verlaine1979

Quintero is left footed and has been linked for about 18 months. Also young, arrogant and at a bit of a career crossroads...

Were the Greek team in 2004 all world class?

VVD would be a vastly bigger loss. Already a better defender than Fonte, much better bringing the ball forward, and a much, much better passer - and still not yet in his prime.

Haven't seen anything more than highlights from pre-season, but if this is the case, we'll definitely need to invest in a new attacking midfielder. Neither Davis nor JWP are finishers.

Try 45 goals in 87 matches. Mane's goal scoring record was outstanding when he arrived - people were just dubious about the quality of the league he'd been playing in.

Blah blah, tedious bromide about teamwork, yadda yadda. Very illuminating.

I'll just cut and paste what I wrote when someone else made the same facile point earlier: "Mane was pretty much the whole difference between finishing 8th and 6th. Take any other player away from the team for the last ten games and we might still have staggered over the line into 6th. Take Mane away and we wouldn't." I can't even be bothered to address the preposterous claim that Davis was our most influential player last year. Some people just love a trier, especially when his face fits.

Yup. Mane was pretty much the whole difference between finishing 8th and 6th. Take any other player away from the team for the last ten games and we might still have staggered over the line into 6th. Take Mane away and we wouldn't.

Easy, Mane basically hauled us there single-handedly over the last 2 months of the season.

Long and Davis wouldn't even get on the bench for City, Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea or Spurs. So yes, top six, but only in the sense that there's often a sixth place team that has a squad nowhere near as good as the other five.

Didn't realize quite how much better Ziyech's stats are compared to Wijnaldum, who looked decent in the premier league after some doubt over the quality of the Dutch league.

Romeu a vastly better passer of the ball than Wanyama, though not as dominant as a destroyer in the middle. Romeu is no slouch as a DM, so who knows, maybe slightly better movement of the ball through the middle will mean additional goals which will offset the couple we might concede as a result of the switch.

This may have been the club's stance internally, but I don't think the reaction here is wholly inconsistent with what was being said at the time. A lot of people were complaining about chance conversion and saying we needed to buy an additional striker who could put away a greater % of chances than Pelle/Long (personally I thought our problem was more creativity and goals from midfield, but that's by the by).

Asked my football obsessed friend in Paris, and his verdict on Boufal is "He's amazing - the next Hazard, though he has a sh*tty mentality. He was by far the most impressive youngster in Ligue 1 last year, with a spectacular/entertaining way of playing."

Yup, don't these stats basically show that Koeman was no more or less a champion of the academy than Adkins, and that Poch's full season with Shaw and Chambers is just an outlier?

Would Yedlin be a reasonable back-up at RB if the rumours about Spurs looking to offload are true? No idea how well he did last year for Sunderland (statistically he seems about average), just remember a cameo at the last World Cup where he looked like one of the quickest players at the whole tournament.

Even for players who love the game, the obligation to train every day and the strictures of being managed by people you potentially dislike/don't respect etc presumably eventually turn it into a job (albeit one you probably enjoy more than a lot of people). Since it's a job, I can't see many footballers looking beyond money (actual capital) and prestige (social capital) when they weigh up where they want to play (maybe location, but I'm guessing it's a very very distant third, especially as the UK as a whole isn't exactly renowned for its beautiful post-war architecture or glorious weather). We aren't anywhere near the top in providing either type of capital, so we can't expect to prevent players from moving on (outside of football most people would probably weigh up job security when considering switching from one employer to the other, but for a variety of reasons, I don't think this probably matters much to footballers). In short, there's nothing - absolutely nothing - we can do unless someone has a spare £1bn they want to donate to the club.

Asking if JRod and Austin can 'replace' Mane and Pelle's goals is simply shorthand for asking if the team will play as well (and thus score as many goals) after the switch in personnel. See?

Allegedly, Puel is a coach who values fierce/determined types on the pitch. I've always found Romeu's attitude in that respect very good - both in terms of his defending, but also his willingness to try and get in the box - so he could well end up a being a key player for Puel.

When we start making £30m+ bids to poach players back from Liverpool & Arsenal, you might have a point. Until then, just because we aren't being eaten by the apex predator, doesn't mean we aren't sitting on a lower rung of the food chain

Looks like a good signing, but I'm not sure you need a black box to pick up under-utilised youth prospects from the Bayern squad.

Looks very strong and technically accomplished - Morgan mk.2.

Yes, because we might well play a tactical formation that wouldn't be enhanced by a physically dominant defensive midfielder or an attacker with unpredictability and pace.

No special knowledge, just based on previous summers. The club haven't ever really pushed the boat out on fees compared to what the rest of the league are doing, so I find it hard to imagine that we'll suddenly start trying to keep up with them now. I'd be very pleasantly surprised if we even brought in even one player at the £20m+ mark - far more likely we'll do what we did in Koeman's first summer and bring in a few at around the 10-12m mark again.

Proven quality now seems to start at around £20m a pop. If you're hoping we'll recruit 3 players at that kind of price, I fear you'll be very disappointed come the end of the window. The whole 'get used to the league' thing is also a bit of a red-herring - some players who are new to the league shine immediately and some don't, and some who are already established premier league players lose form when they move to another club (as we've seen with several departures from Southampton). I'd rather we bought sound, technical players and trusted in that technique than bow to spurious nonsense about the PL being fundamentally different to football as it's played across the channel & beyond.