Stottie

If it gets done, Jacob Ramsey would be this month for Villa's PSR, no? The consensus is that they must sell someone.

Wissa's only got a year left on his deal, so he'll probably leave along with Mbeumo. That's a lot of goals to replace, for their new manager.

Szobo on the bench? I'd be more afraid of Liverpool if they were looking to strengthen defensively. Its all change for them with a new keeper, a midfielder replacing Trent, and Kerkez coming in, but little talk of whether their new outfield players can actually defend. The time bomb of replacing VVD is also still to come. They were hopeless at defending corners in the Carabao final and made it easy for us.

The only hope with Vlach is that we could get a non-loss Saudi fee based on his appearances for Greece. He played 10 90s for them in 2024. Otherwise its pass the PSR parcel if another team is as desperate as we were last summer.

Just watching Japan - Indonesia. It's 3-0 at half time. Posting because Indonesia's manager is Patrick Kluivert and he looks slimmer now than when he played for us!

Just a comment on our form, but take numbers in the 29 games from Nov 1 2024, around when Sandro switched with Bruno, and extrapolate them to 38 games and its P38 W22 D4 L12 F77 A48 Pts 71 That'll get you CL every season, esp if fifth gets CL. The two numbers to improve are goals conceded and defeats. We're already not far off a title winning number of goals scored. We should be aiming at conceding under 30 though, a huge improvement. Trafford may not be ready yet, but getting him in and working on him is a wise move.

I don't normally listen to their show but Geordie Journos said the deal was done last season, fee all agreed, and then our PSR debacle stopped it. They brought it up as defence for the Mitchell comment using some variant of "not fit for purpose" about our transfer policy. I hope the fee hasn't gone up too much. If he wants to start, he'll have to earn it, but the above comment makes him sound very mature. Just on sweeping, but Pope doing it and Dubs not doing it suggests its a combination of Pope's ability and recognition of that from Howe. If all our keepers did it, you could claim it was just manager policy/tolerance of risk.

It was disappointing for Forest to not beat Chelsea on the final day. It was all set up for them. I would say more about it, but our own final day performance was dire and not far off costing us too.

Pedro can be our Jota or Trossard. They're both essentially back ups but get lots of minutes. We can have nice things too, and will need them to establish ourselves as a top club. A couple of ifs here, but If we were to sign Pedro, who plays mostly left, and Ramsey, who proves to be a pre-injury Willock regen, I'd half expect one of Barnes and Gordon to go. I would go as far to say it is fine groundwork for cashing in on Gordon. I don't want to sell him, he's unplayable on his day, but we got major wins this season without him and PSR demands sacrifice for where we want to be. Gordon money would pay for two solid players to fill out the squad or a fantasy football level purple. Not an Elanga, but a signing that will make Liverpool and Arsenal fans sit up and wonder he isn't theirs by right. If you want an example name, Adam Wharton. Or whoever Liverpool fans think they deserve as their Salah replacement. The scenario described is selling Gordon with four, Barnes, Pedro, Ramsey, and Joelinton, options at LW in position and two young full backs capable of delivering from the left. I'm sure we'd manage.

Vs. Willock. Better shooting. Better ball carrying. Seems less affected by the injuries he's had. If you look at all comps, Ramsey has 4 goals and 7 assists in about 25 games of minutes in the season just past. His numbers are bumped by goals in cups etc. but not bad for someone playing in fits and starts. Villa play a lot of 4-2-3-1, so fewer opportunities for an LM. Rogers, McGinn and Rashford have all played in that left forward position. Their fans seem to like him on their forum, which is more than you can say about the evaporating faith in Willock on here. Twitter murmurs of Palace interest in Willock, and we all know who could be coming the other way. PSR likes swapsies.

Very good. How about "Welcome back Villa legend Matt Targett"

Ramsey is pretty similar to Willock, no? Both a bit MIA with injuries/loss of form for last two seasons. Very good beforehand.

We are quite tippy tappy, little triangle-y around the box. Gordon is also good at beating his man or drawing a foul. Maybe a bit more box crashing by our mids, like Sandro for the first against Man U or Chelsea, would help. In that same Man U game, Tino beats his man and overhits his cross, but Murphy reaches it and its Barnes crashing in to finish with Isak on his heels. That kind of multipronged attack gets me all excited! Its on the first Whoscored page, but Isak's 34% of our goals is as high as anyone on the list. Time for the other lads to step up?

