Pata

Nobody takes Fraser even if we were willing to give him away. He still has 18 months left on his big contract. He wouldn't be playing for Southampton if we weren't paying part of his wages.

I think it's possible we'll still finish above Villa. Catching Spurs looks tough though, they don't have Europe and Maddison is back now. Think we'll finish 5-6th, maybe lower if Man Utd or Chelsea go on a big run. Think it's a lock we'll end up above West Ham and Brighton considering their (hopefully long) European adventures. All this if we don't get any massive new injuries obviously, if we lose even more key players it'll only be top half.

That was years ago?

Nah, we dominated those too. Really happy with that performance, we were really good apart from that 10 minute spell when Bailey was subbed on before Tino nullified him. Happy I can finally go read the Howe thread too. I honestly think we can still finish above these, would be confident if we had a full squad. Emery will take them to the final in Europe and they'll be playing two games a week a lot and that was a shocking performance by both the team and the crowd.

That sounded amazing and absolutely embarrassing home crowd at Villa Park.

Yeah, the ball probably ends up cleared by the defender even without the contact but it was such a blatant foul by Mendy that it has to be given.

How is that not a penalty?

Was ridiculously good in that second half.

Colo

Burn has been colossal for the last 10 minutes.

Any need for this?

That has always been the formation out of possession when we are not pressing.

Thought Burn was absolutely fine, surprised to see all the comments slagging him off.

Amazing save, thought that was going in.

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Should tell Brighton they are getting mugged and maybe apply for a job on their scouting network, they know nothing.

Yeah, robust is certainly one of the words I would use to describe him. He was 26 when this season started, think it's a bit early to be concerned about how his body can handle aging right now or even during his new contract that he hopefully signs soon.

"Doesn't seem to have physical robustness to be able to stay on the pitch for a meaningful stretch of games" is just pure weird when he had been fit for basically the full four seasons before this. He'll be 38 at some point too but right now he's 27 which isn't old no matter how you look at it. Happy to disagree with such knee-jerky statements.

I don't think so. Everyone knows he has a year left in his contract next summer and we are never letting him walk for free in the summer after that. I see it as a message to Joelinton and his agent that he will be sold if things don't advance in the coming months and I'm certain he doesn't want that either. Pardew was doing this with anyone who was good, no matter how long they had left in their contracts.

Was suspended for three matches last season too iirc. Incredible.

Seriously? He has played 32, 35, 31 and 38 games for us in the league in the past four seasons. Are we really declaring every player that gets injured this season a sicknote without looking at the previous seasons?

Would be fantastic to be in it too. Many new opponents/countries and we could rotate a ton giving the fringe players and youngsters some minutes. Racking up some UEFA coefficient points too.

Yeah, moving Almiron for whatever it ends up being will tremendously help us with FFP considering his age and the need for replacement in any case. Trippier has been so good for us (excluding the last few weeks) that I'm not sure if the help with FFP is worth it, especially if we are able to move Almiron. Getting similar level of performances for even 18 more months would make it hard to justify selling him and we would probably need to sign another fullback next summer. Saying pretty much the same as you but think he's easily worth more to us in the squad than in the balance sheet.

Think I've read about it too, some teams/agents really value that number.

In a non-FFP world I would rather keep him as a squad player but this makes a ton of sense in reality. He's nearing the age where his value plummets and getting even £20m for him would be great. We need to sell players to be able to build the squad and his age is a massive factor in that. We'll miss his running and reliable fitness but he's one of the first starters we simply need to upgrade. Hope Murphy has a great spell from here to the end of the season so we can move him for £15-20m in the summer too.