Gottlob

It's alright saying that now that it hasn't happened, which you might say is like being a 'wiseman' after the fact. But I hearken back to the early summer of '23, when Anthony Gordon was still seen as a player out of form and it seemed like everything was possible.

Calvert-Lewin is a load of shite. The striker situation should have been sorted in the summer with the return of Adam Armstrong and Anthony Gordon probably going the other way on loan as a makeweight. As it turns out injuries and his own commitment and good form have made Gordon a crucial part of the first team, but we all know how much a side suffers from a lack of focal point up top. Adam Armstrong is a proven goal-getter albeit at a lower level of the game, he's home grown and wouldn't mind playing backup and he's also just one centimetre shorter than Sergio Aguero.

That's the last thing I'd want as my abiding memory of Paul Dummett.

Anthony Gordon had played 800 minutes of Premier League football and scored no professional goals when Eddie Howe was appointed Newcastle manager, which belies the idea that he'd wanted him for years and finally got his man. Since Gordon became a Premier League regular at the start of the 21/22 season he has managed a goal or assist every 421 minutes, whereas Adam Armstrong in at least an equally poor situation for Southampton has managed a goal or assist every 389 minutes. Far from being overburdened with pressure, rarely can less have been expected of a £40 million player who apparently wasn't supposed to start games, provide any assists, or score any goals. He's currently our seventh-choice wide player, which is generous because he's unfairly limiting the appearances of Elliot Anderson. And as a Scouser he's probably already past his physical peak, just like Robbie Fowler, Michael Owen, Wayne Rooney, Neil Mellor, Jack Rodwell, and Ross Barkley before him.

It's easy to make glib comparisons. Some people might say that as a wide midfielder, he plays like Adam Armstrong stacked on the head of Shane Ferguson. Others might argue that all big clubs make signings of this ilk, pointing to Jack Rodwell at Manchester City or Ross Barkley at Chelsea. For my part though he reminds me of one of Bobby Robson's earliest signings, who arrived at Newcastle already having made quite a name for himself, by whom I mean none other than Daniel 'The Wolf' Cordone.

Awful. 'Newcastle calling, Speak the slang now. Boys says "Howay man!" Girls say "Why aye man." Newcastle calling, Speak the slang now. Boys say "Howay man!" Girls say "Why aye man." Slam! Garang-Garang-Garang Gara-Gara-Gara Rang-Garang-Garang (repeat chorus ad infinitum)'

We could easily spend £150 million in the summer on a couple of centre backs, an attacking midfielder, and a centre forward going by our targets in January and the nature of today's prices. Perhaps we'll have more of a structure in place then which will also allow us to pick up some prospects on the cheap, but I think people are overestimating our ability to dispense with half the squad in one transfer window. I'd be sorry to see Fernandez, Schar, and Sean Longstaff leave, and Dummett too though I've never really rated him. Some of the others like Ritchie and Clark have served their time, while Krafth has been a bit of a non-starter.

Every transfer will look better if we manage to secure Guimaraes, who is a big name for a big fee and exactly what we need in the centre of midfield. £10 million for a left-footed, versatile, and experienced centre back who has been performing well for Brighton in that light sounds like a steal, even if he's not among our preferred choices.

Based on his performances last season for West Ham, when his contract expires Lingard could probably have his pick from a handful of clubs with European aspirations. Why come to a club in the middle of a relegation battle for six months on loan and potentially wreck your value?

He occupied their defenders and was a presence up front. At half time he polished off the last of the oranges, and he was a warm body on the bus back home.

A huge result and I thought we deserved it though it was a really scrappy game. Schar was excellent, and Willock showed much more initiative on the ball so at times with him and Saint-Maximin surging forward we actually seemed to have genuine pace in the attack despite the lack of end product. For me Longstaff takes up some good attacking positions and is our best all-round midfielder on the ball, and I thought he was an asset when he came on. Wood looks pretty hopeless. All in all though it was an energetic and positive performance aside from the crucial three points.

He was briefly effective under Benitez when Perez and Rondon had forged a good relationship and Almiron could stretch teams with his pace down the left. That pace and work rate might make him a useful player for some sides, and perhaps our best option still is to play five at the back and stay compact in the midfield while using him and Saint-Maximin on the break. But Almiron is one of the worst attacking players I've seen when it comes to his use of the ball. We've never played him as a number 10 as far as I can remember, and he doesn't have the skill set to make that work in the top flight.

