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My GOD he's nervous on camera. Looked like he wanted to cry and vomit at the same time. But more importantly, very confident on the pitch. Really impressive performance - his first start and he was setting the tone for our whole defence. Trippier looked very proud of him and rightly so.

Pretty prescient, I'm happy with that one Wasn't sure about paying £45m but with the growth in transfer values occurring in the market at that time, it was pretty reasonable in retrospect.

https://www.evertonfc.com/news/1707464/ancelotti-identifies-traits-which-set-gordon-apart

Not sure, but I'm glad he did - I was getting concerned that Eddie had boxed him off as not being a serious RW option.

Taking this far too seriously.

In a world where Caicedo just topped £100m, that bit is questionable... I'm sure it could be done, but it's easier said than done.

Gordon on the right seems natural but slightly concerned about it just because Howe has shown no inclination to put him there. I hope we manage him carefully to get the best out of him rather than just lobbing him in and have him return to being a whipping boy if our poor form continues.

If he comes out of the team because of this, people will - fairly - say it's not a legit comparison because of the strength of our first 4 opponents. But I'd really like to see Murphy or perhaps someone else start on the right. I think it'll be a big contribution to getting us out of this rut.

It's the Capology website that says he's on £120k here though? https://www.capology.com/player/sandro-tonali-36654/

Was there ever any explanation as to why it happened? Very odd.

I thought it was reported he was on something daft like £30k.

Just read this article. To be frank, I have no real problems with Saudi involvement. Still, I thought this paragraph was interesting: It makes me reflect on the efforts the club is currently putting into making sure everyone in our stadium, or eligible to apply to enter it, is as identifiable as possible. Collecting data might just be about preventing ticket trading between fans, but it can be used in all kinds of totalitarian ways.

Yes, we're relatively protected because we've been given a partial cheat code. But for a Brighton - let's say they manage to profit £100m per summer for 7 summers. £700m in the bank, amazing work. The following summer they decide this is the year they want to kick on and no longer be a nursery club, keep their most sellable players and actually smash into the title race by adding more stars to their fantastic infrastructure. But they don't have their £700m to spend. They have £200m (plus optional amortization) from the previous two summers only, which definitely doesn't guarantee success in today's market and means it's more of a Champion's League push. Even modest gambling - spending £100m extra based on projected additional earnings - puts the club in big jeopardy for the following year when they have to make good on the additional FFP payments, as yet another £100m profit from 3 years prior will 'expire' and be removed from their accounts. Now the club looks like it's about to start running on debt, even though they have the actual hard earned money in the bank. One season into their 'big push', and they have relatively little room for consolidating their ambitious new team with further signings. The pot is artificially empty and they're forced to look at breaking off parts of their team before it's really got going. The next season, disruption means they just miss out on the Champion's League and begin to enter a death spiral. Basically, money has stopped being a reliable store of value in the FFP-based transfer market. Turnover is what's required to allow you to keep spending and that's much harder to achieve without sustained, FFP-defying investment. Hence needing to have youth players on a conveyor belt out the door along with international marketing operations to make things viable long term. Anything less and you're done for, which is why NUFC is putting so much focus on the Mintehs and USA tours etc. I don't especially agree with it, but you can make an argument that it's unsporting for money from outside football to come in and disrupt the order of winners and losers in football. But when clubs are blocked from spending football money they earned through football transactions, that's really silly.

Think I'm right in saying your FFP balance resets on a three year rolling basis? So a loss OR profit in 20/21 would expire for this year. It's another one of the more sinister elements in FFP as a club like Brighton or Villa could, theoretically, bank a very serious warchest over 5-7 years. But they'll lose the benefit of profiting on, say, Cucurella just as they move Evan Ferguson on. So they're forced to either not use the FFP leeway at all or dribble it in in a (realistically) low impact way, mixing one or two stars in with their Dan Burns. Neither of which really concerns the established clubs.

Somehow misread the post he was quoting!

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It would be to do with fiddling the fact that purchases are counted as being spread over (usually) 5 years, while sales are counted in full immediately. So selling for £20m today loosens up £100m to be spent immediately, because only 20% of that spend figure is counted in the first year (you just have to make sure you come up with the rest of the money over the future years...). The whole thing becomes a kind of pawn shop buy now pay later game.

And somehow they've made it WORSE.

Burn literally ran away to the left to make the space wider, as I recall.

Get this kid a start.

Wasn't able to watch the match closely, but in his individual actions he seemed much improved? Saw him put some stiff and successful challenges in.

Nearly originally wrote 'with or without Isak'. But don't want to be kneejerk. Even though he has appeared lackadaisical at times, there's still plenty of reason to think he should remain a starter.

Would like to see him start the next game. Good goal, good effort. Tried to make something happen.

Could it be Tindall/our set piece coaching that is responsible? Wouldn't be surprised if he's just doing as he's told re: taking them all in such ways.