The College Dropout

Everyone understands FFP and how sales work for it. And I think people understand we are hamstrung. But it still doesn’t feel right to see clubs that haven’t sold a player for a big fee in 2 years spending £200m for the 3rd season in a row. That might not actually be true of Villa. But with the sheer number of signings they make. It feels like it. And tbf we’ve probably spent £200m this window.

Aston Villa haven’t had a ‘massive sale’ in 2 years.

I get the frustration. Some teams can strengthen every area they want. Spending massive fees along the way. Arsenal, Chelsea, Villa. Whether you like the signings or not they have been able to move as they want. We haven’t been able to do that. We are having to choose 1 from LB, RW AND RCB to strengthen. But people, including our fans still expect us to compete with Chelsea and Villa and probably finish above them both. They have injuries but Aston Villa have 5 ‘quality’ CBs in name at least. We have 2.

Surely narrows aye. But every Man City manager they’ve hired has won the league. Mancini, Pellegrini. But it won’t be the same level of dominance. I hope anyway.

Im taking the piss a bit. But Pep isn’t known as the best man manager. You’ll find a number of ex players who criticise him. So he’s outsourced it to the players themselves. You make yourself happy. If you don’t - no bother - I’ll replace you with someone who is happy and we will keep on winning. Believe me. Because he likes a small squad and is a horses for courses guy. Yeh 85% of the squad will ‘get minutes’ but it may be too few minutes.

Pep runs a weird cult. One where everybody must be totally happy to stay. A ‘no frowns’ policy. So if you want to leave you can leave. So you stay, you smile. You take being benched. You take being out the team with a smile. Or you’re out.

Fati to Brighton sounds great. We should be on that.

A lot of new vocabulary middle aged men hate because other middle aged men didn’t popularise it.

I’ve seen Pardew on talk sport. He’s always saying nice things about Newcastle. I know what he’s doing. But it’s working.

Aye Abdolaye was the CB right? He was solid. It’s Andy who had a couple decent games for Portsmouth that was bad.

That was nice of Roman Tbf.

I semi defended Chelsea’s transfer approach earlier in the summer. I thought it made a level of sense. It doesn’t. It’s bonkers.

I think he gets on the end of so many good opportunities that if 2-3 go in consecutively he may go on 4-5-6. With that extra bit of confidence and assuredness a couple goals gives a player. But you can’t rely on that over a season. You need a genuine option that’s not Murphy.

I’ve repeated a lot. That Almiron is a good member of the squad and anyone that replaces him, needs to have 80% of his attributes (pressing, off the ball movement, stamina etc) or else they won’t fit the system. That’s giving him credit. But his skill set is limited. As good as he’s been under Howe how many goals and assists as he had outside of that hot 9 game period? And even then I still think he’s a valuable squad member. His pressing is the gold standard. But the squad needs more quality down the right sooner or later. It’s a weakness of our current line up and sub routes.

I mean Barnes did score something like 13 league goals last season. That's more than any of our wingers. And for the previous 3 seasons, he's been a double-digit goalscoring winger across all comps - again something none of our wingers have done. I agree that this is based on potential and what they saw of him at Sporting, rather than Wolves. But it's not the same as Barnes.

Even then.... Chelsea & City have the best academies in the country. They just sell those lads on for big fees + sell-on clauses. Chelsea got £10m for Livra from Soton.. then what another £10m when we bought him?

Nunes really hasn't done anything at Wolves to earn that move.

I want smaller clubs to find a way around these. I'm sure we'll be on it too. But I despise sell-on clauses, they should be banned if being used by a bigger club. For big clubs it's just "we can't be arsed to develop this player, so you have him.. and if it works we'll get more money when he's sold and if it doesn't... oh well we've already sold him".

They really need to finish in the top 4 this season mind. But I guess selling Salah fills the gap anyway.

Coutinho is not a reasonable comparison. But certainly Rice & Caicedo are. I'm not trying to flog Bruno btw. Just pointing out the stupidity of his tweet.

It's funny because clubs would love it if we sold Bruno to Saudi for £40m. They wouldn't know what to do if we sold him to Saudi for £80-90m because that's actually fair.

That Veiga guy from Spain has gone he's 21 (might have name and age wrong but there's a young Spanish lad that's gone). Was linked with big clubs, seems like none came in for him. But aye he's comparing us to Wolves and Fulham. But we are in the CL and have massive potential.

We are thinking FFP. He’s saying - despite performing really well Saudi aren’t interested in our top performers. Callum Wilson, Bruno, not even Schar. Like Saudi have taken Neves and Mitro. saying Saudi don’t want our best player assets…. Because it’s their own asset. But that’s a weak argument. Salah is the only crown jewel player in the top 6 + Chelsea last season that has been heavily linked. Fabinho, Henderson and all the Chelsea lot - the clubs were happy sellers. Big wages, good fee, not performing at that level - happy to sell.

He doesn’t have the legs for our system. But attacking wise he would score a lot of goals.

I personally don’t agree with that approach. These games count. If performances levels are still high and a player is a little tired you take the risk to secure the result.