TRon

Our passing game has been rubbish all season. Except against Bradford.

Said before the game that our front three haven't really clicked despite the odd goal. As an attacking force we are very disjointed.

I hope that's not what we paid £55m for.

From our end obviously, but a lot of players would be wanting 3 years or more to safeguard their future. He must really be committed here, he would have had no problem getting a longer contract somewhere else.

Yes we do. But just because we need it, doesn't mean we are in the best position to do it. We have injuries to key players so that reduces our ability to win tricky games. We can certainly still put a side out that can do it if everything goes well, but we need our front 3 clicking better than they have so far this season.

Good outcome that.

I think we need to be realistic and hope to make up those points second half of the season when we will have more firepower with Wissa available. Right now, we just need to stay in touching distance. A win down there is a big ask, and Minteh does seem to save his goals for our games.

It should probably be downgraded to "unreal" tbf.

When I said bad, I didn't mean in quantity, I was meaning in quality. Wissa, Tino, Hall and Ramsey are all first teamers, and would probably make a big difference. Losing Wissa for almost half a campaign is quite a hefty blow. But I did say that if we can stay in touch, we could have a great second half of the season.

Anchoring does seem a weird solution. It doesn't really fix anything and just causes more headaches down the line. The simplest solution would just be to allow clubs who have the money to spend it. If clubs overreach, they go bust. That's how business works in a capitalist world.

That was my assessment of him when he was here. On the few run outs he got, he always seemed to be running into traffic - but tbf he seemed to be operating wide left when that happened. It was strange, because he had always looked like a cracking prospect before that. I am not one of those who thinks he's improved THAT much. I think he's playing in a team or position which suits him better, and of course getting regular games will have helped.

Tbf, it was never a case we wanted to sell him - or Minteh for that matter. We had to sell players in a hurry to satisfy PSR demands of the PL enforcers.

Yep. The gun/archery celebrations are all a bit cliche now, but it's just a celebration at the end of the day. Don't really care that much.

Plus he's 31 now. Everton is probably as big a club as he's going to get. His window was probably about 3-5 years ago to land a really big move.

I should probably stop banging this drum, but I still remember he struggled in congested spaces when he played for us, and with us playing a high press, that means our games are played at a fast pace. With Forest and England, he gets a lot more time and space due to either the formation or quality of opposition. I am still undecided on him at this point. Is he really that much better, or is it just conditions suit him more? If he's tearing it up against the top PL sides then fair enough. I don't really watch Forest regularly so would have to take other opinions on it.

A lot of people cite safety and lack of crime when they move to gulf countries, but I do wonder if that's because there's no real poverty there because of oil wealth. Fair play to him though, he seems to go against the grain, even with his love of the north east. Must fly in the face of a lot of southern preconceptions.

Bit of a pisser if we are having to rest players because they are having all their form games during the international week.

Tbf, Brighton is a traditionally small club, they are natural cucks of the football world. In that respect, Tony Bloom is doing a grand job there. But I resent that he thinks all clubs should act like small clubs. Newcastle and Villa have every right to be ambitious and want to challenge the cartel.

Both us and Villa have literally been forced into selling homegrown players in the last couple of years to comply with PSR. But of course we want to win stuff rather than just make a profit and hope we do it more effectively than the rest. He's a souped up version of Mike Ashley basically.

I still think it's a bit harder in the PL, you are coming up against better defences made up of the world's best talent. It's the reason Elliott Anderson looks a lot better playing for England than he ever did for us IMO. I know he has looked better at Forest, but their formation gives him a lot more space to attack.

The only way to avoid this in the immediate future is if the City case against the PL removes the obstacles to associated party loans. Otherwise the PL will bring down the PSR hammer over wages and we'll end up selling players like Villa if we start handing out cartel size contracts.

Well there is a wage structure for a reason. Otherwise I'm sure we would love to match cartel club wages and offer 300k to all of our top players.

I'm assuming this year as we weren't even prepared to discuss a new contract while Mitchell was here.

How many life choices are realistically available to you when you are wearing a straitjacket?

We were reportedly willing to go to 200k for Isak, I think that will be the ceiling for our genuine world class players. I would love us to be able to offer more, but that means we will have to be on a level playing field with the cartel, and we aren't there yet.