Ultimatt

"Fraser is an England international, Stuart Taylor has a lot of experience and I trained with Alex McCarthy in the week –he was really good with me." So McCarthy is fit? More non-competition for Forster.

Hire him to coach penalties and finishing.

Has nothing to do with the manager. We're saying the players are the problem. The 5 most advanced players behind the striker offer next to nothing goals wise. Pelle averaged 0.37 goals per game. Similar output to both Gabbi & Austin so that's fine. Mane averaged 0.33 goals per game(GPG). Tadic averages 0.13 GPG. Redmond averages 0.12 GPG. Boufal averages 0.08 GPG. Mane 0.33 GPG = Tadic+Redmond+Boufal 0.33 combined. Schneiderlin averaged 0.12 GPG in his 3 PL seasons with us. Davis averages 0.06 GPG. JWP averages 0.05 GPG. Schneiderlin 0.12 GPG > Davis+JWP 0.11 combined. Schneiderlin 0.12 + Mane 0.33 > Redmond/Tadic/Boufal/Davis/JWP 0.42 GPG combined. The stats don't lie. Our current players behind our lone striker are woeful at finding the net. The only creative linkup play we have is out wide when Bertrand/Cedric make overlapping runs. That's not great since at best it creates a cross to a team without a target man (Pelle gone). We have no creative linkup inside or on the top of the box. Guardiola couldn't get these players scoring prolifically.

Tadic - 16 goals in last 122 games Redmond - 21 goals in last 174 games Boufal - 2 goals in 26 saints games JWP - 8 goals in 173 games Davis - 11 goals in 196 saints games It's not our manager. It's not our playstyle. This is our problem.

Ever since Pelle/Mane left we've lost our goals. Davis/JWP never scored and Tadic/Redmond/Boufal not giving anywhere near enough. Little to do with the manager/playstyle, our players just don't score.

Not scoring at home against a poor team destined for a relegation scrap. New manager but its still the same Tadic/Redmond/Davis/JWP that don't score.

New season same problem. 11 shots, 10 of them off target. Can't score.

Being Australian yourself you've been probably seen the same in our sports here. When you bring in video refs the on-field refs become a lot less likely to make a decision worried they might get it wrong. IMO the best implementation is to give each captain 1 incorrect review per match that they can call whenever.

Our team 4 years ago 2013/14: Boruc - Shaw Lovren Fonte Clyne - Davis Schneiderlin Wanyama - Lallana Lambert JRod Fits your description quite well. 7 of those 11 players made moves to top 6 clubs, would've been 8 if JRod didn't get injured and went to Spurs.

The young squad is very true and some of them have strong potential. Young players need as much game time as possible to develop. Redmond, JWP, Hojbjerg, Boufal, Stephens are all at the age where they need to be starting every game they can. If they all start regularly this season i'm ok with it but they won't. Tadic/Long will get games ahead of Redmond/Boufal. Davis/Clasie will get games ahead of JWP/PEH. Yoshida will get games over Stephens (though he hasn't taken an improved contract yet). If we want to develop these younger players then we have Tadic/Long/Davis/Clasie on long contracts getting very limited game time. Then there's the next age bracket of Targett, McQueen, Gallagher, Bednarek, Sims that could easily be those backup players but most are 3rd or 4th down the line. They're all probably above the U23 level so we can't expect much development in any of them this season. The spurs comparison is good. The difference is there young players are at a much higher level than ours. Alli vs JWP. Dier vs PEH. Eriksen/Son vs Redmond/Boufal. We're investing a lot in this young squad sticking together for a few years but the big questions are 1) Will these young players turn out to be good enough? 2) Will they get enough game time to develop 3) Can we even hold on to them if a big club comes calling despite their long contracts. The clubs strategy has merit but there's definitely potential for it to fail with our PL position slipping while we try to develop this young squad.

