ponsaelius

It's more likely to be 3 or 4 for Man United than a turnaround.

Oh well

I'd personally want somebody younger and with less historic injury problems but you can definitely see the logic in DCL. He's a player who would likely be happy coming in as clear second fiddle to Isak and is at a point where he would actually represent value due to the contract situation.

People definitely overestimate players' values on here or more particularly underestimate how important age is to setting value. No matter how good a player is once they're hitting 31/32 they rarely go for any kind of money because 1. By the end of their next contract their value is nil 2. older players have the highest wages. PSR has only made this far more acute than it was 5 years ago. There's no way at 32 with a recent shoulder injury behind him you make a profit on what we paid for Pope. The only thing that changes this market reality is if you get a Saudi club operating entirely outside the need for resale value in any signings they make.

Yup. Throw in his shoulder injuries and there's a chance we can't bank on Pope in the medium term. Ultimately we're probably going to need to buy a keeper in the next couple of years anyway. If a player they want is available now then it's best to act. Buying a young understudy to a first choice is rarely the solution the way people suggest it - because young keepers need to be playing to develop but you don't really rotate. It's actually the one position where you usually need to be ruthless and upgrade. Just like we did with Pope 2 years ago.

Had a brilliant day yesterday. Atmosphere around Dublin with both sets of fans was great - never saw any trouble at all. Delighted for Atalanta and Gasperini to get the trophy their work has deserved over the last 8 years.

He's only got a year left on his deal, that together with the compressed market I think the fee would be lot less than previous years. I'd still question whether it was the right profile of player though.

Atalanta have head to head. They can't finish any lower. Edit: forgot they could overtake Juve.

Grown men crying all around me. Not sure what I'd do if we were ever in this situation

2/2 win record for big Mark Gillespie in shootouts?

You're not all actually watching this are you? Absolute deviants.

To be fair there is a lack of credible left back options and Shaw has always played well for England. I don't have an issue with giving him a chance to prove fitness.

Probably not, though. There's a pretty good chance some of the lads who were on our bench in CL this year and got PL game time when we were stretched won't even make it as footballers. I can see the merit of keeping Dummett around if his wages are cheap enough, even if he doesn't get named in the PL squad. Ritchie I can't see the point. He should be retiring and going into coaching.

Olise would be a dream signing but I think he's a smarter lad than his moody disposition gives him credit for. He turned down the Chelsea move last summer and has kicked on massively as a result. He's onto a good thing now with Glasner so wouldn't be surprised if he gave it another year to flourish and then has his pick of clubs.

The problem is our youngsters are no good or have no long term future here. We're strengthening that massively now but all those we've added since the takeover (Sanusi, Shahar, Harrison etc) haven't been here long to count as club grown so wouldn't be able to play them unless you actually named them in the squad.

Dummett kind of makes sense if you keep him around purely for a European squad on very low wages. With homegrown rules it's an extra player you otherwise just won't have as we'll just have to name a smaller squad in that competition. It differs from the PL because you can't just include the recently purchased U21 players (e.g. Harrison, Sanusi etc) as they won't count as locally grown yet. It's why we had such dramatically restricted subs benches in the CL this year during the injury crisis. However I think we could really do with just clearing the decks at this point, even symbolically.

Can somebody explain how it wasn't a pen for us today? The actual trip on Hall that caused him to fall was comfortably inside the box.

To be fair he never really stood out at League Two level over here, so I'd be surprised. A career in the MLS is not to be sniffed at.

Scored again in a 5-1 derby win against Montreal. Tried his best to miss like Nice to see him rebuilding his career over there.

I personally can't even countenance some of the things I'm reading and hearing (outside of here TBF) about it being time to make a change, particularly if we miss out on Europe. I'm glad to be confident that the club obviously aren't reactionary enough to make a strategic decision like that based on the difference of 2-3 points. Like even if/when we do decide to make a change in manager - it would be done with more visionary scope and based on longer term trends. At the moment I simply can't imagine that any other manager would come in and do demonstrably better than he has done. Is he perfect? Obviously not, and this season has shown that quite clearly in terms of tactical flexibility and squad management. However we need a manager who can coach and motivate players, squeeze value out of substandard players and can develop and improve young players to increase their value. That is how we bridge FFP until we can build a squad that can compete at the next level. He's ideal for this and has undoubtedly exceeded the remit since he came in. I do think the role of a manager is actually overplayed. They are just one part of an overall structure from ownership, corporate management and right down to playing staff. It's far more important to have everyone pulling in the same direction on the same page and with continuity. There will come a natural point where perhaps there needs to be a change in management to progress, just like replacing a squad player with an upgrade, but we're clearly not there yet. Maybe next summer if we have another sticky year we can revisit - not now.

He's got 8 goals in all comps. It's a good return, shows genuine improvement on previous seasons. It's a skill in itself to keep getting chances even if you miss them.

As somebody who regularly watches both, I much, much prefer watching football without VAR. I'd hppily have this go through tomorrow even if it meant worse decisions.

Not a good look that to say the least.

I've got a ticket in the Atalanta end for next Wednesday. I also have a Cat 3 neutral that I need to shift if anybody Dublin based wants it.

He actually wildly overhit the pass I thought.