verlaine1979

Blimey, if true, we really are broke. Wonder what the next set of accounts will reveal? Net-zero for player trading over six seasons and revenues now close to £200m a year - the catering staff must be on some f-ing huge performance bonuses.

Eh, there's zero chance that RH would've refused the chance to add some pace to the squad, so let's not pretend that this is a transfer window tactical masterclass from the club. Our current preferred formation requires a significant attacking contribution from our fullbacks, but our first choice right back is currently too nervy to cross the ball. Whether the thinning of the squad costs us is only going to be down to luck.

The thing is wages, agent fees and loyalty bonuses are highly likely to correlate directly with the transfer activity of the club. Since our transfer activity is entirely unremarkable compared with our league peers (total amount spent, record signing value etc), I see no reason to assume that these ancillary costs are vastly out of proportion with the rest of the league. In other words, they're pretty much irrelevant when asking the question of why we appear skint in contrast to the clubs around us.

If you use Transfermarkt's figures for those seasons instead, you get a net transfer spend of about -£5.5m as of 18/19 (i.e. not including Ings, as we don't know how the cost of his transfer will be offset by sales during the 19/20 season). If all the things we've been told about the way the club is run are true (i.e. no debt, no money taken out by the owner) and there's been no kitty built up over 6 seasons of cost-neutral transfer activity and bumper revenues, then we must've been subject to some quite staggering financial mismanagement.

The critical difference between him and Mane is that from his very first game, you could see that Mane had exceptional pace regardless of how you felt about the rest of his qualities. Elyounoussi just hasn't shown a single outstanding (or even above average) physical or technical quality in any game. If he had anything about him at all, you'd have seen glimpses of it by now, even if he wasn't ready to dominate games.

I'm sure someone will be along to guff on about our (entirely unremarkable) wage bill at any minute.

Presumably he simply mixed up Grumman and Gulfstream.

Wonder if Arsenal might be in the market now that Bellerin seems likely to be out for months?

Bednarek, Hoj, Romeu and Redmond all excellent. JWP much better second half, and not just for the goal (been waiting for him to strike a moving ball that cleanly for years) - he started to play much more progressively second half, got his head up and played several good balls forward. However, we still need a better option at CB. Bednarek is good, but Stephens is rubbish in the air and Vest seems to struggle getting any distance at all on headed clearances as his timing is wrong 9 times out of 10. Sign someone with similar attributes to the ones Tomori showed midweek to partner Bednarek and we might be getting somewhere.

JWP needs to learn how to play on the turn. He'll hit it backwards to a player he can see even if there's open space for him to turn into. It's a profound weakness for a central midfielder to lack awareness of the space around him. In other news, Bednarek continues to improve, doesn't he?

Not doing badly, but it's noticeable that we don't have the technique or composure to keep possession and pressure around their box. If we don't create a chance from the first spring forward, then nothing happens. Everton haven't been great, but they've shown more ability to keep the ball in areas around our area, and have fashioned a couple of shooting chances on the edge of the box.

Nah, plenty of people could see that Mane had something from his first substitute appearance in the league. I probably give as much benefit of the doubt to flair players as anyone (I still want Boufal back and regret that we never used Gaston to his full potential ffs) but I haven't seen a single thing to get excited about in Elyounoussi's play since he joined.

Quite - I guess any player whose data is being regularly updated in our apparently comprehensive database is technically being tracked by the club. I do wonder if that whole thing was a misunderstanding on his part. If we'd been so enamored of his quality that we felt the need to pay close attention to him from the age of 18, then presumably we could've picked him up for peanuts at any time before he scored one against City and added a few zeroes to his price tag. Seems far more likely that someone just mentioned in passing that the club had been aware of him since he turned pro and it got turned into an epic (and unlikely) story of pursuit.

His problem is he's not just slow, he's remarkably slow. Considering people have been banging on about the pace of the PL for years now, it would seem a pretty good rule of thumb that you shouldn't spend serious money on attackers who aren't quick unless you have a really, really good reason for doing it (exceptional technique, vision, strength). His other attributes just aren't anywhere near impressive enough (underhit passes, ponderous decision-making) to make up for his utter dearth of speed. Tadic was slow too, but had superior numbers from a superior league and even he would've probably been 10x the player he was with an extra yard of acceleration. I'd argue on this evidence that Elyounoussi's signing is an even bigger error than Carillo - any competent scout should've been able to tell after ten minutes of watching him (let alone six sodding years) that he's far too slow to cut it.

They seem to have the only players who look capable of a moment of quality.

Johnson has a good left foot. That's as many good crosses from the left wing as we've seen the rest of the season.

I'm sure I read somewhere recently that Dortmund consider players as being too old for their approach once they hit about 26/27, which is born out by the average age of their first 11 seeming to hover somewhere around 23 since Klopp took over. Leipzig have a similar philosophy and transfer policy, so if we're now going to try and model ourselves after the more progressive German sides, it would make sense to try and hoover up some of the underutilised pace loitering in the top six development squads.

I think he's been at the club so long by virtue of the fact that a) we overpaid for him when we bought him and b) we put him on a wage that immediately took him out of the territory of January-relegation-zone-punt, which is really the only market we could have sold him in based on his historic goal return. In a sense, he was the first cast-iron Reed transfer f*** up - overpaying in fee and salary for a player we'd never be able to shift thereafter.

Yup. In almost all systems the players most likely to get on the end of chances created are the strikers. Long is among the worst finishers ever to make a living as a Premier League striker, so therefore he CANNOT be suited to this or any other system, simply by virtue of that fact.

Agree with this. For example, as well as Vestergaard played against Leicester, he was simply dreadful against Derby. The reasons for this perhaps having as much to do with us playing a deep, backs-to-the-wall defensive line for most of the Leicester game, where his lack of pace and inability to turn weren't as exposed. Fact is, our best players this season have become default names on the team sheet more through lack of competition than through excellence. Even at the level they're currently playing, I don't think the likes of Redmong, Hoj and Ings would get into the best Saints XIs of past seasons, which shows the true extent to which the squad needs strengthening.

If every wayward shot he took ended up deflected into the net then I wouldn't have a problem with him. Sadly, most of them make their way towards the corner flag uninterrupted.

Was incredibly lucky with the second - it was his own bad touch that gave him something to chase, and then he looked to have put his shot closer to the corner flag than the goal. Grateful for the win, but would dearly love us to sign someone this month that means I never have to see Long starting for us again.

Agreed - thought he was unlucky to be the one sacrificed. Was a very positive figure in the first half.

Romeu had a game of Kelvin vs. Leeds proportions - absolutely phenomenal.

Has McCarthy's kicking gotten worse this season? He seems to put it into touch almost as much as FF now.