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The has been deliciously subversive for about 6 months now, mind.

It remains as it was, it just got very slightly extended: "We don't demand a team that wins, we demand a club that tries in the context of a competition that isn't fixed to ensure 86 out of 92 league clubs have no possibility of winning it or even enjoying extended periods of competitiveness".

Well, unless we're going full anti-Eddie and putting Longstaff's performances down to poor management, hopefully this means we're optimistic about getting a fee for him in the summer.

I reckon so, yeah. Think it will work out best for all concerned. Unless we're going to seriously change our approach on and off the pitch.

Amidst all this, there is the question of whether Barnes will tolerate playing the role of an impact sub throughout the best years of his career.

Realistically, yep.

Talk of him being sacked by Christmas is daft by the way, unless Mitchell has done an Ashley and lined up a replacement months ago who he's just waiting for an opportunity to employ. We don't want to rush a replacement - we need to maximise that outcome, and it's almost guaranteed that next summer is the most opportune moment.

I agree with the thrust of your post, but Mitchell being bad or good doesn't directly indicate Eddie being the opposite, and vice versa. There's a prospective world here where has Eddie lost his grip and we need to make the change, and Mitchell is the wrong person to pull that trigger and remodel the club in the image of.

I still find it so odd, even though it's clear to my eyes. The team he managed after 5 months of being here most likely whips his team after 3 years. More inventive, more composed, more cohesive, more determined. And I would credit the victory to the manager of that team. Does anyone remember when Dan Burn started talking to him in a post match interview about 'pattern 4' or whatever in our attacking play, and Eddie closed the conversation down? Accurately or not, I think of that as pretty much being the borderline of when we went from canny to chaotic in our play.

I can see a world in which this works for us. If I look very hard.

Yeah that's pretty much it, as I say, it wasn't strictly a problem with Barnes, it's just having a RW who could cover LW would've been better than having an extra LW who could cover RW.

It's definitely nice to have Barnes, but at the beginning of last season, potential alternates would've been Gordon, Joelinton, Willock, Anderson, Hall and even Almiron. Plus Isak, as per our CL qualifying season. So - allowing for the fact we got smashed by injuries - our depth there was pretty respectable compared to what we had in other areas, and stronger than what Howe would willingly use for RW.

With the Barnes debate, it boils down to this - if there was a player out there called Barvey Harnes, who was identical in every way except he was a mirror image of Barnes, with a strong left foot he'd cut in from the right on instead of vice versa, would he have been a better purchase for our club last summer? I think the answer is yes. That's why his purchase gets picked on.

The apology for the snark was warranted, but he's got a point. We're in an ugly situation where the vast majority of the players we can easily tolerate losing aren't worth enough to renovate the squad. That's not just in terms of how much we sell them for, but how much the PSR profit is. For example, if we sold Barnes in the summer for what we originally paid, in PSR we'd make something like £15m - which is nice, but not revolutionary. A lot of our best candidates for sale are drifting towards freebies, meanwhile. Realistically, a couple of painful departures will happen to really remodel the squad. Tino, Hall and Tonali wouldn't generate the PSR profit. Botman is post-injury. Gordon's just signed a new deal. That leaves Isak and Bruno... Let's see what happens.

I didn't think he was stirring too badly to be fair. Isak's a bit concerned about how things are going with the project but otherwise happy being here. Sounds like most of us. We've got him on an excellent contract. Hopefully everyone plays nice with each other, and with a bit of luck we finish the season better than we've started and everything relaxes. Worst case scenario is we've found 2 years worth of PSR liquidity.

There were quite a lot of reports linking him away and saying we were willing to listen to offers along with Almiron, but nothing that ever sounded very solid. Unclear whether that was due to lack of interest from buyers or us. Hopefully it was a lack of buyers rather than our fault... Funnily enough I think I've seen him more lately than I have in a while, popping up in stuff like Gordon's day in the life video and such. Believe he's stopped that podcast he used to do though.

Contract's up in 9 months. It's over, lads.

Yeah that's fair enough. I just think the original twitter post was someone playing games with stats to stir trouble. A couple of years ago I was a supporter of Longstaff being in the team on the grounds of him offering intangibles like defensive positioning and us getting results with him. I was really pleased with what I hoped he could offer to the squad long term. But he looks to have regressed massively to me (quite possibly due to injuries, I'm not saying it's a moral failing of his, although I think it's also to do with him not coping with pressure). I agree with the point you make about looking to get wins rather than shoehorning names into the team (Team England style), but I just don't think it applies on this occasion. We've looked a much more competitive team in the last 3 or so games - albeit not perfect - it's just a shame we don't have results to show for it. The bits we've lacked - attacking quality - are pretty much the opposite of what he offers even on his best days, though.

I mean, we have to take the source for what it's worth, but it's one of the reasons I'm reluctant to lay blame at Eddie's door without clearer evidence. There could be all kinds of things underlying the moves we have and haven't made (or heard about) e.g. club to club relationships, other transfer committee members like Ashworth, maybe PIF sticking their oar in... We're trying to interpret things in a fog, a lot of the time.

You have to admit this starts to paint a less favourable picture of his contributions, right? I realise that's more to it than this (and the other stats mentioned), but these results imply 5 points 'gained' while Longstaff is playing and 7 points for Tonali (both get 1 point for Everton). A 40% uplift without Longstaff! Wow!

I was literally about to post requesting your feedback on this

£27m + potential £7m supposedly. I figure we'd be looking at £20-odd million up front for Willock. Agree with what you say at the end though, if his hamstring hadn't exploded it'd have been more like £50m+.

On paper a Willock sale makes pretty strong sense, but given his injuries I'd be shocked to get much for him. Relative to what could've been. The club can't be blamed for this one, but it's yet another frustrating case of trying to move a player on after their appeal has dive-bombed. If we could get back what we paid for Barnes in the summer, I'd take it. I don't see him really being used better here and it's a PSR profit that can be used to strengthen trickier parts of the squad. I feel bad for him over how things have worked out here, his career is slowly suffocating at the moment - again, not totally our fault, but still.

Not confirmed, so could be total bollocks. But just 'feels' like it's the case all things considered. Given some of the eccentric things that have come out about our overall conduct, it doesn't feel as implausible as it once did.

It really doesn't.