verlaine1979

As with Gabbi/Austin and McCarthy/Forster I suspect the decision is more about who they plausibly can sell to bring in money than who they'd ideally like to sell. Cedric is one of very few saleable assets in the squad, so I'd imagine the sudden appearance of Valery as soon as RH arrived was an exercise in seeing if he could live without his one experienced right back. Depressing to hear we're still grubbing about for the money to sign Ings though. Gao really is penniless.

Unfortunately, I think Bayern offering £35m for Hudson-Odoi is going to raise the asking price for young British attackers overlooked by their clubs.

Clearly the situation is substantially more complicated than you describe, as otherwise players would never sell for more than the value of their remaining contract, or indeed, for more than they were originally signed for. My observation was simply to point out the magnitude of the extent to which we got ripped off by Monaco last January, as by comparison Gabbi and Carillo are almost exactly the same in age, contract length and performance, yet we've taken a haircut on the deal and they doubled their money (by your valuation method, Monaco should've been happy to give us Carillo for about £4m).

Interesting, so we've taken a loss of about £4m on Gabbi, who has just turned 27, has 2.5 years left on his contract, and who hasn't really lived up to expectations (bought £14/15m sold £10.75m). Those are almost exactly the same circumstances under which Monaco sold us Carillo this time last year (26.5 years old, 2.5 years left on his contract, rubbish stats), yet in their case they managed to more than double their money (bought £8m sold £19m).

Having to pay the wages of a handful of ex-academy players who are now over 21 is a rounding error on the club's budget. The one, solitary answer to the question of why other clubs are spending money above what they bring in from player sales and we aren't is because their owners are prepared to put money into the club in the form of converting debt into equity, and ours isn't (with the exception of clubs playing or realistically hoping to play in Europe, who have to abide by UEFA's more stringent FFP rules). That's it - squad size, wage bill blah blah, it's all a red herring. Gao could pump an additional £35m(ish) into the club every year if he wanted to and had the money.

Premier League FFP allows clubs to make losses of up to £105m over three years as long as the owner is prepared to clear the debt at the end of the period. We on the other hand have pretty much balanced transfer fee incomings and outgoings over the last three years, while our wage bill has recently seen high earners replaced with signings from the Swiss and Scottish leagues. FFP isn't our problem - having owners and who don't want to put money into the club is our problem.

Complete red herring. We're nowhere near playing in Europe, so there's nothing to stop our owner putting money in. Well nothing aside from the fact that he hasn't got any. Neither Gao nor Liebherr are worth anything close to a billion, not even between them.

If you're talking about Upamecano, he already seems to be rated at about £30m by a club with no financial pressure to sell. Already seems way out of our league.

I never hated him, I just loathed how absurdly overrated he was by some fans. Far better players (Mane, Wanyama etc) would be pilloried for any mistake, while SD could float ineffectively through game after game and be hailed a genius for his ability to pop five yard passes back to our defence. Funny that. So, what I'm trying to say is that my problem was really always with you, rather than with Davis.

Wonder how much of the £34m we'd get back if we tried to sell Elyounoussi and Vestergaard now.

Vest managed to give away the throw, and then stroll out of position in the next phase of play. A special kind of awful.

Vestergaard and Elyooussi both mouth-droppingly awful that half. £34m spent on players who seem to lack even basic technique.

Yup, though judging by RH's comments as to why Gunn was the right pick for Chelsea, I can't imagine there are many games where it isn't an advantage to have a nimble sweeper-keeper type helping out the back line. Sounds like they are building a (probably entirely valid) justification for switching him to being #1.

Suspect it's more to do with Gabbi potentially having more significant resale value. If RH doesn't really rate either of them as suitable for his preferred style, it makes sense to protect the one you're going to try and flog to raise funds.

Maybe, but he's also got the best first touch of any player we've had since Le Tissier, and it isn't even close.

It was a good pass, but that's literally the only decent thing I've seen him do in a saints shirt. Other than that, it's just hitting the bar (was that against Palace?) and slowly dribbling into two or three defenders before losing possession. So far he's a long way behind both Boufal and Gaston in the disappointing-foreign-creative-player stakes, both of whom gave immediate, if ultimately unfulfilled, glimpses of unmistakable quality in their first couple of games.

Fantastic player.

For the role he was brought in to play, has to be among the most disappointing signings of recent years - not even half the player Boufal is. No pace, no strength, no vision. Whoever thought he could cut it as #10 or a winger in the PL should be assigned to less demanding duties.

Should've done better with second and third goals.

The plan is clearly to keep it tight, and then unleash Redmond to trot at them a little above walking pace for the last twenty.

WH had more speed and strength in every department, passed the ball quicker and more accurately, and had a player of significantly higher quality to finish off half of their decent chances (if Perez was sharper, the game would've finished in a drubbing). Anderson was expensive, sure, but he shows up Redmond's limitations quite dramatically. Our most creative player isn't anywhere near that level, either in pace or technique.

McCarthy's distribution isn't great. If he's passing towards the halfway line he only seems capable of floating the ball rather than pinging it.

Watching Celta against Barcelona, and still think its a huge shame that Boufal isn't here to work with Hassenhuttl. Think he'd suit both the style of play, and the style of man-management.

Although it was a good performance at the weekend, as I was watching I couldn't help think we'd look even better with Lemina's energy in the midfield. We should be looking to add more dynamism to what is, Lemina aside, quite a flat-footed central midfield - not reducing it.

Also he presumably wanted to keep a bit of pace and energy as an outlet just in case, rather than sticking ward-prowse or davis on to stodge us up defensively. Don't think any of our past three (probably four) managers would've made that choice if they'd a chance to stick on a 'seasoned pro'.