verlaine1979

Hmm are you trying to hipster this by claiming that he's an attacker whose great strength is playing short backward passes so as to not lose the ball under pressure? Also, I think the whole 'Pep likes him' thing is absurd. Pep was annoyed that his team almost dropped 2 points because we didn't attack, so he grabbed one of our notional attackers and more or less asked him to question his life choices. It wasn't because he was robbed of the footballing joy of seeing Redmond in full majestic flight for 90 minutes.

I think you've mistaken 'skipping towards the opposition and then stopping when you reach them' with 'running with the ball and taking on the opposition'. Redmond only has average pace, which is probably why you almost never see him trust his acceleration and try to take the ball beyond a defender once he's stood them up.

Hmm, obviously recruitment work still ongoing, but the squad definitely still has a relegationy stench over it.

Refusing to warm up is just a rumour that Boufal has flat out denied. As far as I'm aware, the club have never said anything official on the matter. I'm sure there was an argument about Boufal's attitude that got him into trouble, but the whole refusing-to-do-his-job thing just sounds like catnip gossip designed to excite the bigots among the fanbase.

Colombia were very lucky against Senegal earlier. Really struggled against the pace of their attack, but Senegal just couldn't find a final ball. Obviously England could easily come a cropper in the knockouts as they have so many times before, but Colombia without a fit James Rodriguez are a pretty mediocre side and England have the right style of attack to worry them.

That's also covered in their disclosure about the signing. 11.9m euro (£10.45m) rising to a possible 13.7m euro (£12.07m) with bonuses. In other words, the most we'll get is a good £6m shy of the quoted £18m.

Embolo looks decent for Switzerland.

Ajax can't lie to the stock market. If they say they've handed us 11.9m euros, then that's exactly what they'll have done.

Football commentary is almost never insightful or original. In fact, due to their commitment to always sticking with their first reaction to an incident regardless of what subsequently becomes clear, much of what commentators say bears almost no relation to what's taking place on the pitch, making questions of authority and experience pretty moot. If you don't like listening to women's voices while watching sport, at least have the balls to be honest about it.

Great result, but Maguire has looked very dodgy on the ball in both games, and Sterling contributes almost nothing. There are better players on the bench who'd improve that team.

She didn't, she made about a quarter of that.

Not a lot the fans can do when someone wants to turn the football club they inherited into almost a quarter of a billion pounds in cash. "Oh, you'd rather I didn't sell? Tell me more..."

And its not as if they don't have a sprinkling of decent players. Good keeper, Golovin very highly rated, and Cheryshev has a good pedigree in Spanish football. So far all I see is that they've taken their chances and finished well against a couple of the worst teams in the tournament, as hosts often seem to do.

So if Tadic leaves, Boufal leaves and either Cedric or Bertrand forces through a move this summer, with the existing weaknesses in the squad the club will need to make a minimum of 5-6 significant transfers just to stay competitive. I just can't see that happening.

He might want to win a bit of silverware before his career ends. Plus I'd much rather live in Amsterdam than Southampton or it's environs.

He's a central midfielder - definitely not another Mane. His highlights reel isn't up to much either compared to SM either, though he's only had one full season.

From a quick YT review, Jahanbakhsh looks decent. Looks quite sturdy for a winger - a bit like Chadli or Arnautovic before he was converted to a striker.

Wasn't there a rumour we were looking at Golovin before the WC? If so, almost certainly too late now, as he looks a fantastic player.

Even if that's the official word from Maddison's camp, what makes you think that he's not smart enough to give a diplomatic reason as opposed to an incendiary one that would immediately make him needlessly unpopular with another club's fans? This is very basic stuff.

There are three main sets of opinion on this thread. 1) It's the club's fault that he didn't come here - the board need to be sacked; 2) He chose Leicester purely for reasons of location and we have nothing to worry about - players who like the sunny south will choose us instead; 3) We lost out to Leicester because we only just survived relegation, our squad is thin and our financial standing is an open question - we're now only competing with the bottom 1/3 of the league for players. Only one of those three diagnoses of the situation is correct.

I'm not debating whether we're more attractive than Bournemouth and Huddersfield (I said they're our competition, but I'd expect us to win out against them most of the time if we want the same player). We're simply not a more appealing club than Leicester on any current criteria - we're less successful, we have a weaker squad, we struggled with relegation, we pay less, and I'm not sure our training facilities are really any better than the majority of clubs in the PL outside the recently promoted ones (and in fact they look quite dinky when compared to the very best). As for the whole 'selling a project' thing - it's just spin. Everyone talks about it and nobody takes a word of it seriously. Really all it possibly amounts to is a player weighing up a) how much are the club going to pay me and b) how likely is it that their sporting or financial fortunes will decline while I'm there. On neither of those counts do we score well at the moment.

They've got a better squad than us, better recent history, and probably pay their top players a significantly higher wage than we do. They also didn't just escape relegation by the skin of their teeth. Sad though it is to say, we're not going to be flexing our transfer appeal over Leicester, Everton or anyone like that this summer. Our competition for players are Bournemouth, Brighton, Hudds and the promoted teams.

Not covering himself in glory thus far.

Not sure I've ever actually seen Carvalho break into a run. A real walking-pace player.

Is there really no one else we could've picked for the squad other than Welbeck? For the fourth striker, you might as well gamble on someone who at least has a chance of bringing the unknown/changing the game.