Rich

Aye can never recall Drogba taking a dive, like. He was practically impossible to knock off his feet his entire career.

Think there's been a mix of FUN88 and sponsor-less being sold since launch, but no idea why.

Love that, like. Proper decent peek behind the scenes. Schär: "you have to deserve it first"

One of the creepiest Tweet/photo combos I’ve ever seen.

Wept.

Can’t believe we’ve strengthened Everton.

Might be a total brain fart, but don’t most of the top sides only have two out-and-out strikers in their squad?

I don’t think Howe would open us up to a potential Maxi defensive lapse from the start given the size of the game and the aggregate scoreline, but would happily be proven wrong. He has veered more on the cautious side in his entire time here with team selections, so it would be a surprise to see that change now. If we were trailing maybe a different story?

Thought the same, as he also said this window was only ever going to be about long-term targets. Gordon and Ashby prove that, and it leads to thinking we’ll be prioritising other names we’ve been consistently linked with.

I’ll predict unchanged based on that. If Wilson has only just managed a full week of training, it would be a surprise to see him dropped without giving him a chance to show the impact of that on his performance.

He’s only trailing Trippier and Schär for passes/touches per game this season. As we continue to evolve he’ll hopefully top the list, as there’s nobody else we’d want seeing so much of the ball. He would struggle to be involved as much in one of the other roles in midfield, though I don’t doubt he’d score/assist more than the others do. Still think him, Joelinton, and Willock is our current best trio but for next season I’d hope we could field someone significantly better than Willock. Whether that’s as a 10 with the other two moving to a double pivot, or just keeping the same shape. Joelinton and Bruno in a two would be fucking dynamite. Pop Maddison in ahead of them and you’d better be ready to hit the lights.

The Southampton goal had nowt to do with his on-field position, either.

I think it’s more to do with the general dissatisfaction around Longstaff (and to a lesser extent Willock) than it is to do with Bruno’s individual displays. If we had more creative, but equally hard-working players in the wider CM roles then it wouldn’t be mentioned at all.

Casemiro says herro.

Being serious for a minute... My previous job involved a fair bit of work in trying to accurately judge the strength of leagues globally, as it was a huge factor in assessing transfer business between leagues/countries, working out odds for European games, etc. We're going back a few years now, but the Scottish Premiership was always comfortably ahead of the A-League season-on-season. Top 20 versus top 50, roughly speaking. I've watched countless more games of each league than I'd ever wish on my worst enemy and it felt like Scotland was comfortably ahead of Australia in terms of the overall performance of the teams. Tactically, technically, athletically, the whole lot. The tempo was always the thing that struck me the most, the A League felt so slow compared to the SPFL and lower-league English games. The gap might well have narrowed in the last few years and there's no doubt Australia did brilliantly at the WC, but this is a step up for Kuol whichever way you look at it. EDIT: I should add that the reason for this, in my eyes, is how restricted the A-League is in terms of foreign players and the salary cap. Which also probably plays into the nation being stronger than the league?

Aye, but we're not talking about top nations here.

Strength of league doesn't really equal strength of nation, you know? And vice-versa.

Chelsea have to be letting someone go if Enzo joins, surely? Was looking at their registrations and they have nine home-grown players, with five being club-trained. Loftus-Cheek and Gallagher are obviously included in that, along with Chalobah, James, and Mount. You'd think they'd prefer to shift RLC over Gallagher, although I was surprised to see Loftus-Cheek had played more minutes this season (just not recently, due to a calf injury).

£20M+ seems mad when he's only got 18 months left on his deal and they're under transfer embargo.

What's the fanzone stuff, btw? Haven't seen anything about it.

You arrogant son of a bitch.