verlaine1979

He's going to turn 25 before the end of this season. This is Redmond's absolute prime - he might improve his game by a couple of percent here and there, but this is to all intents and purposes as good as he's ever going to get. The fact that we don't have many other options in the squad aside from him shouldn't distract from the fact that he's a huge downgrade in attacking productivity compared to Lallana, Mane and now Tadic.

It's a mark of how far expectations have fallen that we don't even need to nick a point now to register a crack-papering performance - a consolation goal against a side kipping on a two goal lead is enough. We played without a clue for pretty much the entire game and while I'm confident that a fit Ings will nick a few goals over the season, we looked miles behind Everton tactically and technically (even though they weren't particularly good). Maybe the missing players will transform us when they return, but I doubt it playing either this week or last week's starting formations. A good start would be getting three in the midfield to at least give us some measure of control in games rather than resorting to hoofing kick and rush.

Didn't Allardyce (who was in charge at WH when they were allegedly interested in signing Austin) recently say that the difference between Ings and Austin is that Austin's injuries are so chronic that he's not even able to train as intensively as the rest of the team? Would certainly explain why he never seems to reach the same level of endurance as everyone else.

I hope nobody mistakes the fact that Ings could've scored for us actually being competitive in this game. Dire.

Huh? Pelle scored 3 in his first four league games for us (6 in his first . I thought he looked rubbish that pre-season, but he was very effective once the league started.

It's more the irritation of it being completely obvious from the very start that he didn't have the money to take us to the next level (and potentially doesn't even have enough to keep us at the level we've already reached). The fact that the club mouthpieces are now happy to walk back the original claim about the reason for the sale feels pretty conclusive.

I see the rhetoric around Gao taking us to the next level/taking us forward has completely vanished now.

Also worth noting that they spent £35m bringing Luis back at the start of that season, but were completely open playing him in a back four. Playing a back five specifically enabled them to get the best out of him building from the back, without really having to rely on him one on one defensively. We, on the other hand, don't appear to be using a back five because it best suits our squad, but because several seasons of misfiring in attack have made our current manager especially nervous about conceding.

I acknowledged earlier in the thread that Sunday was Redmond's most effective game in a long, long time. Considering there was still precious little end product to show for it provides ample proof that I'm right about him. Moreover, Redmond wasn't so much beating people against Burnley as he was driving them back towards their own goal. Carrying the ball forward with purpose is something the team has lacked, so I'm glad to see it, but I've no idea what you were watching if you thought Redmond repeatedly beat his man and got in behind during the game.

Indeed - something made abundantly clear by how rarely Redmond takes on and beats anyone at pace (or by standing them up for that matter).

For long stretches of the game against Burnley we hardly had the ball, so its far from a foregone conclusion that we'll be a possession-positive side this season - especially if we elect to play 3 CBs regularly.

You could be right, but he was pretty mediocre before he joined us, so I'm not really expecting him to flourish all that much beyond what we've already seen. Redmond's problem is he doesn't have any outstanding qualities - he's not particularly quick, not especially tricky or inventive, and he's not a great finisher or passer. You need to be better than average in at least one of those categories to have a reliable attacking impact on games, and he's just middling in all of them.

Redmond isn't quick either. I'm not saying he's slow - just average. Very, very rarely see him outstrip anyone for flat out pace, same as most of the rest of our squad. But you're absolutely right that Armstrong hasn't done enough yet either way. Still, we bought him to play in central attacking midfield, so we should probably at least give him a run there before letting Redmond (who has has several years now to regularly put in meaningful performances) to nip in ahead of him.

Pretty much everything good he did was central, but his starting position for us has always been wide where his lack of sustained pace is a real problem. Those flashes yesterday might be just that, but assuming they really do illuminate where he's most dangerous, I'm still not sure where he fits into the starting 11. #10 is the obvious position, but his passing is pretty gash and he'd be keeping Armstrong out of the side.

