verlaine1979

I thought your point was that clubs were obliged to sell before they buy, not just that it was prudent to do so, which is another argument entirely.

There's a restriction on how many players you can register in your PL squad, but no restriction on how many you can have on your club's books. Newcastle still had five senior players left out when they submitted their squad at the start of the season. There's no rule saying every player above 21 taking a wage has to either be in the PL squad or loaned out/sold.

Terrible from Vest - Moura turned him outside the box and suddenly he barely seemed to know where he was on the pitch.

What's your problem with lesbians, stroppy or otherwise?

The youth squads' only purpose is to be a production line for the first team, or a source of revenue if we can sell the ones we don't want. That's why players have always been promoted from the under 18s when someone from the under 23s is elevated to the first team. As said below, there is literally no point and no precedent in loaning a player just to make up the youth squad numbers for five months.

Yes, I can read, but there's little point in loaning a player with the sole intention of them only ever turning out for the under 23s.

No idea if he's remotely ready for the premier league, but until Armstrong came in over the past ten games, we'd been crying out for someone who can carry the ball out of midfield and link up with the attack. From the clips this looks to be one of Maddox's main attributes.

Don't think he seems either way. He doesn't come across as much of a show off, much of a whiner or much of a cheat. Certainly doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Zlatan, Suarez or Vardy who are all genuine c**ts.

Suarez, though I'd get over it if he fancied ending his career here

Eh? What's wrong with Firmino?

In fact, it's not an investment if there's even a slight chance you might lose money. That's even more basic on the business stuff curriculum.

This. It's not an investment if you don't make money. That's just basic business stuff.

I count five under-21s in our 25-man squad listed on the Premier League website. Plus, you do what PL clubs have always done when buying potential for the future - you loan them out which helps you find out quicker if they're likely to come good.

The problem with our approach is that we've stopped taking a punt on players like Bednarek. The buy-to-eventually-sell approach requires speculating on players in a range of price brackets to spread the risk. Over the past couple of seasons we've reverted to one-in-one-out at the first team level, with no real investment in players outside that. Wolves' punt on the lad from Rochdale being a case in point.

Stephens not covering himself in glory there allowing Firmino to turn so easily.

Or they can check it after they score, just like they do with a handball during the build up. No way you could argue that a missed penalty shout during the phase of play is less significant than a handball.

Was there really no VAR review on that challenge, or did they just not mention it on the tv feed? Only seen three replays, but each time it looks like Fabinho jabs his foot out and misses the ball.

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.