verlaine1979

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...

Blimey, did MP really claim that we waited too long to 'react' in his MOTD interview? Delusional to think that there's no connection between your ability to pick up two late goals and the other team already being 4-0 up...

Spurs barely played above walking pace and still managed to score five. I hope two late consolation goalkeeping errors aren't going to falsely convince anyone that they can see green shoots of progress in the last 15 minutes.

Nonsense - we played without shape or intensity today (as we have all season), and Huddersfield could've been 0-3 up before we even had a shot on goal if not for Mooy having a poor game and FF tipping one onto the bar. A team with players of almost any quality can play with energy and organisation, and when they don't, it's really only the management that's to blame.

Nice to have the buffer of a goal, but incredibly lucky that passage of play developed as Huddersfield should've had a free kick instead of our corner after the blatant shove by Stephens.