Tsunami

The club have a ‘recruitment’ department? Is Lee C the ‘HR Director’? Steve Nickson heads it and I’ve just checked that the bloke I know is working for the club now (his LinkedIn profile backs this up).

Fwiw I’ve been told that we have made 2 bids for Jorgensen and that we have enquired about Slimani who isn’t interested as there may be interest from Chelsea. That may change depending on Dzeko. It was all very downbeat. This comes from someone who works in recruitment at the club.

If we’ve been offered £15M he’ll be off. Rafa won’t play him so we’ve got to take the best price going. He’s so far down the pecking order losing him will make no difference to the squad as it is. Hopefully we can get shod of Colback as well.

Can someone reverse the top half of the Shearer statue and stick it on that badge.

We need someone we can rely on to put the ball in the net. We look like breaking our transfer record on someone hardly anyone has heard of? Talk about taking a punt. Really worried about this, going from the Dutch league mid season to the PL and hit the ground running is a massive ask unless you are a top player. Feyenoord are quoting 20€ simply because there’s PL interest.

Really don’t get the easy way some on here are dismissing what Shelvey offers. You need a squad with different strengths; in our price range players with Shelvey’s strengths will come with some weaknesses. IMO he’s not the greatest athlete but he’s not the worst and his vision and range of passing is under estimated. It’s really not that easy to pick passes; if it was we’d have Diame and Hayden pinging 30 yard passes around. Our other midfielders tend to largely play with their heads down and with a passing range of up to 15 yards or so. Shelvey looks for the more expansive pass, it isn’t always on and he doesn’t always go Hollywood, he usually doesn’t. Rafa obviously doesn’t trust him but I don’t see any sense of letting him go unless we have a confirmed upgrade and that’ll be expensive.

Grabban knowing us

Interesting to see where we will play him. He could end up anywhere from LB to a try out as a No10.

Liverpool have wasted so much possession

She’s apparently said they be willing to spend upwards of 200M over the next 2 transfer windows? If that’s so why not just meet the £300M it is thought might do the trick and revise the transfer budget? They’re supposedly in it for the long haul and there also the unknown in the new TV deal. Ashley may well just decide to wait it all out anyway but I do think Staveley has been a little inflexible in this. Surely the most important thing is to get the sale through with enough money left available to start the overhaul. From the figures quoted this should have been possible but we’re too far into the window now for this to happen. It would be easy too think that’s she’s trying to get us on the cheap side and that does also lead to questions on what the future could hold for say match going fans. I’d like to know plans for pricing tickets and the like. Staveley clearly sees the club as a money making opportunity and doesn’t want to pay a penny more than necessary. In the meantime the club continues to suffer and there’s no investment in the team from anyone.

After the first bid I’d imagine Ashley wasn’t too impressed with the other 2 bids. He wants £350M, PCP’s one bid that would reach that is too loaded. You’d like to think that a bid of around £325M with no clauses, perhaps made in say 2 instalments, might do the trick. The new TV deal could move the goal posts altogether and PCP would be aware that this was around the corner. It is a little disappointing that they haven’t been prepared to meet Ashley nearer to his valuation. I can see why Ashley thinks they are pissing around.

Lol that is a dive

It did impede him; he’s trying to jump over the challenge, gets hit and it clearly affects his balance. It’s a penalty all day long for me If that's a Premier League footballer jumping I'm an Olympic high jumper. He’d have been ok if the defender hadn’t lifted his leg higher

:dontknow: It did impede him; he’s trying to jump over the challenge, gets hit and it clearly affects his balance. It’s a penalty all day long for me

That’s a penalty

Should be VAR

Wonderful

So the club is still for sale yet Ashley uses language that quite clearly says I’m a fucking nightmare, don’t even try to negotiate with me. Any remaining middle eastern interest will be dead in the water after this.

No surprise there.

Lol

I think Ederson (?) was more at fault than the Liverpool keeper was. Sane struck it really well, was much closer and the keeper was in the right place. It just flew past him

Tried a camera save As Nemtizz said, positioning has to be poor

Think Edison has to be slightly disappointed with that.

I seem to remember a good number of home games last year where we adopted similar defense first tactics and got away with it as we were up against Championship sides; it cost us quite a few dropped points at home. We scrapped past some very poor sides by the odd goal. Nobody is wanting us to throw caution to the wind but there are some opponents in the PL where you need to be more positive. We’re predictable at home; it causes unrest in the crowd and eventually a fear of losing out on the pitch. Opposing managers must love playing us away, good sides pick us off and poor sides know that we won’t put them away and that at some point they will get into the game. Without us buying a goal scorer or changing the set up at home we’re going to struggle to collect enough points at home to be safe. Forget it’s Rafa, look at the results and performances. If we go down it will be home performances that will have cost us and a stubbornness to change. We’ve got some right numpties in the crowd but we’ve also got fans who can see what we’re trying to do but can also see that’s it’s simply not working. I’d take a couple of 1-3 or 4 reverses at home to some mid/ lower table sides if it also meant a couple of likewise favourable results. It’s points we need ahead of goal difference. I’m wondering if the Watford home game has got Rafa simply refusing to try anything else.

As much as I love Benitez I do think the team were instructed to let them come out second half to create space in behind. Someone said about Benitez sticking or twisting either in this thread or in another, every time Benitez has twisted (Tactically) this season it's been somewhat of a struggle. He should probably have stuck with what we did first half yesterday and he should never have went to 442 as so many idiots kept whinging about. We simply don't have the quality so the formation we play currently is the most suited one for us. Swansea were awful on the ball in the first half and we should have pressed them and really got the crowd going. We let them into a game where they had nothing going for them.