It's clear the club/board have adopted a new strategy in the last year of locking all players into long term deals so we don't need to sell. Yoshida and Davis are the only 1st teamers not contracted to at least 2020, with the latter only because of his age. In theory it sounds great to have all our players locked in giving the club the power in negotiations. In reality, as witnessed by the VVD situation, or Fonte last season, the players can still be petulant children and try to force a move. The other key point is that our best XI is arguably the worst it's been since coming back to the PL. Only 1 of our players is being courted by another club. The rest were given long term deals and big payrises so we wouldn't need to sell but no one really wants them anyway. Getting into Europe can be seen as a curse in disguise because it forced us to bloat our squad, losing sight of that strong first XI over depth and rotation. If you look at Leicester's title run, 9 players started 30+ games. Their depth was poor but it didn't matter because they only played once a week. The depth was exposed last season with their European run. We go into this season with no Europe but still with our "Ready for Europe" bloated squad. So what we have now is a situation where we're paying big wages to a lot of players that will get barely any gametime this season, which takes funds away from signing/paying better players to improve our first team. The long contracts are fairly meaningless when these players aren't desired by clubs above us in the food chain. I feel like the board have gone overboard with this strategy and lost sight of smart business decisions. Get our best players on long contracts but there's no need to give payrises/long contracts to squad players that'll bench warm all season.

I'd say strikers is the least of our worries with Gabbi/Austin. We need a strong AM and a new GK. Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

So not Puel's fault but just a poor squad then? Glad you've come around Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

Forster gets preferencial treatment because he's English. If he was foreign he'd be out already instead of getting a contract extension. Has no competition, guaranteed starting spot, super long contract so no need to improve. Club F'd up.

A bit old. We tend to go for players a bit wet behind the ears

Strange extension. Can't help but feel he wouldn't get such preferential treatment if he wasn't British. When he was signed he was told he was guaranteed to start and Boruc was shoved out and he hasn't had any competition for his spot since. Now he gets a contract extension on the back of an abysmal season by his standards? Where's the shot of him sipping a cup of tea by the pool because it seems like he can do that and still get rewarded.

They've been blessed with £125m for 2 players. Pretty easy to spend big on the back of that. Real good chance to push on much like we did on the back of Shaw/Chambers/Lallana sales.

It was just the skates and trolls on here pushing the "Black's a problem" line. Never anything out in the press and here the club confirms it's in fact the contrary and he's well liked.

Agent fees should be paid over the life of the contract. Absolutely ridiculous how much they profit from shopping their players out every 2 years. The worst part is the better the player the less work they need to do yet they earn more. Demand is high and clubs will always come calling. Whereas agents actually work hard shopping lesser players out. Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

I'll agree with you there. They really overpaid for Sissoko. Doesn't mean the Mane deal wasn't good too though. Better than the risk of letting a player hit 1 year left, like the terrible deals we got for Wanyama and Clyne.

AFCON year. Plus Sissoko had 3 years left, Mane had 2. If we didn't sell Mane last season we would've got 8 months out of him and been forced to sell for less a year later.

With addons. Lukaku £75m is 2.5x Mane's £30m. Lukaku 25 PL goals last season is 2.5x Mane's 10+11 in his 2 seasons with us. And that's with the massively increased fees this season. We got a good price for Mane.

Sun, Aug 20 - Huddersfield v Newcastle (Sky Sports) 1.30pm Sun, Aug 27 - West Brom v Stoke (Sky Sports) 1.30pm Sun, Sep 10 - Burnley v Crystal Palace (Sky Sports) 1.30pm Sun, Sep 10 - Swansea v Newcastle (Sky Sports) 4pm Mon, Sep 11 - West Ham v Huddersfield (Sky Sports) 8pm Fri, Sep 15 - Bournemouth v Brighton (Sky Sports) 8pm Sat, Sep 16 - Crystal Palace v Southampton (Sky Sports) 12.30pm Sun, Sep 24 - Brighton v Newcastle United (Sky Sports) 4pm Sun, Oct 1 - Everton v Burnley (Sky Sports) 2.15pm 33 games televised. Only 9 involving 2 non-top 6 sides. Promotion teams involved in 5 of those 9.

FFP last season was a maximum loss of £105m over 3 seasons in PL, and £30m in UEFA competitions. If Everton don't sell Lukaku now they'll 100% breach UEFA FFP and potentially get kicked out of Europe (not that Koeman cares as he'll probably tank the qualifier).

Good move. I echo what others have said about him being loaned years prior. We should follow the Chelsea model more of loaning our prospects out and bringing back the ones that can make it Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk