ScepticalStan

A centre-forward with 7 goals player of the season ahead of Van Diijk or Bertrand He's not a bad player at all, has had a good season and brings a lot to the team aside from his goals, but can we please stop this nonsense?

Oh I'm not criticising Pelle in the slightest. Re-read my post. I think he's a solid enough player and decent value for £9Mn. He's not a world-beater by any means, but if you want a world-beater you pay world-beater prices.

I don't know why Pelle is held to such a high standard. When we signed him; people noted the relatively low price for a PL centre-forward and said "I'll settle for 10 PL goals a season". If he fails to find the net in any of our remaining fixtures, he'll have averaged out at precisely that across two seasons. He's an average player and was always going to be. Not good, not great, has his moments, has his **** games as well...blabla. Standard. Let's compare him to his peers in the PL... Gomis: 5 Wickham: 5 Rondon: 7 Deeney: 8 (five of them penalties) Carroll: 3 Walters: 4 Mitrovic: 5 Gestede: 5 Sakho: 4 Valencia: 4 That's basically Pelle's peergroup. He's not Harry Kane, he's not Alexis Sanchez, he's not Diego Costa and he's not Aguero. At the end of the day I don't think I've seen Saints get *precisely* what we've paid for more than we have with Pelle. His goal return + overall contribution has been pretty much exactly worth the £9Mn we paid for him. Want more from a centre-forward? Well that'll cost more (barring a 'lottery signing' like a Vardy or Mahrez).

He's a fairly average player who we slightly overpaid for. The fact that the man receives absolute adulation from our fanbase despite having never scored double-figures in a Premier League season is a testament to the somewhat chauvinist sectors of our fanbase who also think that JWP getting caps for the U-21s of a national team who's senior side and indeed U-21 side were knocked out in the group stage of both of their most recent competitions is remotely impressive. Shane Long has done alright and he's a useful pest to have up front, but a 'runs-around-hard-worker-good-honest-player' is never the star man of any serious team in the top six or above. Or when they are, they've scored 19 goals with 9 matches still to come. In fact, that's a good point. Vardy does everything Long does *and* scores goals. If Long was a fair deal at £12 million, what price would you put on Vardy's head?

Quite. Former Netherlands and Barcelona captain and Champions League winner Ronald Koeman ought to listen to the opinions of nobodies on this forum far more.

I sadly texted a Liverpool-supporting friend of mine that for the first time, I had to admit that £57Mn for Lallana/Clyne/Lovren looked like a fair deal.

Usual 'whatabout whatabout whatabout' nonsense. Regardless of whether the Tories screw up the NHS, you can't seriously claim that it being subject to a potential demand of 500Mn people whilst we're in the EU isn't going to have an impact on overcrowding.

This really does sum things up nicely. You can come out with all the wise, learned leaders of business, industry and science who favour staying in the EU. You can come out saying that those who oppose it are just scattered ninnies like Farage and Galloway and you can post an LSE study that says how the UK's GDP will increase should we stay in. Simple fact is this: remain or leave, they'll be winners and losers either way (and I use the latter term non-derogatively). Its interesting because I got into a debate about the doctors' strike the other day and how, regardless of their efforts, the contracts WILL be forced on them as there are still tonnes of doctors coming through the universities and plenty from abroad who'd be glad to work in the NHS. As such, there might just be a silver lining in that the sheltered middle-class (that used to sneer at the likes of builders pointing out that they couldn't compete with cheap labour from Eastern Europe) might be taught a harsh, but valuable lesson: you can't negotiate with anyone if you can be easily replaced. Its that simple.

I think you'd be very surprised at how much stocky strength Messi actually has. If you've ever watched him play in the flesh, you see it quite clearly - he's actually surprisingly resiliant. It was the same with Ronaldinho as well - a wiry physique combined with excellent balance and a low centre-of-gravity that made him very difficult to shake off the ball as much as he might have had the skill and pace to dribble past players. Then you've got players who really are thin-as-a-pin like Neymar, but they're extremely rare examples and in Neymar's case, he gets away with it thanks to having flexibility, agility and balance that is absolutely out of this world (in addition to his pace and skill). Juanmi is, however, a completely ordinary player when it comes to those abilities - and is ridiculously weak. As soon as he's given the ball he's robbed of it completely effortlessly by the nearest midfielder who gets shoulder-to-shoulder with him, rendering him almost completely ineffective. He can't even muster a bit of resistance by getting his body low, sticking his bum out and shielding the ball (as, by example, Messi and Suarez are very good at as part of the 'dirty work' of striking play. He seems to consistently receive the ball in a standing position and run with it incredibly daintily so that when a defender does get alongside him, he loses the one-on-one physical battle so completely that his skill is an irrelevance.

Quite - and for all intents and purposes the bookies that he's 'cashed out' with have essentially got themselves odds of 71/29 on Leicester to win the league (insofar as they've paid 29k to save 71k if Leicester pull it off).

