, I didn't scour too far back, but by October of his debut season with us, people were already touting Mane as being a future big money player (£30m still being a fair whack in 2015). There were a few randoms who spouted off about him, but he showed touches of class from his very first substitute appearance for us. For what it's worth, I think Djenepo has looked almost as promising, albeit with more injury disruption. On the other hand, I thought Adams' finishing looked rubbish when I saw his goals for Brum on YouTube, and I've not seen any of those promising moments for us that might persuade me he has the technique to make it in the PL. He just looks like another average Championship striker that a PL club has taken a punt on - the transfer history of the league is littered with them.

He was planning to bring in a few signings last January too. Not sure it means much in terms of whether Gao ultimately spends or not

It isn't money laundering. It's finding a loophole to move money out of China at a time when the government wanted cash outflow to cease. He said it himself in that interview earlier this year - Jack Ma or someone like that was extolling the virtues of establishing capital outside of China, so he wanted to do the same. He's borrowed £200m in short term loans to buy a cash-flow rich asset in the hope that it will eventually self-finance the incurred debts. Once the loans are repaid, even if he sells the club at a small loss it will have been worth it to move a sizable chunk of cash out of China.

You don't think three years makes any difference? The sport has changed - average players aren't at their peak from 28-30 anymore, with the physical demands meaning that decline now starts from about 26. Even allowing for the fact that center backs peak a little later, Yoshida, Bertrand and Cedric are all on the wrong side of their peak years now, having been close to their prime in in 2016/2017.

What's the point of this comparison? An additional three years hasn't done any favors to most of those players, with Bertrand, Yoshida, Romeu and even Hoj seeming a good yard slower than in 2016 (plus Cedric clearly wants out, so his effort has declined regardless of his physical condition). For reasons both to do with transfers and the general composition of our first XI, we are a slower, weaker team than we were under Puel. And as someone else said, standards in the league are increasing all the time.