HawK

At least it's another Murphy on the books. Just need Robocop now.

Yellow ticker mini-heart attack

I love how San Memès looks externally, but it is a bit bowl-like inside. In person it's quite high-up and you could see it from all over the city but most of the city blocks have tall buildings so you'd only catch it from certain places. How they did it might be how we'd do it (building next to StJ ames') :

Aye part of me thinks he's Bergkamping it, Titanic style

His birthday in a couple of days I think

As both yourselves @80 and @Unbelievable have pointed out, I totally agree different players have different requirements for maintaining fitness and everyone is unique. That said, if there is any ounce of needing to protect Isak in that he could do with less minutes every now and then, and it's not happening because we don't have someone to bring off the bench, this is what I was meaning. If Isak becomes a player that can play practically the whole game every time and that's how his fitness works, then I won't be one to argue, but I can only go on is injury record up until now. I really hope it's not a coincidence that availability has gone up since Bunce has been involved, especially with bringing players back from injury. Botman particularly was at no point rushed back, granted there wasn't really a squad need to do so until Schar got suspended, but it was also at the projected time of his return. I remember back to seasons yonder that it was great news a player was coming back much quicker than expected from an injury, whereas in recent times it would fill me with dread as I would think they'd just re-aggravate their freshly healed injury.

xG for me is just a simplistic measure of how many good scoring chances a team has had. It's not an indicator of who 'should' have won. 100 outside-the-box, wrong foot, scuffed shots vs a shot from someone who's rounded the keeper and only has the net to aim for sounds about right - and that' how I thought xG worked. What I don't get about xG is how each chance is quantified - a penalty is a static xG of 0.50 or something I think? Maybe more? I read it somewhere. But what if it's Ivan Toney, Cole Palmer, Alan Shearer taking that penatly and the keeper is a 17yr old youth team keeper who's come on cold off the bench to make his debut because the first team keeper just got sent off? This is where there's a bit of ambiguity, I think this is where the 'context' of the game is important with xG and xG alone shouldn't be used alone as a basis to quantify the balane of a game.

Putting Osula in to protect Isak is much more important than not putting in Osula because he's not ready. We need a body, up front, that can come on for Isak when the game is won. Someone that isn't also important like Gordon who should also be protected to some degree. If Howe values Osula's development ahead of Isak's fitness, we have a squad problem and that means we should go sign a 31yr old journeyman player 5a from abc FC in the championship for 1.5m to protect Isak when he doens't need to be on the pitch as an urgent priority. Isak needs to be protected at all costs.

Aye, this is the biggest thing he's going to be remembered for, I think he's the hardest working footballer we've had in my lifetime at least. Splicing any footballer with 'Almiron's work ethic' is going to improve them, that's a real nod to him as not only a player, but as a person.

I thought I'd add something different to the discussion as his stats are not often qualified when compared directly with Jacob Murphy for example, yes Murphy gets more assists, but why? I can't speak to the general feel, but personally I think I'm pretty balanced when it comes to discussing players' qualities. I also see what others say he brings to the table written on almost every page - gives all effort, does his best etc. I didn't see much value in me writing the same thing again at the end of my post about his vision as a 'safety smilie'.

And bring Alex on too

I'll wish Miggy all the best, he gave it his all, but as a PL footballer he was very limited. He had two big limitations, and in my opinion his one-footedness wasn't the biggest, it was that this was his vision when he had the ball - That's why he gets no assists, he didn't know where anyone was. As purely an inside forward and someone who should end all possessions with a shot, you can get away with this, but you need to be more than this. He might do better in a slower league where he'll be pressed less and give him a chance to get his head up.

This is going to make my FM25 save a bit easier now

Bournemouth absolutely dicked forest, they're on a tear right now. Feel a little less bad about the 1-4 now.