verlaine1979

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.

It's obvious that Tuchel was never a genuine option. No suggestion from anyone in the media that there were every any substantial talks - just about a week of embarrassing gossip that we wanted him, followed by a firm 'not interested' from his representatives.

Yawn. If your ball winners aren't good enough to pass the ball to your ball players, you need to get new ball winners. Irrelevant in our case anyway, as all three of our ball winners are better passers than SD anyway (JWP might actually be a very good passer if he played with a little more speed and confidence, but that's wish fulfilment for another day).

I only saw the release clause mentioned today by the Mail or similar, and it didn't seem particularly authoritative?

Heh, exactly what you do with a £30m asset you're on the verge of cashing in.

Stephens is too weak in the air to ever be a first choice CB.

Not really - Promes probably the pick of them, though I've always liked how Dzagoev plays. That said, everyone knows the PL is awash with money, so I doubt we're in a position to insist on bargains wherever we're trying to buy from.

The money definitely left Anzhi, though no idea about the rest of the league. The two biggest sales from the Russian league were both in 2016, with both Hulk and Alex Teixeira going to China for £40-45m.

Promes has a contract until 2021 and is apparently one of the top players in Russia. I doubt we'd get him for £30m since that was what Chelsea paid for Willian five years ago when they bought him from Anzhi.

He's been asking for too much time on the ball for a couple of seasons now. Wants a look at every option after he's received the ball, but 9 times out of 10 he still tries to pick the simple backward or sideways ball. A total liability in the middle this season.

Three years ago he was slow, mediocre and massively over-rated. Today he was a special kind of awful - mystifying that he managed to stay on.

Is that three consecutive possessions Redmond has surrendered with a shocking touch or pass?

Davis might as well not be there - put Boufal central and let Sims have a run down the wing.

Indeed, completely ridiculous suggestion. It's not like there aren't large swathes of the city just begging to be knocked down and developed if anyone actually thought it would generate a decent return. Far more likely that borrowing to invest in a football club with (assuming PL status) large guaranteed annual revenue to pay off the debt is a good way of quickly building up a sizable asset in a comparatively stable economy.

Fortunately, every club in the PL knows that's how Arsenal do business, so we'll have already accounted for the possibility of disappointment and planned suitable alternatives, right? Right??

Notice Wilson's Telegraph piece this evening says "The final incoming fee from Van Dijk will be around £60 million due to a large sell-on clause to Celtic but that money is being made available to reinvest, even if it is likely to be spread over several transfer windows" suggesting that those hoping for a couple of big attention-grabbing January signings might wind up disappointed.

I imagine united fans were saying the same thing about the stonewall pen we got away with at Old Trafford. I don't think of us as an unlucky team this season - not a lot of decisions decisively gone against us, and not a lot of shots hitting the frame of the goal compared to past seasons. We're just slow, weak and cowardly on the ball.

This. Hoj was our best player first half, so of course he had to be taken off. Lemina has energy and can press and carry the ball, so of course he changes his mind and keeps him on the bench. Just utterly mystifying subs, which seemed to have no discernible logic in terms of strategy or shape.

Ouch, some dreadfully transparent spin in that interview. VVD stuff is obviously nonsense, but I wonder if the 'small club' rhetoric is a deliberate ploy to prepare us for the inevitable lack of additional financial investment from the new owners?

More finances? We're effectively £200m in debt. The days of us being regarded as a well-run, debt free club are over. Watford's record signing is (just) higher than ours, and Burnley aren't far behind. The VVD sale represents a pretty big windfall, but I doubt anyone already managing in the PL is looking at us as anything other than a sideways step right now (and unfortunately, like it as not, the Everton job is a lot bigger than the Saints job, so the situation with Watford and Silva isn't at all comparable).

Subtext of the Wilson tweet about getting the money up front as we plan on buying in Jan. Is this a controversial interpretation? I assumed it was commonly accepted that our debt-laden owners don't have the proverbial pot to piddle in.

New owners setting out their stall early in the first window fully under their control? Having to sell to buy certainly doesn't sound like next-level investment...