I think it was more the case that after getting spanked by West Ham in his first league game, Hughes decided that any further hammering was likely to be fatal to our survival chances and so made us ultra defensive for the final stretch. It worked just well enough for us to survive by the skin of our teeth, but it's not as if we transformed into Chelsea circa Conte's first season.

Looked so much more comfortable with four at the back, which makes me wonder why we spent the entire pre-season stubbornly playing a back five. Redmond was very good second half, Elyounoussi showed touches of class and Ings looked sharp. Despite all the chopping and changing, our best team now looks pretty obvious: McCarthy, Bertrand, Vestergaard, Yoshida, Cedric, Lemina, Romeu, Redmond, Armstrong, Elyounoussi, Ings

Not sure this is really relevant. Under FFP our wage cap is £7m higher than it was last season, when Forster's new deal was already in place. Since then we've lost two of our absolute star players and replaced them with newcomers to the league. There's absolutely no way that our wage cap for the new season has significantly constrained us from signing reinforcements - it's the capital outlay on transfers we seemingly can't afford.

Why would FFP be holding us back when it's assessed season by season with an additional £7m + commercial and player trading revenue being added to the club wage cap each season? We've just gotten rid of two of our biggest earners in Tadic and VVD, and the likes of Elyounoussi, Armstrong, Vestergaard and Gunn are hardly going to command similar wages to established PL performers (especially as only one of those was actually a first choice player for his previous team). We've been bought by an owner who seemingly can't get his money out of China, but for some reason nobody wants to believe that the club are constrained in capital expenditure, and that the problem must lie in the murky, opaque world of FFP. Looking at the recent ownership history of the club I find it far easier to believe that we're being managed to a strict acquisition budget rather than we're simply hamstrung by a wage cap that seemingly doesn't affect any club of a similar stature.

So, according to Transfermarkt, our player purchases and player sales almost exactly balance out over the last three seasons (there's about a +3m Euro difference spread over three years). So it seems we're not just determined to be self-sustaining, but we're going beyond that to being cost neutral in player trading. Our most recent financial results showed us making a post-tax profit of £34m, though that was before the takeover and VVD sagas etc.

FFP allows us another £7m on top of last year's wages, plus additional commercial revenue, plus profit from player trading, plus we've removed Tadic and VVD who were probably our top earners or very close to it. All their replacements have been newcomers to the PL, and thus wont be on anything like the wages of the two who left. Even taking into account continuing to pay partial wages for loanees, I don't believe for a minute that the stumbling block to signings is a lack of extra headroom on the wage budget.

I don't buy it - under FFP you can increase the wage bill by £7m each year, plus apply additional commercial and player trading revenue to increase your wage ceiling if you want. We've removed two of our most senior players from last year's wagebill (Tadic and VVD) and haven't replaced them with anyone who'd command anything like an established PL wage. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you could cover all our incoming wages this season just from the space freed up by Tadic and VVD, without even touching the additional £135k a week FFP allows you to add as a baseline. We aren't buying because we're cash constrained in terms of transfer fees, not wages.

Have we seen any post-takeover financial results yet? If money was taken out of the club to service the debt used to acquire it, what would be the first indication other than a line-item in the annual accounts?

Indeed - though in recent seasons the number of crosses seems to be a function of how slowly we move the ball forward, and how limited our attacking options are once the opposition defence is set.

Moreover, when people are asking for a 15 goal a season player, they mostly seem to be referring back to a bygone age when the striker was the absolute focal point of the team, scored the vast majority of the team's goals, and the entire purpose of the game was to get men to the byline to put in crosses for them (in other words, mid-nineties Utd). The game has gone through at least one if not two tactical revolutions since then, and as you suggest, arguably no role has evolved more than that of the lone striker. It's great if you can find one who can create and score their own opportunities while playing in support of the overall tactical approach (though if you can, they either cost a fortune or don't stay with you long), but it's far more important to find one with the intelligence and technique to hold the ball long enough for meaningful attacks to build around them.

No, I can see he has decent control, but he didn't outpace anyone during that mazy run and I haven't seen him burst past anyone in any of his pre-season cameos so far.