Stottie

I wouldn't start Shelvey for this. There's too much risk of them winding him up.

The stories about Gayle, the Mitro elbow and ban, and no new keeper are concerning, but with Rafa we won't be in the worst three.

Based on his goal record alone, I'm surprised we'd didn't hear more about other clubs coming in for him during the summer.

Benitez has been consistently undermined to the point where it would understandable for him to actively look elsewhere. If this is now the case, what I don't understand is why he would break the exclusive to Louise Taylor. I need to hear it from someone else first.

The "Rafa bought a load of shite too" argument is wrong. He's done wonders to shift all the deadwood we had from beforehand in so little time. (Does "released" for Riviere mean a free transfer?)

Yep. Even people who can't stop going to matches can do that.

I guess anyone defrauded by buying a ticket to watch "70M" of new signings would need Rafa and his people to testify against the club. So you might get your money back, but Rafa would be a dead man walking and the club would hire another Pardew yes man. fwiw, I think this is much worse than what happened to KK because we have a specific budget Rafa was told he had and many specific examples of cheap players he could have spent it on. Unlike KK, Rafa is supposed to have control over transfers.

Fleetwood are League One. If Woodman is now England U21 level, that's below him. There's a good chance of coming up against cloggers at set pieces with lower league officials to protect him. He'll learn goalkeeping tactics for that level too. Good footballing side in the Championship is the lowest he should go.

It's possible that Brighton play in a way that does not highlight Krul's weaknesses, say kicking. So him not suiting what Rafa wants to do does not necessarily imply he won't be of use to one of our rivals.

Would there be any chance in buying out the Heed as a fans' federation? They're only four leagues below us, it was three last year.

He was first choice for Huddersfield last year, so this is a big punt on the two strikers they've got in.

We should only do this if Rafa thinks Krul will weaken them. I take it this doesn't mean we've got a keeper coming in ourselves.

It's mental to not have a replacement in already if Rafa is not happy with him as the Shields Gazette article says. Unlike the others, there was never any possibility of us not being able to find a buyer.

Just three points on the graph, but it looks like Buffon, Lloris, and de Gea were all playing in their countries' senior leagues at 21. Woodman turned 20 in March. Woodman has been frequently capped at youth level, so the career path so far is not vastly different. With the increasing tactical requirements placed on keepers for kicking and sweeping, the position might be more difficult for young lads than in the past. That said, I'd have him on the bench as backup at least.

Well, if nothing else, thanks to Fulham we can now dismiss those posts on here that said Gayle was worth "10M" 15M is only the first bid.... Lots of options, but only 36 hours or whatever to get something done. Back to Arsenal for Perez? Origi on loan? Praet and Remy on loan as backup with Joselu first choice? You expect Gayle to get a full medical wherever he's going, so selling him first may only leave minutes to sign a replacement. The deals will have to be done at the same time. Still hoping for a keeper myself.

3 out?? Three Loans: Sels, Armstrong, Toney. Eight Gone: Anita, Guoffran, Mbabu, Ameobi, Murphy D., de Jong, Rivière, and Hanley (ish). Rafa's only been here for a year and a half, so the transformation of the squad, esp. in terms of deadwood out, has been very impressive.

Maybe we need a video contrasting him with Souness's super CM signing for us, Amdy Faye.

Yeah to rival Reading for 7.5M. He put up Matt Ritchie-type numbers last season, so that is a bargain. I wonder what the plan is. Gayle?

If this is an echo of Rooney, I suspect Fat Fred had an agreement with Everton and was making fake bids to raise the price Man U paid.

Yep. We were also comfortably winning in the last two against both Spurs and West Ham, making them extra brainless. A lot of punditry seems to be knee jerk or trotting out cliches in place of insight. The cliche Mitro has created for them is that he's violent and needs to be watched. It's hard not to laugh when he kicks a keeper up the arse in a friendly, but it just marks his card further.

Ditch the ginge!

As I've said before, I rate Dwight Gayle. He must be worth as much as or more than Andre Gray who just went for 18M. Gray has 9 PL goals and like Gayle is already 26. I would question whether Huddersfield, Brighton, and Swansea (once Llorente heads to Chelsea) have a striker as good as Gayle. If Rafa can pull off some serious wheeler-dealer move though by selling him, I hope he goes for it. If it is Origi, we would be a perfect loan destination for Liverpool because we look a solid team who could potentially take more points off Liverpool's rivals with more quality up front. Goals for us against Top 6 sides would be more use to Liverpool than goals for them in the final minutes of games where they are already ahead.

I didn't see the whole Huddersfield game, but I thought he looked good against Spurs before that. I guess he'd have got on as soon as Shelvey was off if we'd not used two subs already.

In the first three games, Swansea have taken the fewest shots and hit the fewest crosses in the league. Their possession stat has been low, but not as low as us. So not a lot going forward from them so far.

Win 3-0, the kneejerk pressure switches to de Boer, Bilic, and Wenger, and what do we get? This, more speculation and nonsense to think and worry about. It does your head in. fwiw, to me, Gayle is worth 20M to a potential suitor like Leeds who just sold a lesser player for 15M. I think Gayle is a PL quality striker. Since we rushed him back last year, it might be premature to write him off as "injury prone". There would have been less pressure to get him back in had we bothered to sign more creativity (Townsend) for Murphy and Mitro.