tajjuk

Better teams? Where are these? Norwich aren't better than Wolves IMO, Sheff Utd are probably Cardiff level, who knows with Villa they could easily do a Fulham. Newcastle are worse, then the likes of Crystal Palace, Bournemouth, Burnley, Watford, and Brighton have hardly done much in the transfer market. Also our start was hardly the hardest either and Hughes managed to waste loads of points there. We've improved the squad, we actually have a stupid amount of depth through, the players have had a full pre-season with ralph as well, predicting a relegation battle is massively pessimistic IMO.

Over paid but hes still a very good defender and better than what they have got. He's massively dominant in the air, can bring the ball out of defence to start attacks (has a decent amount of assists for a centre back), has a good range of passing, scores goals and rarely makes mistakes either. (Same mistakes leading to goals as VVD last year at 1 IIRC). Think people are doing him a disservice, it today's market he's probably easily a £50-60 million player.

Tipped by the BBC to have a breakthrough season - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/49057145

Or they shift Schneiderlin, who IIRC is on about £100k a week. Everton have a similar issue to us, they have been trying to shift players from a bad transfer strategy, the likes of Morgan, Tosun, Bolasie, McCarthy and Mirallas.

IIRC When we first signed him he was pretty good for the first few months, then just seemed to get worse and worse, but still swanned around like he was our best player. I wonder if being shunted out on loan and then struggling to get into a Celta team has meant he's had to eat some humble pie. I believe I read a story that when he returned back for pre-season he was the fittest player and achieved the highest score in the beep test, which maybe coupled with him seemingly not on the 'discarded' pile with Austin, Lemina etc. means he has had a big shift in attitude and might under Ralph knuckle down, learn and improve? I mean we must have seen something in there to buy him, plus this is a guy that was performing well for Lazio in Serie A and was playing for the Dutch national team at like 22-23.

It IMO looks increasingly likely that rehabilitating Hoedt into something approaching a good player might be our plan B to buying a new centre-back probably with us going into the season using the back 3 again. We then have Cedric here as extra cover for Valery in the wingback role.

To be fair they have made one signing over the last 3 windows, they have a squad that with a little more key depth and little more quality could be challenging for the title and clearly for the champions league, have already sold one full back and seem to trying to sell the other one. You can understand them getting a bit twitchy, they are in a great position to push on and seem to be not doing it. It's a bit like us after finishing 6th or going further back to the 8th place and cup final, not kicking on from a good season with key investment and thus wasting a good opportunity that you then have to re-build back towards.

Leicester won the league in real life, if FM 16 had predicted that people would have ridiculed it. There are thousands upon thousands of calculations going on for FM to simulate a football season plus the inputs of the user playing the game, its going to cause some weird results across millions of players simulating millions of seasons. Doesn't mean the way the game is set up and the way players are scouted and given abilities in game is not based on real life. As others have said football clubs in real life use it as a resource because essentially you are tapping into thousands and thousands of scouts from all over the world who painstakingly research their clubs and players to get them as accurate as they possibly can. The vast majority of times I play out a season in FM19 Man City or Liverpool win the league and players like Moi don't do very well, just because you have some odd results does not mean its not based on real life and is trying to be as realistic as a game can be. FM has over the years predicted many future stars pretty successfully and often before the footballing world even knew about them, of course it has got some wrong, like Cherno Samba and Freddy Adu, but then so do footballing pros as many IRL were predicting Adu for example to become a superstar.

At least some links are coming up again, feels like we've not even had any rumours for the last couple of weeks. Maybe we'll see a few Ings like deals, loans with a commitment to buy or some moves with lots of instalments like Arsenal have done with Pepe

Yeh the quality of who they have bought is questionable. Wesley, a striker who scored 10 in 28 last year in Belgium Mings, a Bournemouth reject who did do well in the Championship last year Our back up left back A young centre-back from Brentford (who is a decent prospect) A left winger from a lower mid table Turkish team A centre-back from Reims A Wolves reject centre-back And Jota who has managed 8 goals in 70 odd games for Birmingham in the Championship and despite being 28 has only managed 18 games in a top league in his career. No exactly inspiring stuff.

Not seen any links with any for ages.

Yeh agree you can understand his frustration, its hardly like the rest of the team were setting a high bar.

I missed a question mark, it was meant to say - Yeh don't Everton need to balance for FFP?

Yeh don't Everton need to balance for FFP? they have some absurdly high earners after their rather scattergun approach to transfers over the last couple of years.

Yeh, you can see why he likes Long, he's quick, he runs all day for him, he's reasonably tactically astute and gets when he needs to press. He's also pretty decent in the air able to challenge for longer balls. It's just his general link play and finishing that lets him down, but if they can be improved, together with some confidence then he could have a decent year. We don't really need Long to be scoring 15-20 goals (especially if we play a front two) his general harassing, pressing and work rate will create opportunities for himself and others, so if they can improve his finishing and composure so he bags maybe 9-10 goals, that will win us more points.

He's here in Southampton, but the rest of the squad is in Ireland/on their way back from China, Ralf is in Ireland as well. Hope the 'leaving brigade' don't get in his ear

We are doing a lot of moving around pre-season, Austria, China, Ireland and now off to Holland. When is the squad all back together at Staplewood?

