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1. Sign Wissa to replace Wilson. 2. Either retain Isak or replace him. 3. Sign an additional CB to account for injuries and aging. This is all we really need to do in order to avert complete disaster. There's a whole month left and it seems very doable.

But.. why? PSG literally just sold Mbappe, replaced him with a bunch of cheaper players, and won the champions league. I think the point you're actually trying to make is that there's not a catchall stat in Football like OBP where it literally does not matter if you get it in one player or spread over multiple players. (The breakthrough in that moneyball scene was actually the identification of OBP as a catchall metric, not the idea of "replacing players in the aggregate.") Which is fair enough, but that doesn't mean you can't get better after selling your best player, nor does it mean you can't develop more complex models to anticipate the impact of replacing your best players with two or more players. In fact, somebody at the club is probably doing exactly that with Isak right now.

I don't see any of this as incompatible with what I said. Obviously they haven't "lost interest" completely but I don't think anyone can argue that we're no longer one of their top priorities on the sporting side. Like you say, we are a relatively small part of their portfolio in the grand scheme of things.

Shirt is Pope's to lose but they'll be in competition all year. If he hasn't usurped Pope by season's end we can cut loose. No downside really.

You can most certainly make the team better overall by replacing one expensive player with two cheaper ones who are better in the aggregate what are you even talking about. That's not even analytics clubs have been doing that for ages.

He seems like an all-around good character. He was once a very promising prospect before regressing due to lack of confidence and the inability to iron out specific deficiencies in his game. Seems like the exact sort of player you'd want to unleash Eddie Howe on. They've worked together before too.

That's just not true. Analytics already dominate basketball (where there are less players, but they are all constantly making sudden complex movements) and American football. It takes more time and effort to develop analytic models for "non-static" sports, because you need expensive position tracking software to break down game states into data, and there are more variables overall. But once you've gotten a functioning model and useable data, the process of deriving information is not particularly more complex. (Also, this debate is basically over anyway. Every club in Europe now uses analytics to some extent).

At least we now know that it's still within the realm of metaphysical possibility for us to sign a player.

What is the reality of the situation, pray tell.

Yes but I think "long term" in their heads was more like 4-5 years. Not 10+.

Yeah, this article is decently insightful and more or less summarizes our ownership issues right now. PIF came in thinking they could turn us into Manchester City within a few years. Now having realized that this isn't the case, they're now unsure if they're all that bothered. We're still part of their portfolio and they won't do anything to devalue the asset, but I'm sure there are serious internal doubts about whether it's worth investing time and money for stuff like a new stadium and training ground. We probably occupy a lot less of their attention as well. Wouldn't be the first time management of a PIF asset got pushed to the wayside for sexier new things.

Once he realizes he’s not getting his wish this summer he’ll play and score goals. Maybe the unhappiness will prevent him from being at 100% peak performance but he’ll be good enough. He knows the best way to guarantee a move to a bigger club next year is to continue playing well.

Wearing a long sleeve training jacket in July Seoul weather. Absolute psychopath behavior from Eddie.

Genuinely assumed that this could not possibly be the same Vardy that I'm familiar with. Like, he must have had a nephew who's also good at football or something.

Tips for your first trip to SJP: (1) whatever you do, do not get caught on sky sports camera during the match. (2) if you are anywhere within the city limits, assume that someone from the forum is secretly filming you on their phone. (3) if someone shouts out your forum nickname while you're in a queue outside the ground, that person is a serial killer. Actual serious tip: Try to work an away match into it as well (assuming it's even possible to get tickets these days) because being in the away end is a whole different experience. Also, when I did it, this happened:

Maybe he ONLY WANTED LIVERPOOL. One can hope.

I can't read his mind, but if the goal is to move to an even bigger club in two years I could see him thinking that guaranteed CL this year and being undisputed first choice striker is more important than all the other stuff that comes with playing for Man United, especially since they're at best 50/50 to make the CL even next year. Obviously it's more likely than not that he'd choose Man United over us since that seems to happen most of the time, but it's not guaranteed.

"CL aside" is doing a lot of work there. It's not like Man Utd missing the CL this year was a one-off thing. They've missed it in the majority of the past ten seasons. If the ultimate goal is to move to one of the true elite clubs in Europe, the CL is a very important shop window to boost your value.

If you assume that media noise like this is usually agent-manufactured, I think the scuttlebutt is a pretty strong sign that Sesko's camp is very worried that he'll be the last man without a seat when the "big club striker musical chairs" concludes and will be stuck with his current club. I think he definitely wants to come here, it's just an issue of whether anyone bigger than us will come back in for him. Based on the overall landscape it doesn't look like that's happening for now.

I think it's just difficult to keep someone not named Steve Harper as No. 2 goalkeeper for more than a certain number of years because they'll fall into either resentment or complacency. You've gotta keep rotating that role with different players even if it's not a straight upgrade. And clearly the club feels that we're past the date where we can keep Dubravka around as a pure backup. If we're not going to be able to sign some massive superstar keeper, a move like this makes sense. He'll either hold down the backup position for a while, or we'll get lucky and he'll improve under Howe to eventually supersede Pope as No. 1.

It does seem like we're making a late pivot from trying to buy like a "Top 6" club to trying to buy like an "Other 14" club. That sucks, but I don't think it's a bad decision given the realities of the market. Plenty of good players to be had as the biggest fish in the smaller pond.

Realistically, Tottenham is the last club to “break in” to the cartel without the benefit of being able to spend unlimited money in the transfer market. And even their status is a bit tenuous imo.

Massive “only I can fix him” energy from Howe It’s not going to cost us any money, so whatever.

Even if this was the plan before the summer, after how the transfer window has went, I don’t think it will be anymore

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