The College Dropout

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.

I think it's often better for teams not to have one outstanding individual like that at international level. Over-dependance, others pass on responsibility.

The only defence of the lad is that I think it's difficult being a winger under Rafa. In his time at Liverpool, the best wingers he had were Kuyt, Ryan Babbel and Luis Garcia.

Wolves seem to be run tremendously top to bottom. Wolves have also mostly acquired players and training staff from Spain and Portugal which I think helped them settle down quicker.

Mbabu looks a player. Disappointing we had 3 managers that didn’t see his potential. He always looked good when he played as well. Looks a league above Yedlin imo.

Has he captained them a few times - Davies and Everton? Seen them a few times and he hasn't really impressed me but i think that's down to his style more than anything.

Dummett is an ugly footballer. Looks to have a relatively poor touch and passing range, uncomfortable dribbler. So obviously he has detractors. Despite all of these flaws, I think he's been our best fullback since Debuchy. Manquillo's a pretty good footballer and much better technically than Dummett but he just can't defend well. Santon was a classy footballer, you would think he would do an ok job at central midfield technically. But the lad was just culpable for so many goals conceded, likewise Janmaat. You can't have a possession, highly technical based game with a Paul Dummett but we haven't been that for a very long time. And we have bigger problems with the squad.

Ranieri knows how to organise a defence like. He’ll be given money too.

Well no, the reason its not remarkable is because we’ve won two games out of twelve and we’re in 14th. Wage bill is the best indicator of success in football Probably trophies and points tbh, but churlishness aside, if you're comfortable with including a football business outlier like NUFC in what stat indicates what, which I wouldn't be, our wage bill's neither significantly higher than our relegation rivals, nor does it make up for the massive deficit in transfer spending between other clubs and us. I shouldn't have bothered mentioning wage bill, although it is the biggest financial indicator of where you will finish. My main point is that its not remarkable if we stay up considering we are currently in 14th when we've got 9 points from 12 games Like spurs? That's an anomaly. They're the best run club in the division. He's right, wages are the best indication of where a club will finish more or less. But wages + transfer we'll be bottom 5. And more importantly, we haven't improved. Some of our wages will be going on the likes of Jack Colback.

West Ham don't need him though but I guess Yarmalenko has a big injury. But they really need dynamism.

Fucking hell. They just can't seem to help themselves. £80k a week FFS. Out of contract 31 year old currently serving a ban for doping. So West Ham I'd have him here in a heartbeat. Perez 9 or the bench. £80k isn't a mad amount of money either in the PL. Shelvey will be on similar.

Agree to a point. I actually think it's very difficult to find defenders that are good at the basics 98% of the time. Marking, heading, pushing up etc. think the key to the bold bit is that you have to be coaching them well to achieve this, pardew coached a defensively minded setup and we were a fucking shambles also at this sort of level rafa is making it very clear that one of them being able to play with the ball at his feet as well is paramount And my point is a lot of basic defending is difficult to coach. There were times Colo would only win 40% of his aerial duals. It's hard to defend with performances like that. We've had defenders terrible at some basic aspects of defending for a long time at this club from Janmaat, Santon, Willo, Colo at times etc. Although I agree, Rafa is tremendous at organising a defence. The rest of the teams down at the bottom - are just defensive. Even Burnley and Brighton depend a lot on "will and desire" rather than genuine good defending a lot of the time. Apparently Huddersfield don't concede as many genuine GS'ing opportunities or shots in the box as one might expect too.

In practical terms, the bottom 6 or so are absolutely woeful. I think 32 points might keep you up this year. Maybe slightly less. Because so many teams are so far behind the rest, staying up losses some of its magic. As Rafa even said, it's a case of teams being worse than you than the team being any good.

Salah needs semi-regular double-digit points to justify his inclusion. At the moment he's not worth the price difference to Sterling, Hazard and a number of others.

Out the NO top 20