He got back quick, where are the rest of the players?

Should also be noted if you read that article posted on the Ralph thread, and see what he did with Inglostadt is that he didn't massively overhaul the squad, he bought in a few players here and there that fitted with his philosophy, but actually a lot of the players that were there when he took over, who were struggling in Div 2 and were looking likely to drop into div 3, the ones that bought into his philosophy and adapted to him, were still there finishing comfortably mid-table in the Bundesliga like 2 years later. Which just shows how much he can do with existing squads given the time and with those players buying into what he is doing fully. We've already seen what Ralph has done in just over 6 months to our existing squad that most of us were berating over the last two years, hence the optimism from many of us about what he can do with it over a full season and full pre-season. He's made many of our players improve a lot in that short space of time, so who says he can't improve our defenders and our team defending as a whole?

Again our performance under Ralph last season, extrapolated over a whole season would net something like 48-50 points, easily enough for top half, if not top 8. With more time to work with the players and instil his ideas, plus two additional attacking options to take the burden off Redmond and Ings, people being 'naively optimistic' as you put it are actually being fairly logical. Especially when you add in last year Hughes wasted a lot of 'easier' home games where we should have done better and Bertrand was unavailable for half the season. Yes of course having improved defensive options is desired, no one is saying we shouldn't be looking at that and I am sure the club will recruit at least one. However, it is not all doom and gloom if we don't, to suggest if we don't get in another centre-back means we are going to be flirting with relegation all year makes no sense. Also its hardly like the rest of the league has improved massively either. Obviously the window is still open so lots can change but currently - Newcastle have got weaker, they have lost Rafa and their two top scorers. They have just signed a striker but again unknown if he'l do it in the PL. Crystal Palace have lost their star right back and they could lose their star attacker in Zaha and have basically signed no one. Brighton have not done much so far in the window and have an unknown quality in Potter in charge. The three promoted clubs are probably weaker than the 3 last year as Wolves looked a clear strong contender last year that no one thought would go straight back down. Norwich don't look as strong. Villa have spent heavily but the quality is questionable so look like they have done a 'Fulham' and Sheff Utd look like a Cardiff to me. West Ham have done West Ham things, who knows what you'll get with them, but they have lost proven PL goals in Arnautovic, so we'll have to see if Haller can replace him. Bournemouth have signed a championship centre-back. Everton have signed Delph Watford have signed Craig Dawson. Burnley have signed Jay Rod. Wolves basically confirmed two loans they had last year and have Europa league to juggle this year. So aside from the top 6 (two of which have unproven managers for this year, one has a transfer ban and both Utd and Arsenal are struggling to get their targets, plus Chelsea have lost Hazard) have any of the rest of teams around us and above us really got any stronger? IMO no, most of the league has barely bought anyone, Leicester have probably done the best business out of the mid table clubs, but are about to lose their best centre-back. So why the panic? We are starting a new season with a very competent manager who in the short time he has had has made massive improvements to several of our players, and we have added two pacey attackers, who potentially could add extra goals. Whilst the rest of the league has so far mainly stood still or even got a little worse to be honest. I just don't see how under those circumstances we would be near relegation unless something went horribly wrong. IF we don't sign a centre-back, then I expect us to end up using the 5 at the back used a lot last year probably more than Ralph was planning to, but that was a pretty successful shape that earned a decent amount of points. Most of the Premier League has only signed one new player really (with quite a few loans being made permanent like Ings for us, Gomes for Everton, Kovavic for Chelsea, Dendoncker for Wolves, Tielemans for Leicester). If you ignore those loans then the only clubs to have made more than 2 major signings are Villa, Sheff Utd, Norwich, and Man City (3).

He is one of Europe's top rated young centre backs (was in the top 20 shortlist for European Golden Boy award 2018) and apparently has recorded a top speed almost as fast as Salah hit last season. Centre-backs that are fast are a rare commodity, especially if they are only 20 and already have 2 seasons of Bundesliga football under their belt.

Upamecano seems highly unrealistic to me, unless he desperately wants to play Ralf and in the Premier League, you'd think both the Manchesters would snap him up, especially if the fee was south of £35 million considering Utd are buying Maguire for £80 million. Though apparently City need to shift Mangala before they buy a centre back as they have 4 first team ones at the moment. To be honest any of City, Utd, Liverpool, Spurs and Arsenal you'd think would snap him up.

Same heard the names, but once you see them all listed out like that over a 2 year period it shows a clear change of strategy. It also makes sense because well we just can't buy top level players so hoovering them up from lesser leagues academies and using that pathway as selling point seems to be a good strategy and hopefully it'll start showing some signs of working in 2-3 years time when these 16.17. 18 year olds start becoming 18,19, 20, 21 and appear in the first team squads more often.

Shame if true, but seems like its based on him liking an instragram post at the moment.

They have paid like £35 million to Liverpool for Ibe and Solanke, so their business is not that good, plus they paid money to loan Clyne and their defence was terrible in the 2nd half of the season.