Smirking_Saint

Here we go !!

Yeah its a gamble but he has the talent and raw attributes to be a very good CB at European level

One of my favourite Burnley replies… I mean.. it literally makes no sense

Their arrogance is absolutely breathtaking Not realy sure where the ‘myth’ that he doesn’t want to be here comes from, by all reports he’s pretty relaxed about the whole thing, absolutely no indication from anyone that he ‘desperately wants to leave’

Salisu has cut it in the prem and left sided CBs are more of a premium than wingers

I just think thats who we’ll sign…

Yeah I think so, if JWP or Sulemana stay it only improves on this… striking options worry me but I think we’re looking to do business there I personally think we have, overall the strongest or atleast a top 2 squad in this division… time will tell if we can shake off last years mentality and adapt to Martins system

Bednarek will be one of the better CBs in the division Smallbone has been our standout performer in preseason Baz.. tbf… I thought would be ok but his pre season form is a definite worry Not really sure what you see there

Im hoping when we see movement on these we can potentially bring in a CB target of our own, imo I think it’ll be Ronnie Edwards and I would hazard a guess we have it lined up already Lyanco will be an interesting one, not sure where we go from here but I reckon we’ll see him go out on loan

They’re different types of players tbh Caicedo is more of an 8/6 where as Lavia is probably more of an actual 6 So I suppose it depends what you want really, Lavia is more like Casemiro/Fabinho where as Caicedo is more like Gundogan

Im fairly sure he was part of the ‘French’ clique that were making noises about not wanting to be here towards the end of last season Its why I was pretty sure Perraud, Diallo, him and Mara would be off to some degree Whether those thoughts have since mellowed im not sure

I don’t think hd is, I think Burnley are pissing everyone off lowballing, but tbf they don’t have a huge budget Ive said it before, at 20m or so Id probably cash in.. thats a hefty amount for a 23 yr old thats only really had 1 good season, under that figure I think he’ll play a good part this year, and he’s looked sharp in pre season

Personally no, Ive said from the beginning it’ll be top 2, im confident

Well, not really, I mean we’ve signed Charles to replace Lavia… Tino is great if he stays, if he doesn’t then we have 2 x adequate RBs JWP… yeah, but I imagine the hope there is he stays… tbh with how Smallbone is playing Im less bothered about a CM, without JWP I think it will be Charles/Smallbone/Alcaraz but in that scenario Id expect a further CM to come in

Weren’t we linked with him ?

Ahh.. yeah not sure on that one

I mean… we have… we wanted Charles and Manning… we bought both even before the planned sales because we didn’t want to lose out…

Exactly this

There is plenty of time to go in the window and a European Champs next year. We’ve already started moving players on We’ll be fine Id expect another 2 minimum to be gone by next week, if it pushes on we’ll probably look at loans

Oh so now we’re not just selling them off cheap we’re subsidising them aswell Fuck me… let me know when you out your house on the market 👍🏻

Fairly sure Swansea want 20m for him which seems to be putting everyone off

No I think its two seperate clauses, a buy back OR a sell on fee (around 20%)

Ive not seen enough of Charles in a 3 man midfield yet, not enough of him at 6 to form a strong opinion My overall issue is, certainly Stephens and to a lesser extent Bednarek are more reactive defensively then proactive, and they’ll need to be more of the latter to help stiffle transitions Lavia was very good at it, lets hope Charles is… unfortunately if we end up playing Smallbone at 6 then the risk increases imo… great tidy player on the ball, but not defensively aware enough

Im not convinced you can really comment a ton about our possession based system with the team we out out last night, it was heavily rotated due to the amount if friendlies we have AND unfortunately McCarthy continues tk be completely incompetent with the ball at his feet I think its a system that could work, especially in the Championship where we’d expect to play against a majority of opponents that will primarily look to stifle us and sit deep.. you cannot really play our high press anymore, not in any major capacity because we’ll likely be too dominant in possession I suppose we’ll see but Im optimistic, overall we’ve looked pretty good.. defensive transition is where its breaking down, we need to get better at that and quickly

I actually said this in one of the other threads I like this RM system, think it potentially will be very effective in the Champ… BUT… we are going to be subjected to team’s attempting to quickly break behind out high press, and so we’ll need defenders/No.6 that is able to react quickly