verlaine1979

If you own a football club outside the top 6 of the PL, £300m is probably close to the notional ceiling for your investment anyway. If you want to 10x that figure your only realistic option is to sell and reinvest elsewhere.

Let's see what the club's true debt situation is before we start celebrating having the highest financial commitments in our history as an unalloyed good.

Yup, had good close control and did a good job holding and linking. The ball stuck with him when he got it far more often than I've seen yet with Carrillo.

Considering neither have scored yet, Palace's £9m January striker Sorloth put in a far more impressive performance than anything I've seen so far from our £19m buy.

Agreed, don't rate Redmond at all really, but yesterday was his best performance since Liverpool in the cup last season in terms of his willingness to take responsibility and attack his defender.

The other thing that's probably worth remembering is that she was actually much less wealthy than initially reported, so the loans she made to the club were probably a very significant proportion of her net worth at the time. This would explain a lot both in terms of the need for bridging loans from BVA and her desire to push through the Gao deal so she could finally make the majority of her inheritance liquid after five or six years.

I think we're talking about a different interpretation of the role. I don't anticipate Boufal making a lot of runs without the ball into the box - as a #10 he should be the one in possession most when we're attacking, essentially acting as a cut-price Hazard. The runs to support Carillo would come from Sims on the right and Gabbiadini/Tadic on the left (with Gabbi the more likely to make them).

I've been banging on about investing in a proper #10 for years, but in the absence of one of those, I'm not sure Gabbiadini is the answer. His game is all about short, sharp runs and anticipating the delivery of the ball, rather than holding onto possession and releasing the right pass (that said, it could definitely be argued that he warrants a starting place on the left of the attack ahead of Tadic, which is pretty much where he was plying his trade when we bought him). Ideally the #10 needs to be able to go either way, and frankly the only attacking player we have who doesn't seem to be entirely one-footed is Boufal - therefore for that reason alone he should get the attacking spot through the middle.

On the basis that he clearly has far more pace than anyone in the squad barring Long, and the technique to actually hit the ball reasonably cleanly, I'd stick Sims out on the right, Tadic on the left where he belongs, and then Boufal/Lemina/JWP/Anyone else with a valid claim at #10. My preference would be Boufal, but I suspect that Pellegrino's conservatism will continue to see Tadic play in the middle as soon as anyone else less-established comes into the team based on nothing more than a spurious notion of seniority.

So little movement. Just now when JWP picked the ball up in space on the right about 40 yards out, there must've been of our 5 players ahead of him, and they were all just standing still looking at him.

Redmond glides infield, ignoring the obvious run from Bertrand before placing a pass into touch on the other side with that cultured right foot.

Why people assume Redmond must be fast doesn't bear a lot of scrutiny. I wouldn't bother pondering it for long.

Not according to the sprint data that was accidentally included in one of Hoedt's signing photos - Redmond has a decent spring, but no real sustained speed. I know some people have questioned the validity of those numbers, but honestly - when was the last time you saw Redmond burn someone for pace over more than about five yards?

He doesn't have pace. The reason why everyone is saying that Sims gave us something different with that one run when he poked it round the full back and then sped past him is because Redmond isn't quick enough to do that. He's got a yard of pace to make room for a cross, but he's apparently got the same sustained top speed as JWP and Tadic which when you consider the latter two are starters, and Redmond was for the first half of the season, is probably why we always get reeled back in so easily when attacking on the break.

Hooray. Our saviour.

JWP trying to loop a header in from 10 yards is hardly the same as Firmino and Salah having the ball under control with the entire goal to aim at from 12. Couple of half chances from swung-in balls, but created nothing clinical all game.

Always liked his crossing, though wasn't it him attempting a square cross-field ball in his own half against Reading that basically cost us going up as champions? Or am I just assuming it was him because in my memory the ball was played left to right?

To seek alternative points of view, such as yours. See how this works? That said, close control is something p!ayers usually have or don't have, and you can tell straight away. I'd be very surprised if he turns out to be the linking target man we were looking for on that evidence.

Hardly written off. I saw quite a lot of shonky control from him, but as I said, I'm abroad and the stream was freezing quite often so entirely possible I missed his good work.

Was watching a very patchy stream admittedly, but looked a total donkey from what I could see?

Redmond doesn't have pace. He's got a yard of acceleration at best to create space, but no flat out pace at all really. Top speed is on a par with JWP if I remember that leaked spreadsheet correctly.

The Pep thing was obviously just spin. Guardiola has a temper and he just picked the closest player to b*tch to about the fact that we basically sat deep for 90 minutes. Reading it as an endorsement of Redmond's skills is laughable.

This is utter rubbish. If your strategy is sh*te it doesn't matter how wholeheartedly you commit it. And half the time wholehearted commitment to a strategy is actually the problem (as the print news business will tell you at length). I think you're mistaking a South American speaking slowly and clearly in a second language for having a clue about how to win football matches. Look at his selections and game management - he either has no clue, or his ideas are junk.

Reports relating to Promes are that we're nowhere near bidding at his £30m release clause, so the £50m spent in one window thing is probably just PR.

Only Lampard was already a 10 goal+ a season midfielder (across league and cup admittedly) when he was still in his teens. That said, the really big seasons didn't start until he was 25/26, so there's still time for JWP, even though he is building on a lesser goalscoring foundation.