Not a player, but I'll never forgive Billy Davies and his whole Derby team for going out to intentionally kick the everliving **** out of a seventeen-year-old Bale in the play-off Semi-Final in '07.

Yup.

Sunderland really gifted us a point today. They panicked hugely as soon as they got their noses in front and had something to lose - kept on heading the ball/clearing it with plenty of time to bring it down and keep things under control, especially with the extra man. All they ended up doing was gifting us corners/FKs and giving us the ball back from the 85th minute onwards. Better teams would have seen it out against us comfortably.

The problem for Labour is that they want to stay within the EU for the exact same reasons that the Tories do and if they were being honest, agree with everything Cameron has been saying. They just can't admit it.

WTFILN?

The day after Brexit the CEOs of VW, Daimler AG and BMW will be banging on the door of Merkel's office to negotiate a favourable free-trade agreement with Britain. They aren't going to want to get involved in a tariff war with their largest foreign market. (Or so I've heard - that's the counterargument at least). The other one being that Nissan threatened to pull their factory out of Sunderland if we didn't join the Euro, and have since doubled their workforce.

It should of course be Bertrand, who's actually been superb for much of the season despite the hugely varying range of really quite solid performances vs utter dross that we've had served up. VvD is our best player and should be the man we build our defence around for several seasons to come, but Bertrand has been a model of consistency.

Listening to the Liverpool fans booing Sterling who left to win trophies and play CL football whilst getting paid more. Embarrassing to think that's what we sound like re. Lallana. Give it a rest.

I do agree, but I think you underestimate how much the kind of player you're describing would probably cost. We aren't the only team in the league who'd love to have that kind of player, but don't.

Funny how the look on Burnham's face morphs from 's****** s******' to 'oh God I actually managed to lose a leadership race with this guy'.

Few interesting comments from some of the Eurosceptic guardian commenters swimming against the tide. "I remember when the debate was raging about the UK joining the Euro. The Chief Executive of Nissan said that if we didn't join they would have to close their factory in Sunderland. A decade on and we haven't joined the Euro but Nissan have significantly increased the workforce in their Sunderland factory and commissioned new models to be built there (including a new model exclusive to the US market - last time I looked the US was not in a currency, economic or political union with the UK). I am sure that Euro membership and EU membership are factors in firms decisions of where to manufacture. But there are also a whole set of other factors such as tax rates, land, infrastructure and labour costs, legislative burden, skill sets and flexibility in the labour market, sunk costs, exit costs and relative levels of productivity and efficiency which also factor into their decision. As Nissan proves, firms are prepared try to influence debates like this to support their preferred outcome (including through the use of threats) but if that outcome doesn't materialise then they don't automatically follow through on those threats and I remain to be convinced that they'd all rush off to higher tax EU countries which have less flexible labour markets." "The EU will drop to its knees and offer the UK a political and economic blowjob in the weeks following the Brexit vote. We would be their largest customer in the world. We are set to overtake Germany as the largest economy in Western Europe. We will be able to recruit migrants from a pool of 6 billion not just 600 million so we will grow even faster than expected. The day after Brexit the UK becomes the EU's single biggest export market, ahead of China, Japan and the USA. There will be no Norway Model. There will be a British Model. One where you trade with us on our terms or **** right off. Basically. Reality will bite hard when the board of VW suddenly finds itself potentially losing its second most profitable market territory. If they don't play nice then we can just punch them in the face until they do with trade barriers and encouraging their own anti-EU voters to rise up. The only thing that really matters is the Germans. They control the EU and they REALLY like selling us their cars. The chairman on VW, BMW and Daimler Benz will not let Merkel damage their key profit centre in Europe by trade tarrif wars. The U.K. made more cars in the North East of England than the entire Italian motor industry last year. Bring on a tarrif war if you must but it will **** VW all night long There are no import tariffs on cars into the EU now. That went fifteen years ago. Ford make the Mustang in the USA and sell it across the EU and there is no tarriff. International car corporations are not here for access to the single market. BMW makes Z4 and X5's in Alabama and imports them to Europe. Minis in Oxford and exports them to the Continent. The Japs make models here and sell them all over the planet. Why? Because we have really good tax and labour market rules and it makes sense to produce here."

Had a little nosey at the Arsenal forum during the game. A few of them were pretty impressed with him yeah.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/11/europe-turn-tables-bullying-britain-david-cameron-eu "It’s time for Europe to turn the tables on bullying Britain" "So far all the talk has been of David Cameron’s demands. But the EU would hold all the power in post-Brexit negotiations, so it should spell out how it would make an outgoing Britain suffer" The supine comments below the line are frankly jaw-dropping. This is why, whilst I'd like us to leave, I have no hope whatsoever.

Silly me looking at the bookies, I should be paying more attention to the Daily Express