verlaine1979

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.

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.