TRon

Tiote is the best example of a midfielder who never hid. He used to get pelters from a section of the fans, but I loved that he used to seem to be everywhere demanding the ball, especially in our side where a lot of players tended to go missing.

He probably couldn't handle our aggressive press in midfield. The dead balls give him plenty of time to gather his composure and take his time, maybe in the heat of live play he gets lost a bit in the midfield scrum.

So why is it none of the bigger clubs have made a bid for him do you think?

Get in. Time to dust down that Joselu-lu-lu video.

Jack Colback is an absolute master of hiding from the ball. How I define a player who hides is one who will make a safe pass when it comes to him, but will never make the run to get the return. FWIW, I never considered McTominay as someone who hid from the ball, he does seem to press quite aggressively, so I can see why he might appeal to Howe, my question is whether he can actually use the ball, or retain it under pressure himself.

Great. Now instead of paying £15m for a Man U cast off, we'll be quoted £30m.

Scotland must be overloaded with world class midfielders if he can't get into that starting eleven.

Has he even been linked with us?

It came up on my youtube suggestions: You were right, he's not really said that much wrong, even if that cunt Farage did try to gently nudge him in the Le Pen direction. I was actually quite surprised at how lucid he still is considering he had a bad drink problem at one time, and he's getting on a bit.

Spurs are currently a CL club, London based as well, which still matters to foreign managers. I'm not a fan of London personally, but from an cosmopolitan POV it does make sense. They along with the other traditional big six are always going to get choice of top managers, if it wasn't Nagelsman it would have been Tuchel or Poch. I mean look at the manager who is on the way out, that tells you a lot. The best hope for the downfall of Spurs has to be Levy's penny pinching and his insistence on trying to rein top managers into his way of thinking. He's always struck me as the rich man's Ashley in many ways.

German domestic football has the whiff of the old days when English football was quite insular. Banned from Europe we were convinced we knew better than everyone else, and that's when we had the regression to hoofball and the rise of the PFMs. It's not a bad idea in principal to have a certain amount of insularity to preserve the look and feel of the domestic game, but I doubt the PL would have become the best league in the world if we had continued down that road.

On it

Read that this morning, one of those articles which makes me hesitate to cancel my subscription tbh. Loved it.

He'll know who Farage is without a doubt, pretty sure he's got a degree of some sort. Supermac maybe not, since his brain cells were pickled in alcohol for decades so I doubt he remembers how to tie his shoe laces. You can argue they aren't really complicit, but Farage is definitely using them for his own purposes.

That poster doesn't get any better with the passage of time.

He'd make a great Captain America.

Agree with this. Their only genuine rivals should be Sunderland, but obviously the mackems are fixated with us, so boro end up as second hand rivals looking in from the outside. Actually both boro and Sunderland have too much of a chip on their shoulder about us, but that's just because Newcastle is an attractive city, and those two would probably be high up on the list of the worst places to live in Britain. That's not our fault, it's just town planning and hygiene standards.

Agree, Neves is technically a good player, but if we want to play a high press, I don't think you can have him and Bruno in the same midfield.

All well and good, but a bit vague on what his actual qualities are. Box to box is good, no arguments there, but we have Longstaff who already ticks those "boxes". What in your opinion makes him better than Longstaff?

Well there's the issue for me using Bruno as a deep lying midfielder. He has the same issues as Cabaye when he was used in that role, he's not the quickest so he has a penchant for missing tackles in really dangerous areas which can lead to free kicks or cards being brandished. Also we lose his goal threat and eye for a killer pass when he's not playing further forward.

Where's that from? The Daily Star?

Really hope Spurs don't land Tuchel. The guy's too good for these shitty London clubs. There again, so's Conte.

Gordon should have had a couple of assists already tbf, some nice skills on show to create them as well. I think there's a player in there.

I can see why he might want him from a short term POV. Never really noticed much about him from the creative side, but he does look like a pain to play against, he presses hard and has mobility. I just would have thought there will be players with those attributes who can actually use the ball a bit better if we cast our net wide enough.

FWIW I thought Willock's cross for Isak's goal was a bit tasty as well, but yeah, Isak's play was unreal.