egg

You ever moved house Del? When I have, I've had to pay the pesky estate agents, and pesky lawyers, and pesky removal men. If I hadn't been able to save that cash, I'd have had to pay it out of the sale money. It's not a hard concept.

Newborn

We haven't got 20-30m for a start.

There will be an activation window (ie not before x date, and not after y date) and a minimum notice period I'd imagine.

They gave us great service, and made us a lot of money. Is that the point you're making?

I guess it's about incentive to the club getting the player on loan...where's the incentive to play and develop the player? This arrangement gives us that, all while giving him the platform to develop and the carrot of possibly going back to Chelsea if he does well. It's a genuine everyone's a winner situation if he does well.

Pretty much this. I look at it as us paying something akin to a loan fee which, plus his wages, is our maximum outlay. If the buy back clause is invoked, the fee that they give us is a kind of development fee. It's brilliant business.

It is pointless. These are stats that do not actually analyse what a keeper does, what mistakes he's made, what shots should be kept out. Analyse all of that, and there's a point to it. You can't just focus on one area of the pitch. Our LB last year created next to nothing and gave us a lopsided team; our CM created little from open play; our CM got over run often; our CB's got done for pace time and time again; our manager failed to make changes, tactically or personnel wise ; etc We were poor last year for many many reasons. Yes our GK's were shit - and we don't need stats to point out the obvious - but we wouldn't have done much better overall with a world beater in goal.

A stat that analyses a GK performance without analysing actual mistakes is utterly pointless. I'm with you on the point that we need a better keeper, but the average fan doesn't need meaningless stats to tell them that.

Cross purposes Adrian. I think McCarthy is shite - the point is that I don't need reams of stats to show that.

Does it assess each goal and someone independently analyse whether an average keeper would have kept it out? If it does, I can see the merit. Anything short of that, it's meaningless statistics. What it doesn't do is tell us that a coach and horses have driven through our midfielders and CB's and exposed the GK's time and time again. It's pretty obvious to me that if you do a better job of stopping shots, you'll get less goals, and focusing on just the keeper ignores other problems.

Dry

I'm with Duck on this. Its pony. We can see that our keepers are shit, and it's obvious to most that McCarthy is worse. We can all see that Villa, Leeds, Brighton, etc have better keepers. We can also all see that our CB's were poor. Dragged out wide Bednarek was a fish up a tree. We can see that the CB's at Villa, Leeds, Brighton, etc. are better. We don't need stats when the issues are bloody obvious to anyone who's seen us play and has half a clue about football.

I'm mystified how he does it driving back to Carlisle. Some effort.

I'm not so sure. We looked much better today with more men in the middle and less out wide.

Yep, for all his faults, Stephens stands up to be counted and likes to have a word with anyone who needs to be spoken to. Good lad.

I'm not sure about that, but he won't be happy playing second fiddle to Tino though.

The point being Yes but the point he's making is that we should be prioritising a solid CB and a decent GK. This lad is neither of those things.

I think similarly. No capitulation or really heavy scoreline, just beaten comfortably by the better team.

Yep, plenty, it's appalling. I'm hearing lot's of people saying that the US should have stayed and us too if they did. The US didn't stay though so that doesn't get us anywhere - what do you say we should have done in the light of that?

Upwards

Yep. People keep whingeing about it, but they ignore the question of what we were actually expected to do after the US withdrew. "Managing it better" etc is just noise, it's not an actual answer.

Mountain

Nope. He's appalling. Arsenal's deals are all a bit odd. Bin off Ozil, then tie Smith - Rowe down to take his place, then sign Odegaard to take (or push for) his place. All over the place.

Is that live data for what we've spent on shifting the turds, and our signings? 10% loyalty payments? Signing on fees? Etc. You're a bright fella, you know the reality.