verlaine1979

Hope the loan works out for him, but Charles just looks a bit lumbering and slow to me, which isn't something he's going to be able to change.

Saw Forest beat United 2-1 last season and thought they looked quick and powerful on the break. Sangare, Gibbs-White, Elanga, Hudson-Odio, Awoniyi and Wood would probably all make our first XI. Will be an interesting measure of where we stand.

I suspect the American finance influence at Chelsea also has them treating player trading like venture capital. Buy lots of young players, for their first loan send them to a good league with no option to buy, then wait to see which ones 2-3x in value. If Les proves himself an effective PL bulldozer for us, he'll be worth at least double what they paid for him without ever having to kick a ball in anger for their first team. On the other hand, if the first loan isn't a huge success, they're sent out again next season to less auspicious clubs with an obligation to buy that hopefully covers the original cost of the purchase or better (as with Broja link to Ipswich now). The key to the approach is that you have to be comfortable with a few big sales covering many more smaller losses.

I seem to remember the forum (myself included) was sniffy about Rafa Silva when he was at Braga because he'd only scored 5 senior goals during his first two seasons. 77 league goals and 71 assists after he moved to Benfica suggest we were probably a little hasty. Hope Fernandes kicks on with us like that.

Taking off Sugawara for Edozie was clearly a mistake. KWP roving from the left and Suga's crossing created a lot more issues than Edozie, even though 90% of our attacks seemed to go through him once he came on.

Downes, Ugo and a through-ball expert wonderkid would seem like a pretty flexible midfield, and well matched to a mobile rather than physical attack like BBD/AA/Archer

Why is everything going through Edozie? It's not as if he's winning those battles.

So the exact thing everyone was expecting to happen, happened. At least it only took 40-odd minutes to show how easily the weak link in our game is going to be punished at this level.

Admittedly, there haven't been a lot of opportunities to see him at top speed with the whole field to run into, but he strikes me as someone with elite acceleration, but only over relatively short distances. If you compare him to someone like Doku or even prime Ronaldo, he just seems too slight to maintain that pace for long.

At least Archer strikes the ball well with either foot. A bit of a rarity.

If you lose twice to a team and finish below them, it's pretty hollow to claim you were better than them.

Looks strong, quick and nice weight of pass. Just what our lightweight midfield needs.

Battle-hardened and won't bottle games against our closest rivals? You mean like Leicester and Ipswich last season?

The Lazio game was on ESPN+ in the US, but doesn't look like they've got Saturday's game sadly.

I think we'll need to be more pragmatic, that's all. Burnley went up with the highest average possession ever recorded in the Championship. Surprise surprise, they were not able to impose their philosophy on a much stronger PL and got dicked most weeks. I'd prefer we have a plan to avoid that, rather than stick with a playing philosophy we lack the players to implement successfully.

Right. And it's my belief that trying to play keep ball is going to be suicidal. Better to have players who can carry the ball forward on th break, as that's likely to be all th possession we get.

I think the idea that we're going to be a possession-based team in the PL is absurd. In terms of having the right personnel to dominate possession we're second last behind only Ipswich. Good intentions will wilt pretty quickly when we can't get hold of the ball (or keep it when we do) because the opposition are both technically and physically superior.

Absolutely - the reputational aspect is just to explain why we shouldn't be surprised when, financial considerations being equal, a player chooses Brighton, Fulham, Forest or Bournemouth, etc. over us at the moment. We're probably the top relegation candidate right now - nobody with decent options is likely to pick us without exceptional additional benefits, be that higher compensation or guarantees of game time not offered elsewhere. The reasons why we seem to lack the financial firepower of our closest rivals is another matter entirely.

Well, unless a more desirable club matches our valuation. In which case we'll have to offer more in order to get Celtic to "encourage" him towards us, and probably higher salary too.

Bigger club discourse is just narcissism of small differences unless you're one of the handful of teams with global recognition. We're not a bigger club than Brighton and they're not bigger than us - they're just another interchangeable modestly sized PL club with a better five-year record than ours, which is pretty much the only reputational issue that will matter to a young player choosing between us as their next step on the ladder.

Bournemouth had a striker who scored 19 league goals last year. Last time we had that, we finished 11th.

I remember Haji Wright being absolutely dire at the last world cup. Didn't see him last season in the Champ. Perhaps he's improved?

Reported at the time as 10m for Edozie and 6m for Larios.

Wasn't Edozie 10m?

Err, I'd say man for man that current midfield four is much weaker than either of the others... Downes is good, but he's not prime Romeu or Lavia, and he's the only one you could argue is at par.