leffe186

Agreed m the latter part, although the fact that keepers and CBs tend to develop a bit later can skew it a bit. Yeah, I looked at Transfermarkt but they were so wildly wrong on our loanees that I ignored it. We’ve got an absolutely bonkers amount of kids out on loan and if the other teams are anything like ours it’s a wonder there are any players on the lower leagues actually owned by their clubs. Christ knows how many players Man City and Chelsea have on loan, although Strasbourg might reduce the numbers. It sounds like all those players you brought in will start to filter out on loan in a couple of years time,

I feel like most clubs have the same feeling. Loans are hard. It’s a big driver for bullshit like Chelsea-Strasbourg. Do you have any successful loans going on? We’ve been criticising the club for loaning a Korean kid out to Coventry mid-season where he barely got a sniff. Yet others have had phenomenally successful loans this season. It’s not an exact science.

It’s at Old Trafford. See Bruno Fernandes card decision etc.

Makes sense, I thought that was one of the games where Palhinha was RB moving to RCB when defending. Was trying to remember what the formation was before VdV was sent off. So the RB is at RCB (no Romero or Dragusin), the CM is at RM (no Kudus or Odobert) and the LB is at LM (no Udogie or Maddison). Who’s missing? Those six plus Kulu, Bergvall, Spence, Bentancur. Maybe more, I’ve completely lost track - Byfield and Luca Williams-Barnett are kids who would have been CB and sub and have been injured for weeks. I presume Froggy’s just on the wind-up pretending we have had nobody out of position, but we’ve absolutely spent a lot of money on a lot of players. Kudus, Odobert and Simons were brought in partly as cover for Kulu and Maddison, and now all five are injured. One of the problems is the constant drip drip of new injuries coupled with the long term ones meaning you can’t play the same team more than a couple of games in a row. Remember that stat about us not going two weeks without a new injury since March 2023 or whenever it was? Like I’ve said repeatedly, we’ve fucked up the management and fucked up the squad building. We were still 11th before that Forest match but since then the injuries have just got worse and worse, with the accompanying psychological and physical effects. If you have a core of regular players you can mitigate things - ignoring Bayinder, Man U had five players in 45 or more squads that year. Fernandes, Dalot, Garnacho, Onana, McTominay. We’ve had one. Kinsky - the reserve keeper. In the best of times it’s hard to change the first XI every week, when you have a new manager it’s a recipe for disaster.

Absolutely. Without a number 10 or a right winger, or any left-footed players, but that's a consequence of injuries and poor squad construction. Madders is in as a mascot, RDZ himself said so. Hopefully we'll still be in it in the last game and he'll get to come on. We've been playing players out of position all season, including Palhinha starting games at CB. You finished the season with Casemiro and Evans playing when Maguire got injured, but you were safe at that point. It was a crisis, as I said, but if you offer me Palhinha and Davies at CB again if it meant I could have Madders, Kulu, Kudus and Solanke on the pitch I'll take your hand off. Edit: Also, just looking at those games you picked - before the game at Forest we were 11th, just three points behind you and above Newcastle. So yeah, that's a decent team with a manager who's already starting to struggle but not a serious issue. Then you say we "very rarely had to play anyone out of position if ever" then post the XI against Palace with Palhinha at RB, and a Brazilian teenage LB at RW

Fair point obviously, and I’d love to put that team out again, only more than €200M of it is already out for the season.

This is the thing - we’re about to get relegated but if it wasn’t for a mad half hour on a doctored pitch we could have been in the quarter-finals of the CL. And that’s missing half of those players. There are loads of really good players in the squad, it’s just an unbalanced squad absolutely obliterated by injuries that was managed by somebody who wasn’t quite up to the task for half the season.

He’s just wildly biased. Always has been. When he started as a pundit he was refreshingly intelligent but it’s almost become a parody now.

It’s flawed in similar ways to normal reffing. It’s not corruption, it’s either consistently favouring a home side by reacting to the crowd or following a narrative like ignoring repeated cynical but small fouls, or giving certain clubs the benefit of any doubt.

Those puns are so criminal somebody should call the copse.

