S-Clarke

He also said that Southgate is in fact, massively overachieving. I don't really know how you can overachieve when you have many £100m players in that 11. Underachieve yes, but certainly not overachieve.

It's all he knows really, he's not what I'd call an attacking manager. He's a defensively minded risk averse manager, so when he tries to play an attacking team with all guns blazing it goes horribly wrong as he has no idea how to balance the transitions. Stick to what you know Gareth, but sadly that will never get the best out of the players we have.

Exactly. This was more of a mental switch off rather than a physical one, they were just not there in a mental sense. They didn't want to be there, none of them. The one guy who probably did and wants to stake his claim (JWP) didn't get a look in. Give it a few weeks and you'll see all the pictures of them away on their Duabi holidays on the beaches lapping it up. That's where they want to be now.

What exactly was Maguire doing there? Holy jeez.

This feels like another Wolly with a Brolly moment. Ramsdale is incredibly overrated too.

Decent at the Euro's, his call up at the time caused a bit of confusion though. I think this season has been an absolute disaster for him though, from start to finish. Injuries, injuries, injuries and then part of a pretty crappy Leeds side to top it all off. I know he's being linked with big moves this summer, but in my opinion he needs to get back fit and get playing (well) for Leeds again.

Might just be me, but I've never known what the fuss is all about regarding him. I've never been blown away by his showings for Arsenal. Smith-Rowe always looks the more impressive.

Same as Gallagher imo. I think Mount looks better at Chelsea because he's surrounded by better players. We do have some decent players, but Southgate seems to be tinkering a bit at the moment and funnily enough JWP still can't get much time.

It's like watching Southampton.

Not really sure Bowen is international quality to be honest, seems to lack something at the highest level to me.

There's no doubting that he's better than anyone we've got in attack, but that's not exactly hard. Like others, I don't see the value in looking backwards. He was great for us, he would still score goals for us for sure, but there are other players out there who would also score goals for us and (as sad as it is to say) potentially provide a decent sell on in the future. Ings wouldn't.

I think as with most years, avoid the promoted teams like you said. Ideally you want the promoted teams around Nov just before the WC, when they start to flag and lose their bounce and before they can fix it in January. I love to start the season at home and finish it at home, we had both start and end away this year which doesn't give you the best chance for a good start (or good finish).

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)