S-Clarke

It makes sense, it's kind of what we did with Tino really. I just don't think we can rely on that model for every single transfer, not whilst our established players - bar 1 or 2 - are very poor. So we need a bit of a leg me up in the next couple of windows to baulk out the quality of the squad, we can still find the gems and then let them flourish in a better team. That'll get us back on the right track.

Not sure where they got that from. He played 80+% of their games from the start.

That's as close to a done deal as you can get.

Looks like Derby have had their Pinnacle moment... For their sake you hope they've got a Liebherr waiting on the side lines ready to bid...otherwise it's probably curtains.

This is a video of him at Bolonga. Not sure if this matches up with what you see for Sweden

At least that will firmly put to bed the Salisu throw-in nonsense.

Is that a post from today...or an old one? If that's from today that's hilarious. I assume state backed is referring to City. Well, Nunez is costing them significantly more in a transfer fee than Haaland cost City (not taking into account wages obviously)

I'm guessing Crocker would also be aware of him due to his England youth invovlement.

What makes you think he's anything like Diallo? He's got a much bigger physical stature to start with. I don't know a great deal about him as I've not really seen him play, but I know from reports over a few years that he is very highly rated. I'd say a level above the Diallo's based on the reports I've read.

They do have an edge with regards to CL football, but I think we should also play on our unique selling point compared to those two - we're in the PL. Arguably the best league in the world, players would love to come here and test themselves against the best players. That has to be seen as attractive in my opinion. If they want CL football, the notion is simple...they do well for us and get their move to a CL club in the PL in a season or two. There's no reason why we can't be looking for the next Haaland or Nkunku before they get to Dortmund and RB.

I think our model will work, if the scouting is better. As long as we're prepared to look in the 20m market with a view to at least double the money when they're sold, it could work or us. We just need that initial investment over the next couple of windows to restart that cycle. Dortmund and RB do it perfectly. They invest when they need to invest, but primarily their income is from the large sales they get. There is mileage in the model, but it really does require the scouting to be totally on point.

Based on the records/form we had under them - Forster - We had one of our longest runs not conceding with him in the side, just after he'd got back from injury. Boruc - He was solid for his 18 or so months in our team, thought he was treated quite harshly by being forced out. I can't forget that goal away at Stoke though. Steklenberg - Decent cover, not amazing but an experienced enough player who was part of a decent side. McCarthy - Should have been no more than a squad player really, backup at most (which is what he was signed as). Pretty poor as a regular. Anyone part of a 9-0 isn't going to be remembered too fondly. Gazzaniga - Error prone and eractic. He could pull off decent stops, but he was just a bit too eractic to be regular at this level. Gunn - 9-0 say no more, he was horrendous. Davis - Like a rabit in headlights sadly. Great for us on our return to the PL, but totally out of his depth once we were there. Cabbalero - Hard to rate him really, didn't play too many times.

Yeah that's fair, I wouldn't say he's been very good - but good is a fair assessment. He will be first choice for us next season and I don't have a huge prob with that. We looked better when he was in the team (he was awesome Spurs away)

Yeah, that's true - it wasn't our money as such, it was all created from our sales. But it does demonstrate that you need to spend decent amounts to be successful in this league, if you can sell-to-buy like Leicester for example then it works well and you can keep the wheels revolving. We tried to reinvest what we got from Mane, Tadic, Wanyama, Morgan, VVD etc and just spent it on a load of shite. Then we couldn't sell that shite to keep the sell to buy wheel rolling, so we were stuck with the crap trying to suck anything we could out of it. I don't have a problem with the re-invest what you sell model as such, but the problem comes when you don't have anything to sell and the ownership is unwilling to put the initial investment up to start the wheels going again. I have confidence that we'll see that happening over the next two summers.

No, they've done it the right way! How Klopp has built this team on beans is beyond me, it's just transfer genius all of it. They don't tap players up, they don't pay over the odds, they don't dish out big contracts. No, no, not at all. Their success is not down to spending money, not at all.

I think we've done bloody well to say in this league post 2017. We did invest big money but it all failed, like you said we've never recovered from that. Clubs like us cannot afford to make 1 big mistake, let alone 6+ of them. Incredible amount of failings really. It feels like last summer and this summer has been the start of recovering from that and building a fresher team. Investment is important for sure and without that we'll continue to be stuck in this horrible loop, so I'm looking for an initial investment in the next couple of windows with the inevitable sale for profit mantra starting up again as the likes of Salisu/Tino etc continue to flourish. Koemans seasons were successful due to spending money complimented with good scouting. Being able to invest in VVD, Tadic, Mane, Pele, Toby, Bertrand to supplement Fonte, Morgan, Wanyama etc created a very good team. We were able to use the money from the sales to get those guys in that first window, we still made mistakes (Gardos, Elia, Djuricic, Taider) but the money gave us a little more leeway.

https://football-italia.net/southampton-make-offer-for-svanberg/ (The bit on gazzetta relating to Svanberg translates to... Mattias Svanberg could go to the Premier League: Southampton has offered € 10 million to Bologna.)

Did you get out of the bed on the wrong side?

Doesn't that class as tapping up? It's Liverpool though, so we shouldn't be surprised. Nations favourite and all that, achieving success the right way and not spending silly money at all.

The only reason Eriksen hasn't signed at Brentford is because he's waiting for a Top 4 club to have a bite. If they don't, he'll re-sign at Brentford.

To be fair if it wasn't for his winning goal against Sheff U, we were toast. Think he got 20 goals that year, easily a deciding factor imo.

If we're talking about FM, why on earth is Redmond my top scorer with 20 goals and worth £45-56m? He's unrealistically too good, I might have to tweak it!

Yep, Chelsea poached him from us (he was a London lad) FC Bayern München: Die außergewöhnliche Geschichte von Jamal Musiala in Bildern | Goal.com

Kind of suggestive that the club were inherently aware that it wouldn't go down 'too well', as he's clearly not amazing (ditto McCarthy), so they were hoping for a good run of form to slip that in when the fans would be less likely to react negatively. Not a good show really, like you said disrespectful to Stephens and the question remains as to why we signed him on, as a club we're clearly not enthused about it. The only sense I can try and attribute to it would be the fact we were still owned by Gao, we didn't know what our scope would be for replacing etc - so saftey first, keep the players around who 'wanted' to be here - even though they weren't great. That's all I've got as a reason!

I don't see any truth in that. He didn't particularly leave here on the most amazing terms, kept us hanging with the contract and put us into an impossible situation in his last year. Cleary he's better than anyone we've got and he'd walk into the side, but I'd be happier if we looked into the future this summer rather than continuously trying to reinvent the past (and that includes re-contracting Long etc)