Kaizero

That's First Choice England CB, Dan Burn, to you

Literally went from plain English for 45 seconds straight and then to "Yerurgh Erbhle? Ehbdseh yerguh yerrble blergrh yerr??"

Would've had him at a B ranking before the League Cup win. That said, it's kinda impossible to not go with an A at this point

I'll be the devil's advocate here for a second, but if we were to give the narcissist the benefit of the doubt (remembering that his main priority has always been his #1, himself, and that everything else has, and will always be, of less importance to the man) – at the time he spouted those bits of absolute crap to the media, he wasn't really lying, was he? Of course his motivation for saying those things were to prop himself up as "doing a better job than expected given the difficulty of the job"... but that in and of itself doesn't mean that we as a club, during what probably was the worst period of penny-pinching during Ashley's ownership, weren't set-up to compete with, well... anyone, really Now, if Pards wasn't a narcissist, we'd most likely not have heard him spout that kind of shit in public. I've mentioned my dinner with Pards on here at least a couple of times in the last few years, and the man repeatedly stated how much he liked the club and the fans and wish his time here had been under different circumstances, all whilst calling Ashley every expletive under the sun. His reasons for liking us are deeply rooted in his narcissism and his hatred of Ashley stems more from him feeling Ashley didn't allow him to "push on" after finishing 5th, and not from the general shitness of Ashley's ownership. But, IMO, if you look past the how and why of things when it comes to Pardew's view and opinion of the club and the fans, which are all rooted in him having narcissism and (naturally enough) not being aware of the fact he has it – the guy genuinely likes the club and dislikes Ashley*, so... yeah *He likes the club because we were the club that allowed his ego to soar higher than it should have been allowed to, and he hates Ashley because he believes he stopped him from soaring even higher in his unearned position as our manager. Whilst that's not the same as liking the club for normal reasons or hating Ashley for logical reasons, at the end of the day he does like us and does dislike Ashley.

Just realized Frank Lampard's got a 13-3-5 record in the league since taking over at Coventry, that's a PPG average of 2.00... If stretched over an entire season, that's 96 point – which was enough for direct promotion all of the five most recent Champo seasons before the current one, would've won the league two out of five times as well. Does this imply that, god forbid, Lampard might actually possess some tactical knowledge and acumen? Or is it just a flash in the pan freak run of form? If anyone that keeps a better track of the Championship than I do (which wouldn't take much) could enlighten me about which of the alternatives it is, I'd appreciate it 🙏🏼 Until someone tells me otherwise, as I'm not exactly about to go look at Coventry highlights or keep any more track of the Championship than currently (which'll likely be checking in on the standings in 3-4 weeks time) to figure out if Lamps actually has some previously unknown/unseen managerial talent or not

Would be a great signing, and that's me saying that with the added anti-own-nationality-player bias already added to the mix If we went for Egeli over Nypan, it'd (IMO) point towards us having a quality scouting network set-up to spot and go for the (arguably) better and more first-team-ready player of the two – rather than do what the other "big" clubs look like they're doing; chasing headlines about youngsters.

C- at moment, B+ at max potential.

IMO it's more a sign of lazy journalism, as I have my doubts when it comes to how much knowledge a journalist for Goal has about youth players worldwide – beyond those already "known" due to being at "big" clubs, as well as those at "smaller" clubs who's had interest shown in them by "big" clubs. Just from a Norwegian perspective, they've listed Sverre Nypan at #15 – yet in reality, Sindre Walle Egeli looks an even bigger talent. Difference between the two being that Nypan has experienced clubs like Arsenal and Man City explicitly expressing interest by inviting him to visit their facilities, which in turn has been broadly covered by national and international media. Meanwhile, Egeli (less than 6 months Nypan's senior) has excelled in the Danish Superliga and already been given his debut for the national team. Yet, Egeli isn't even on the list...

Iconic commentary

Much too wordy, and he's lost the magical "implication" touch in his text where the joke's kinda hidden beneath the surface. Like his first attempt at a Saudi-diss, if he'd left it at "desert city", it'd have been amusing. He didn't, which made it feel "in your face" and kinda like what writers do when they don't believe their readers are clever enough to get the joke unless it's telegraphed directly into their dumb faces That said, this frame absolutely destroyed me:

Sat in silence for what felt like forever as neither mind or body knew what to do with themselves, then I just broke down in tears – took a few seconds for me to shake off the PTSD from past horrors before realising the tears were tears of joy.

This. It's perfectly okay to disagree about a subject and still remain cordial, never felt this was anything other than two people with two different viewpoints about him discussing Murphy.

If scouts used your method for comparing players, it'd be pure chaos. The ranking method utilized was combining a data set consisting of chances created for team, big chances created for team, goals scored, assists, xBuildUp90 and xChain. Then weighing and averaging those values for a player acting as a winger, before combining them into an average weighted score. I'll give you that I did not include "successful take-ons" in the data set.

You need to combine relevant stats to get a genuine insight into what a player delivers in total. Can't cherry pick one stat, that's why most people hate when people reference xA and xG as something definitive. A take-on attempt is when a player makes a decisive move to pass a player in front of them. It doesn't include a successful dribble as that counts as an attempted dribble, not a take-on attempt – even if the dribble means the player gets past the opposing player. If the singular stat showing that Murphy's not had success with decisive moves to pass a player brings you comfort, I won't take that away from you. I do recommend you look up how many take-on attempts Murphy's made, so you at least get some context regarding the actual importance of that stat. At the same time, look up his attempted dribbles (this is the stat for more advanced take-on attempts). I also recommend you use something more accurate than FBRef as they don't even have the correct amount of minutes played. There are decent free alternatives out there, UnderStat and FootyStats being two of them.

Palmer, Kluivert, Saka and Elanga. Salah is at the top if we're to count him as an out-and-out winger, which I didn't as KaKa was on about only comparing Murphy to wingers, and in my mind Salah is more a striker than winger

5th best winger in the PL so far this season. I'd say we should be fairly happy he's playing for us and not our competition.

You do realize that if only comparing him to wingers, he'd rank even higher...right?

Because the stats don't lie. They literally state how often he gets past players He's being compared to all the other PL players, and whatever data set I'd be referencing would tell the exact same story. FWIW, I use WyScout and I trust it just as much as Arsenal, Manchester City, Barcelona and clubs of that ilk does, as it's the tool their scouts use. Given the fact it costs £3k a year for access, it better be correct.

What are you even on about? He's in the 80th percentile of all PL players when it comes to getting past defenders... The other bits has already been debunked, which makes it baffling to be pointing out. He's 11th of all PL players this season when it comes to contributing to goals scored. When removing team's penalty takers goals from penalties, he's 9th. He's 25th when it comes for "big chances created". There's no statistical evidence that could be used to back up an argument for Murphy not having been, and still is, a quality PL winger. Again, he's the 7th best NUFC player in the club's PL history when it comes to assists per 90 minutes.