The College Dropout

Turn of phrase. Really like him and his style of player. Haven’t had a player like this in some time. Made Burnley’s midfielders look flat footed.

Ki’s such a great little player. Keeps things ticking over in the right direction. Skilful in tight spaces, nice and mobile.

Lascelles makes everyone look better. Many thought it would be him to drop out for Lejeune. Lascelles lad will keep getting better.

They’re the sort that would get an Allardyce in and keep them up though. Fair point. Allardyce teams also always invest in January. If they don't invest with Sam, they'll still go down. Allardyce was Sunderland manager from October and barely kept them up. He's not a magician. Palace from November or so too. It's Palace and Fulham that can turn it around with the right manager. The others need big investment. Only Wolves and West Ham would seriously spend and I don't consider either serious relegation fodder.

Poor week but into the top 25 in the NO league. Tempted to keep Hazard, Wilson and Jiminez for one more week before making some big changes perhaps.

And overall, even with decent owners we'll never get anywhere as a club if we can't develop young players.

I think we are in the same sphere of understanding. It's just that i'm looking at it as a fan and you're looking at it from Rafa's perspective (a man that fundamentally didn't rate Mitro for what is likely a mix of personality and ability). We as fans should be disappointed that Rafa has sold a player what at 20, scored as many PL goals as his replacement has in his best PL season in 3 seasons. And is 5 years older. getting the best out of Mitro would've solved a lot of problems. Likewise Mbabu.

I;ve made a decision that i'll keep Aguero as my captain because he's surely due a hat-trick at some point. Might move to Sterling though.

Aye. Not had a bad week considering he's my captain. 52 points. Probably end up on 54. Still top 30 in the NO league, 1st in the private league but being closed down, 1st in the work league.

I agree it seems he and Rafa wouldn't work out. But that reflects badly on Rafa. That's a part of management. Making the best from what you have.

Yes. Murray was a great player for Palace. The season after he did his ACL he scored something like 7 in 19. They let him go the following season. But there’s more to the Benteke thing. Prior to last season he was close to a 1 in 2 player. He had scored close to 80 goals in 5 seasons in England. There’s a good player there somewhere.

I don’t know what your point is. I know Mitrovic is a good player. However his fans have barely commented here while he’s gone 7 games without scoring and now he has a good game and all of a sudden he’s brilliant again and its a massive mistake by Rafa Selling a 7 in 13 striker looks like a massive mistake. Selling a 13 in 38 striker would be a massive mistake.

Even if he averages 1 in 3 - which he was close too in his 1 season in the PL with us I think it could only be considered poor business.

Triggs, point is - unless you’re going to score mid 20’s and up you’ll go through lean spells. His goals to minutes ratio is almost identical to Harry Kane’s and better than Wilson’s. No penalties iirc? It’s 7 in 13. He’s 24. The indicators are bad.

Only difference is in the PL 2 teams are doing this and a couple others are closer.

But why? If we are to punch above our weight we need to get young players with potential and realise it. Anyway, Ashley.

Looks a massive mistake. Simple. Same with Mbabu. Same with Milner. There was something big in there and the manager sold it rather than dig it out. Mbabu’s probably a 10m fullback. Mitro is probably a 12-20 goal PL player. That’s a £30m player at least. We can’t afford that. It was a bad deal.

I might use bench boost soon. I've had philosophy of always having decent players on the bench this season. But to get Salah in that's likely to disappear. Best to get my bench points now then switch tact.

1st in my paid league. Going to play it safe and go Aguero. If West Ham give it a go, they'll concede a lot of shots on target and Aguero is beginning to finish matches again.

I don't like how footballers wages in the UK are (a) not public domain - not that we have a right to know, it's just interesting and (b) why it's often calculated in weekly pay. Who thinks of their wage/contract/salary in terms of weeks? Unless you are paid by the day / hour? When I played FM I would switch the wages to a year. A £100k p/w contract was something like £5.1m a year. 3 year deal, £15m. Can quickly look at the other finances to decide whether it was worth it or not. Much easier to compare to other players too.

Would agree with this. The great Barcelona and Spanish teams are marked by superb teams in the truest sense. I don't rank them individually as high as I rank the unit.

Alli's basic passing isn't very good. Loses the ball loads.

Didn't see much of Kluivert pre-NUFC but his touch was magical. Would love us to sign a striker like that or Berbatov. I'd take Ibra today.

Robert & Viana were booed when we were still fighting for 4th one season. Wolves at home. If it were Liverpool, they wouldn't have been booed aye. Very toxic time at the club and the source of a lot of the "deluded Geordie's" stuff. In those days the fans were extremely quick to boo. Think the crowd Boo'd a 0-0 at home to Birmingham once because we lost the opening 3 or 4 games of the season.

I agree in some aspects. But you can't have a team that regularly finishes 11th - 18th in a 50k stadium and not expect groans.