Watford have made four signings for a relative pittance already this transfer window, three of whom played today and managed to look like footballers and athletes. Meanwhile we've been busy convincing ourselves of a job well done after splashing £25 million on Chris Wood. I know that none of the movers and shakers at our club have been in their positions for all that long, but there are deals to be had which don't involve protracted negotiations or acts of desperation for heavily inflated fees.

Chris Wood will slot in nicely alongside the squad full of players who people wanted to see sold if not lynched after the result at the weekend: ageing and one-dimensional but previously capable of slugging it out for a side in the bottom half of the league. He won't improve us in the long run and perhaps the cavalry isn't coming. But right now we don't have another striker, so a few winners is all it will take for him to more than recoup his fee.

Why was your mate getting you to smuggle the rum out of his own house? It's like robbing Peter to pay Paul. It doesn't make any sense.

He's obviously better than what we've had, but I do worry whether his nebbish character and funny English make him a bad fit for our current squad. Like Rafa he seems detail-oriented and a hard taskmaster when it comes to what he expects from his players out on the pitch, but he lacks the same sort of gravitas, seems to rub some players up the wrong way, and could easily become a figure of fun. He'll obviously get plenty of scorn from the press after every disappointing result.

For twenty years Manchester United were the golden goose of the Premier League and were handed all of the decisions every week, yet they still managed to cultivate a siege mentality as though they were the ones being hard done by. What sort of warped mind buys into that way of thinking? We know the answer: Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt, and Cristiano Ronaldo, bullies, abusers, and rapists. You had to be mentally deficient to play and succeed under Alex Ferguson.

I think people would be more inclined to pledge if they knew they were going to get an area of jurisdiction come the day of the takeover. People would feel more involved if they could pledge their monthly pound knowing for instance that when the takeover occurs, they and a small group of their fellow trustees will have decision-making powers regarding the type of potatoes which might make the matchday chips.

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/steve-bruce-arsenal-post-match-poop-1759595 'I was sow pleased with how we played in the first half, but obviously sow, sow disappointed with how we performed after that. Obviously we put in a few of the new signings today who we'll have to bring up to speed, but the Premier League waits for neither man nor beast and I've been telling the players that. At the end of the day you win some and lose some, but what you don't want to do is give away gowels like what we did in the second half. Not to put too fine a point on it, we pooed worselves the night.'

His left eye framed by a curl which his lips can scarcely muster, he's heard of his namesake, the short-lived Italian actor, but on the pitch he's languid rather than dashing: never one to lead the dance, his passivity gives the mistaken impression of a come-hither.

Less Argentine-Italian than Italo-Mexican, as a child he watched games of polo through a chain-link fence and wore a broken bandolier which he found by the dump. Slung low around his scrawny waist, he was no conquistador but a sunken crevice.

He sounds like a too-cute-to-be-rakish Argentine pivot player, slight of build, wearing his floppy hair with an undercut, most content away from the pitch nuzzling up in a woman's heaving embonpoint.

The problem with female football commentators, is that they don't like it up 'em! At least not on a cold night in Stoke etc. I can only presume that Match of the Day are practising sabotage in appointing a woman with an horrendous voice who is as cliche-ridden as any of the men. Otherwise there are some good female commentators, good female analysts like Eni Aluko and Alex Scott, and I don't want even my colour commentators to be solely comprised of male ex-professionals, especially since male ex-professional footballers must be one of the thickest and most sheltered and least reflective demographics on the planet. Seriously it's astonishing the discrepancy in analysis between former footballers and former athletes in other sports, perhaps not coincidentally especially some of those sports that give relatively equal billing to men and women, like tennis and track and field.

There's always a strain of support at least on the internet which seems to think that firm avowal of results and trophies makes them themselves winners.

I'm not sure that the forwards would ever see the ball in these teams with two deep-lying midfielders and five at the back. If you have Debuchy and Enrique as your 'wing backs', which they're not really, then Cabaye and Tiote in the middle and three up top, there's not much pace and a dearth of options when it comes to carrying the ball up the pitch. I'd go with Disco's team: Krul Debuchy - Lascelles - Coloccini - Enrique Sissoko - Cabaye - Jonas HBA - Ba - Remy feeling that Cabaye offers more balance and creativity than Tiote, wondering whether Perez might offer a bit more than Remy when it comes to linking the midfield and attack.