Saint_clark

Annoyingly you're not wrong, an upgrade on Ming's and they're a side whose quality is up there with Leicester. Strength in depth will be a real problem though.

We can't afford to go and buy any of the proven premier league strikers, the only one who might come to us is Abraham and 1. We can't afford him and 2. He's not overly proven as a regular scorer anyway. You mention Adams struggling but being in and out of the side last season he still scored just 3 less than Ings last season. If he scores 3 more this season then we only need to find 9 extra goals from a new striker and spread amongst the team to match Ings' contribution. The real issue is whether we concede less. We can concede just 10 goals less than last season and pick up an extra 10-20 points because of it.

Don't forget we've already spent circa £15million on Perraud, Simeu and Livramento.

You don't HAVE to use every sub you name in a friendly. If we ended up down to 10 men due to injury that would ruin any point of the test as well.

Fucking hell Redmond, easy pass was on for Elyounoussi to be one on one or a clear run and shot for himself but he decides to slow down and take an extra two touches so the defender can tackle him.

If Stephens accepted he can't pass the ball as well as he thinks he can and kept it simple he'd instantly be a much better player. Needs to be a no risk style centreback.

Yep been good, he reminds me of Kante (obviously nowhere near as good) in his style of play.

Literally the only reasonable and plausible explanation would be that a bunch of players are having to isolate after going for a meal together or something.

Tella and KWP getting knocks but having to stay on due to us only having a pair of boots on the bench. Brilliant.

In the one season he played for us before he was sent out on loan he made 19 appearances for a total of 1070 minutes on the pitch - the equivalent of 11 and a half games. Difficult for him to show anything without being given a proper chance.

Elyounoussi playing well, sorry everyone.

In fairness, every quality player we've sold - VVD, Mane, Lallana, Lambert, Pelle, Wanyama etc - we've been told we'll get relegated afterwards. They were all important players, but we adapted and moved on. No reason we can't do the same now.

Probably after Liverpool's cut?

From what I've seen so far this pre season we seem to focus more of our play down the wings to get early crosses in.

We need to be sensible ourselves though, we don't want to be spending the majority of the Ings fee on one player. If we can stretch it to Armstrong and Delaney then that would be money well invested.

This is the first time since Ralph has been here that he has money to spend AND none of Lemina, Hoedt, Carillo etc clogging up the wage bill. Let's see what he comes up with having £25millionish and £200k per week in wages to spend.

We've actually got a good deal for him. We'll be fine.

Yeah this is the biggest issue we have, we have to hope we're stronger defensively.

Most teams in this league survive without a 20 goal a season striker. Ings only scored 3 goals more than Adams last season. We'll be fine.

We absolutely cannot let JWP go to Villa now we've sold Ings to them, unless it's for anything over £60million. Part of me wonders if the Ings deal was us deflecting..."we aren't selling James, but can we interest you in a proven goalscorer for a similar amount..."

We can accept all the offers we want but a player has to agree to go as well. If he didn't want to go to Villa he wouldn't.

Armstrong and Delaney in, would still like to cash in on Vestergaard OR if he will sign an extension sell Bednarek or Stephens and get another CB in.

He can go fuck himself. Hope that £30million figure is true.

That's fine, but you can name subs and not have to use them. You just name them in case you DO have to use them.

Don't even bother trying to rationalise this, there is something incredibly odd about not just naming the entire squad on the bench in a friendly and you know it.