Chris_R

Everton supporting mate says that Rafa had asked him to play more defensively whereas he's always been much better going forwards. Not supporting Digne here, but that fits entirely with how Rafa builds teams and I can see some players not being overly happy with having to sacrifice their best attributes.. Howe will want to play more positively and that might suit him better.

The main reason for that is when going to Middlesbrough, you lose a lot of time when you pull over on the A19 to duct tape up all your air vents.

Have you got a ticket for the Cambridge match because you seem rather invested in him playing in it. I really don't think he will. It's madness. Our one and only priority, that the whole of our future depends upon, is staving off relegation. If we get through the next couple of cup rounds and if we string together enough league wins to be clear of relegation, only then can we start to take the cup seriously. In previous years I hated our "get out of the cups ASAP" strategy because that was literally all we had to look forward to. Who gave a shit if we got relegated even because the league was irrelevant, it only determined how much money MA could make from the club. Now it's different - this season survival in the PL will be a springboard to a whole array of fantastic things, if we believe the brochure. We need to put all our eggs in that basket. Screw the cup.

He will not play against Cambridge ffs. Anyone who thinks we'll take the cup even remotely seriously this year, let alone putting our new signing into this match, is not really reading the situation very well. Screw the cup, quite frankly. I don't care if we play our U12s in it. Just don't risk anyone even likely to be needed for a single minute of PL action between now and when we're comfortably clear of the drop zone.

Any of them started to hope Trippier might not sign yet? Love it when they get false hope just for it to be snatched away.

Which previous PIF/PCP transfer announcements are you basing this assertion on?

This. Can't imagine a second signing. Maybe a sponsorship deal, but not another player.

That's other clubs. Ours is just whether you can climb in and out of a fucking wheelie bin.

He's on £400k/week, allegedly. Reckon Juve need to pay at least some of that, it's crazy money that nobody will touch.

Agreed. I'd stay well clear of PEA and Wilshere. I guess pay as you play is zero risk, but he would take up a squad space and might mean we don't get someone useful instead.

Also I think what I read said they'd rejected €30m, if you meant £28m it could be more...

Christ, why are we letting him see the training ground before he puts pen to paper?

I mean, there are people who work at the airport who could just get their phone out in a spare few seconds. Could be that. But you're right, driving there specifically to film it is sad.

We've signed a few exciting players under Ashley but all our previous "big" signings have been about resale value. Ashley always wanted people he could resell for more. This is different as it marks a genuine change in direction. In all likelihood Trippier will leave for £0, but the owners don't care. That's what makes this a truly exciting signing.

If we do, it'll only be because we've stayed up, done well, and he's played many many games over many years. And in that case he'll have been worth it.

Beats the old days where you used to have to throw a toaster in.

I mean I'm not one of the overly impatient ones and I'm relaxed about the process, but I'll about I'm constantly baffled why we seen to only when think of picking up the phone on January 1st. That's just the time you can register players. You can agree fees and personal terms any time you like and then just press the "go" button when the window opens. Why do we never seem to do that?!

Yeah but in their head Ashley buys us back and we languish in the Championship whilst that Dreyfus chap turns the mackems into some world superpower. They don't exist on the same plane of reality as anyone else.

They have never, ever, at any point in our respective histories accepted this though. Despite it being utterly undeniable.

But their hope, rightly or wrongly, is that if we get relegated PIF walk away. That's what they're clinging to, to keep us away from any kind of success, hence why they're utterly desperate for us to go down. If (I don't expect they will, but let's humour the mackem mindset here) PIF did walk, we were relegated and them promoted, we might well be competing on a much more even footing. Of course they then need a lot of mental gymnastics to reconcile their desperation for PIF to walk with their insistence that them buying us has made us into scum who everyone hates and anything we achieve has lost any meaning ever again and they think it's brilliant. But that's mackematics for you.

Still no signings? Fuck this shit. Ridiculous.

Sorry, £40m a year? Fuck off. That's £770k/week, that's Messi money, and he doesn't have that pedigree. If he's after even a quarter of that we should slam the phone down and move on. There's about 4 or 5 players in the world I'd think should be able to ask that sort of money and he's not one of them, not by a long way.

Just because something doesn't happen doesn't mean the journalist talked shit. Thousands of transfers don't come off, thousands of true stories are kept quiet or denied by clubs. I'm not defending the guy, I've read literally nothing he's ever written beyond the above Trippier Photoshop and I have no clue who the guy even is, and I don't care. I just think saying someone talked shit just because something didn't happen is a massive reach. No matter how close anything gets to happening, no matter the reasons for breakdown, no matter how much both sides wanted it, both sides will inevitably Derby there was ever any interest in order to save face. Most transfers fail to happen. A journalist getting most things wrong proves nothing. Again, maybe he does talk shit. I just don't think you can state with such authority that he definitely does.

No we don't. We just know that in the end Fonseca didn't sign. We don't know how close it got or why he didn't sign. Maybe he was incredibly close to signing and it all broke down at the last minute, and this journalist was right apart from a last-minute hiccup. Maybe he talked shit throughout. We don't know. All we know is that the outcome was that Fonseca didn't sign.

We don't know anything of the sort. All we know is that Howe was appointed. Anything else is speculation.