Turkish

I think the story was at the time that the selling club (Burnley?) Would have taken less than half what we paid. Absolutely terrible signing.

Scott Marshall a centre back signed from Arsenal in the mid 90s for a fair amount of money at the time- Played for us twice lost the first game 3-0, he scored and own goal, his next and final game we lost 4-0 and he scored an own goal in that too. He never played for us again

We won’t be doing that. We’re stuck with McCarthy even though the club won’t admit they’ve given him a new deal. Bazunu will come in, we will keep Willy for another year and that Turkish glovesman will sign and go on loan for a season before replacing Willy in 2023/24 as our third custodian

No wonder Middlesbrough are so desperate to take him on loan before footballs best secret gets out

Yeah but we topped the league for minutes given to teenagers last season "minutes given to teenagers champions, you'll never sing that!

Report: Everton want to sign a £58m striker (hitc.com) £58m!!!!!!

With that many washing machines it's a wonder they dont keep more clean sheets.

We’ve been shambolically run it’s as simple as that. All that nonsense about is being a well run club was BS. The only club in that been in the premier league a decent amount of time with a sell to buy strategy and even then we’ve not got a pot to piss in. The obsession with trying to be clever and believing our own hype. Rather than buying 3-4 quality players for c£30m that address the fundemental weaknesses in the team weve gone through endless players at sub £15m no where near good enough.

What's wierd is he has a go at you for being a grown man posting stuff on football forums when he spends his his whole life posting his preachy shite across multiple forums and everyone on all of them thinks he's complete crumpet.

Such a strange, bitter old man. I expect you saw all the union jack bunting last weekend and were shitting it about the rise in facism.

If it is the plan then the plan needs ripping up and starting again.

Yes.

You're stumped because you're missing the point completely. Signing a load of kids who have never played in the premier league before wont end well unless there is a core of quality players around them, we dont have either. So we're going to throw them in with the crap we've got. I've already said Bazunu would be a good signing if we already had a decent number one and he was brought in to challenge him then replace him plus we had a good defence for him to play behind, we dont have either.

What better way to force electric cars on people than to make driving petrol/diesel ones too expensive......

I'm all for buying potential but until we've got a good solid core of players to mix them in with we are always going to muddle along. As others have said every good team has a blend of youth and experience. Even Fergies "dont win anything with kids" team of the mid 90s was built around players like Irwin, Bruce, Pallister, Cantona. Keand and Giggs were in their mid twenties, Schmicheal had been there for 4 years and was an established international keeper. It's actually a bit unfair of us as a club to just throw these players in and expect them to perform at premier league level when they've never done that before. Some of them will come good, but some of them wont.

It beggars belief it really does. A decent centre half, one that can actually mark, defend and organise the others and a competent goalkeeper and we've fixed a lot of our problems.

Is't over 50% of the cost of fuel tax these days? With VAT being applied after fuel duty so we are being taxed on the tax.

It really isn't just about "are they any good" Fonte wasn't the best defender in the world, he wasn't even ever the best defender at Saints in the premier league but he was experienced and a leader and complemented Lovren, Alderwierld and Van Dijk really well. It's not just about being the talented, especially in a postion like goalkeeper and defender where communication & organisation are just as important as being a good player. You might have it a bit as a young player but you really only get that from experience. People keep going on about his international experience. He's played 10 games at International level, he's played against Portugal & Serbia who are a decent sides but the rest of his appearances have been against the like of Andorra, Azerbijan, Qatar and Luxembourg. I hope he turned out to be the new Buffon but however talented he is it's a huge gamble to expect a keeper who has never even played in the championship to potentially be our number one keeper and if we are stuck with it being McCarthy god help us. It'd be different if we had a competent number one and he was being brought in to challenge him, or even if we had a decent defence, but we dont have either.

I was talking about being our best goalkeeper in a decade

That’s not a particularly high bar

Yep we’ve shot ourselves in the foot keeping McCarthy. I disagree the money is better spent elsewhere a good keeper wins you matches and points. A crap one costs you them, as we well know

Hed have to stop being Irish first

Let’s hope so. We don’t have a great track record when it comes to signing YHGTIs in key positions though do we.

Exactly. Get one or two in a summer brilliant, but not when we’re desperate for quality in key positions. Still we know best.