AyeDubbleYoo

Never seen Beto before, looks massive.

I knew that bit

We might well have just started with Barnes on the left if we didn’t have such rock hard fixtures.

I didn’t know Wetherspoons even took reservations.

Yeah, had them both on my possibles list too, and Wissa.

You are incorrect. Boom.

All of our investment doesn’t come directly from the owners though, the club has income streams.

I mean, they aren’t in Europe. Why should they compete in European competition?

I’m keeping faith for a little longer, Brighton have some hard games coming up. Had to get Kepa out, decided to go for Ederson because I can see 3 or 4 clean sheets for Man City coming up. Minor stuff like, really I need a wildcard but I think a couple more weeks or info could be telling.

10/10 to me doesn’t mean to you’ve addressed every possible weakness and you can carry any number of injuries. That’s impossible, squad building is never ending.

The fact we're ahead of schedule is also important, we never planned to be buying 4 £60m players to slot straight into the first team. Let's not forget that an elite DM costs £100m+ now, for example. We're doing brilliantly, we need to just enjoy it.

We should steamroll their midfield, unless this new lad comes in and is the new Kante. Of course getting opened up on the break is the big threat, I do wonder if Nunez might start (despite taking him out of my FPL team ) Always going to be a very tough start to the season but at the very worst it's a 50/50 for me.

I mean, Kudos hasn't arrived and all Szob has done is dived for a penalty. So those comparisons might turn out to be fine.

I said before the window that there are different ways to build squad depth. You can sign players around the quality of the ones you already have (ideally with potential to get better), or you can sign players much better than the ones you have and make the current players into subs. It seems for many reasons that we've gone for the first approach. It's less risky, it's better financially, it's better for squad harmony, it doesn't depart too much from what gave us such a great season last time. Once we have a beefy squad I'm sure we'll be looking at big quality jumps if we can find them.

TBF the job was very hard, that's not really the point though. Anyone who knew about Newcastle and Mike Ashley should have refused to work for him. Hence why I still hate Shola and Graeme Jones.

I'm still not convinced like. I know the appetite for football is large but even the most exciting Saudi teams probably have the quality of a mid-table PL team or lower. And people have heard of Benzema but they haven't heard of St Maximin et al (in the world). I don't want to be an auto-cynic just because it's Saudi, and if they pump money in forever I guess it will have an influence. But I just can't envisage a future where people follow it. I could very well be wrong.

I promise I’ll stop posting this after this, but I found the automatic assumption that we would replace the RW very annoying. Similar questions might have applied to Wilson’s position in the past, but like Miggy he just came off an absolutely brilliant season.

Still don’t see the apetite for anyone to watch it. Not anyone from Europe who has a league of their own anyway. To me these players are basically retiring.

Not this Gordon stuff again.

I mean, the whole thing is a circus, why would any manager expect signings to suit their style?

The Saudi league is the biggest threat to FFP for sure, but only if the teams come into direct competition or it gets so big that it starts taking fans away. Can’t see either of those really.

It was a questionable decision but no way it should have been overturned IMO. It's mad how VAR can't correct the referee during the game but afterwards it's all good to change things.

I do get the point that developing and selling a player isn't all bad though, the player is still going somewhere. Just seems weirder when clubs are buying players that are no better than the ones they're selling, just because one is better for FFP in the short term.

But shouldn't well-run clubs be playing their youngsters rather than selling them? Like, they seem to just be selling a young player because a signing from abroad is better for FFP profit. That feels a bit wrong to me.

And don't forget we still have Anderson and Willock etc to provide additional drive and threat from midfield when needed.