80

Pretty stunning if true. Hope he runs his contract out here and snaps his knee in his final week. No friendly Shortstaff treatment for him.

Wouldn't be surprised if they end up going with the 70s one in monochrome full time. Maybe with a bit of Saudi green on the magpie's wing.

Fair enough, although Kev Lawson was implying something similar in his tweet too.

Strictly speaking, we don't know whether there are any clauses attached to the Minteh sale, do we? I agree it feels unlikely that we do. But - from what I gleaned at the time - the Everton sale was set to go through, with Minteh being keen, until Brighton came in and our attention totally switched to them. So maybe the terms were preferable.

I wanted to sympathise with @Nobody's post, but yeah I had a similar thought The 'if' is gigantic.

Think it's a bit of a leap to say he's applying pressure to the club. I think he also has to give away a tiny bit to the press occasionally just to keep them onside and stop them going totally rogue. Especially at a sensitive time for the club. He would've looked daft if he'd said 'Malik who?'.

Definitely. Or the deselection of our current one, anyhow.

Direct quote from Staveley, re: whether Liverpool were approaching us and whether we were taking the possibility of Gordon leaving seriously.

Agreed, in spite of our frailties last year, we only ever really got punished for pace and agility down our left. Plus Dubravka hugging the line. In spite of their relative slowness, Schar and Botman have to go down as one of our best ever defensive partnerships. So I'm not going to worry about a lack of that with new signings too much. We're not at the level where we can sign players who tick every single box just yet, so if we get speed we'll probably lose something more tactically critical.

Inclined to think it's a clear design choice rather than a mistaken oversight at this point.

For some reason it seems like all our central defensive links - for years now - tend to be on the slower side. Do we just not rank speed that highly in our list of needs? Preferring reading of the game and reach etc.

I agree with most of that. I was inclined to sell back in January. Only thing I'd say is we don't know what we were being offered for him. There were strong media reports that Bayern's best offer was about £6m, after initially offering a loan and then £2m - a long way short of £18m. I'd snap your hand off for £18m.

I wasn't expecting him to go into this season as a starter either, in fairness. Kelly seemed like too good of a match for Eddie's preferences. But it's definitely looking like he will be now. Which is great. Boosts the idea we can get away without buying a centre back, in fact.

This is a key point.

Yes, the dynamics of the market are shaped by it's rules. PSR is dictating whether some clubs are able to spend less - or more - than usual on certain players. I'm sure it upsets the regulator but it's their own fault.

Fair enough, hadn't seen that. But the figure I was quoting was either from Hope or the Athletic (or both) - I can't remember which. Came as a shock at the time, it's somewhere in this thread, a few days after the deal was officially off.

I agree with the vast majority of that. Initially, I was just taking issue with the idea it's definitely Eddie clinging on to every player we appear to be unable to shift.

Fwiw, it was later reported their third and final offer was something like £6m, having started lower.

Well, Trippier's the most debatable out of that group. The question with him is where his head's at, but if he's switched on and over whatever problems he's had I'd say he's categorically still effective at the top level, and highly influential. He had the best passing stats in Europe 9 months ago. That's not to say we should definitely keep him, given PSR, but pre-Bournemouth away Trippier is a huge loss to the squad. If we ended up keeping him because of Howe and we then got post-Bournemouth Trippier for another twelve months, then yeah, that would reflect heavily on Eddie.

That remains to be proven though. It would be mental if he's fighting all outgoings, but I don't think it's a fair conclusion, yet. It's not like we've had lots of clubs making serious overtures for them, and the mainstream story is it was Miggy blocking a move, not Eddie.

Think it's time for my monthly comment that football is in a revolting place nowadays...

You're rubbing it in now.

Looks like he's modelling himself on Dave Angel.

Recent is a relative term, I guess

No, unfortunately. Believe that's from the same interview where he was bigging up Mitchell and Bunce as top class, but just not necessarily right for him.