I’ve lost patience with this stuff though after nearly 50 years as a fan. There’s a fine line between “buying a foul” and “diving/cheating” and I think he crossed it, particularly as it’s very clearly been coached.

Let’s hear from the experts: Stephen Warnock: I think it's a penalty because the defender gets on the wrong side and allows Gyokeres to go down Allows Gyokeres to go down. Oh fuck off. I’m starting to get really sick of shouting at clouds.

Yeah, Simons would be irritating, given that he’s another who’s going to be out for months. I’m less worried about Gallagher. Either he’s got a clause, in which case that’s fine, or he hasn’t, in which case the person who was stupid enough to OK that gets fired and is no longer making any decisions This seems like a decent breakdown of where we might be: https://archive.is/20260429075443/https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7234117/2026/04/29/tottenham-relegation-finances-wages-bookkeeper/ I’m happy he spent a decent amount of time discussing our loss in value, because I barely give the slightest shit about that. He also talked about the EBITD with foreboding before confirming that it had been the fourth-best in the Premier League. The one advantage of not “panicking” in Jan is that our amortisation should be in a much better state, particularly after a Summer where you’d presume we shop out a ton of players.

He’s got good sources, but he’s also got a real hard-on for us - he’s been pumping out this stuff for months. Might be true, might not, no idea. Someone at the Athletic reckons most players have relegation clauses.

I genuinely think people still don't quite recognize how good he is.

I used to cite that Milan-Barca 4-0 as possibly the best performance by one team I have ever seen. This feels like two Milans playing each other.

I would genuinely say this is at a different level. It's incredible.

Could you wish for a better contrast to Arsenal?

I like some of it.

Enjoy your VAR next year, lads

Did you see the West Ham one at the weekend?

How could they, with no ambition to challenge and no real fanbase?

Looks like Preston North End are going to combine the two. Seems like they may be about to be bought by Amr Zedan, a US-born Saudi businessman who "is a key player in the Saudi Vision 2030."

That was a joke (Edit: just checked, I even put a smiley next to it ). I said yours was a crisis - see the last paragraph. My point is that ours is on a whole new level.

Then that's hardly a crisis at all . I only put Bailly in because I presumed he was part of the injury crisis. If I put Lindelof in instead that's 31 more games overall and 21 in the league - even your second XI was more available than ours. You had critical issues in one or two positions, we've had it all over the pitch, all the time. It's infuriating because you can't even have a proper go at the manager, you're always having to think "well what the fuck else is he going to do?" And yes, we've played Palhinha at CB too (not as much as Casemiro, I know, and he had to do so in an FA Cup semi-final. Against...oh yeah now I remember). My point, once again, is that this truly is an entirely unprecedented injury crisis and when you said you felt the way we do, well, you have no idea. This is a completely untenable situation - you cannot manage a football club under these circumstances. It's so incredibly frustrating. Every week is a different squad, key players are missing week in and week out, players recovering from injury are forced to play because there's literally nobody else and every time you think you've turned a corner you get kicked in the teeth. We've made a couple of critical errors in building the squad, but that's only a part of the story. You finished 8th and won the FA Cup partly because your injury crisis was actually nowhere near as bad as ours. And I finally got round to doing the Newcastle maths too. I've definitely got this a bit wrong but I'm going to use Targett as the proper back-up LB (not Dummett) - we can swap him with Hall if you like. In 23/24 I used this as the first XI - Pope, Trips, Schar, Botman, Hall, Tonali, Bruno, Joelinton, Almiron, Isak, Gordon. And this as the second XI - Dubravka, Livramento, Burn, Lascelles, Targett, Ritchie, Longstaff, Anderson, Murphy, WIlson, Barnes. Obviously Tonali wasn't injured, but I've included him anyway. If that's the case these are the scores on the doors: Newcastle 23-24 (51 games): First XI squad availability 403 overall, 297 in the league. First two XIs availability 786 overall, 591 in the league Man U 23-24 (52 games): First XI 393 and 291. First two XIs 808 and 592 Spurs 25-26 (52 games): First XI 275 and 219. First two XIs 714 and 527. You both had injury crises, but ours is breaking new ground, literally. And it's been going on for three years, but I'm fucked if I'm working that all out. This is depressing enough as it is.