A winger (Grealish) pull back instigating chaos is how Man City got that last minute equalizer by Stones after being parked in the 10 man Arsenal box for half the game. That's the most memorable case of attack vs. pure defence I can remember. Man City had 28 shots in the second half. https://www.whoscored.com/matches/1821096/live/england-premier-league-2024-2025-manchester-city-arsenal

I'm going to have to go on a Youtube hunt for a "how to beat a low block" tactics video. As an old man, I hope its "put a big man up front and stick it in the mixer"

Going back before the Madueke/Elanga talk, but if its loans or loans to buy, I'd like Nkunku or Douglas Luiz, not Sancho or Grealish. Someone now persona non gratia but whose big output at their previous club was the season or two seasons before maximum, not effectively ancient history of seasons long gone. Youngish players who've gone to Saudi prematurely and are now bored and want to get back to proper football would also qualify as damaged but interesting goods. In this case, its bargain hunting and getting what's out there worth a punt, rather than zeroing in on any profile, as you would do with a regular buy like Madueke/Elanga. With wages, my concern is that we probably don't want to sign anyone pricey until we tie up Isak on a new deal that will make him our highest earner. I presume we are working on this actively already to get it done and that we're going to do whatever it takes to keep him, smashing our current wage ceiling in the process. On the plus side, doing so will probably create more scope/mental resolution for paying more than we'd currently like to secure the services of other new purples. As it stands before he signs, its understandable if there are "we can't pay Mbeumo that because Isak will want that times 1.5" fears.

Id be up for loans with obligations we can trigger or not trigger depending on how the player does. I think Villa were correct to go for it in January, even if they came up just short. This is independent of my opinion on Rashford and Ascensio, the actual players they chose.

The acceptable three-year loss being set years ago and not going up with the inflation of transfer fees is very unfair. Wages to turnover is about the only bit that makes some kind of sense.

I don't think we can sell the Greek keeper due to the PSR loss on his book value. All we can do is loan him out. We may have messed that one up, but a PSR high fee swapsies early in the window strikes me as an easy route to more headroom for squad building. We should keep an eye on Villa and see how their situation develops. If they get in a hole, offer a big fee for one of their players conditional on them taking Vlach for 15M or whatever his book value is. Pass the PSR parcel.

I wonder how fast Maresca bins them. He's pretty much binned Nkunku, who has 15 goals and 5 starts in 2430 minutes (equivalent to 27 90s) in all comps for Chelsea. He's 27 now, so whoever comes in for him shouldn't have to pay so big.

Spurs already have a fine right sided player in Kulu. Johnson plays there too. They need a left sided player to replace Son. Mbeumo to Spurs, Kulu to NUFC, with Harvey Barnes as makeweight would be ideal (thinking of PSR) however.

fwiw here's the Joao Pedro season heatmap for Brighton in the PL. Mitoma's heatmap gloriously hugs the left touchline, so Pedro has been floating inside that. The above is Sofascore and here's where Transfermarkt think Pedro's been lining up. I like Pedro as a player and don't mind the suggested price tag based on what Spurs had to pay for Solanke. We've had our eye on him for ages so we must know what he can do. Based on the above heatmap alone though, this would make extra sense if we're moving on someone who plays mostly on the left. Our squad is already left side heavy.

Yes for Spurs, that's not good enough. At a club with years of underachievement, like us under Bruce, many fans would snap your hand ff for 1.2 points a game and a trophy. Thankfully we've got the trophy blank monkey off our back now and can ask other hypothetical questions.

He's clearly pretty good. How good I can't say, because Forest scored first more than anyone and seemed to spend the remainder of the 90 minutes defending for a 1-0. This will wreck any attacker's stats. NUFC 20 wins, 12 by two or more goals. Forest 19 wins, 7 by two or more goals. In this situation, you have to rely on the eye test. Aside from their games against us, the one game I saw where they did fall behind early, against Villa, they played really well, really threatening, and were unlucky to not draw level.

I wonder how much a Douglas Luiz loan would be. Juve haven't been playing him. Luiz-Tonali double pivot, Bruno 8, push Tino and Hall right up.