Smal

Forest would have bitten our arm off if we’d actually bid £50m for Elanga last summer I reckon

feel like the club deliberately feed Edwards bullshit smokescreen stories whilst they do the transfer they actually want to do. Happened with Barella/Tonali but it's happened a couple of other times too.

think we have to evolve into a better team than one that fits Elanga to be honest. He's a pure counter attack forward. We are a CL side now - we need players who can do things against teams sat in a a low block.

his first touch is a tackle

absolutely brutal but probably mostly necessary.

Wirtz's output is not enough to justify £100m+ imo

take him out of that team and they'd genuinely have been in danger of getting relegated this season

Adrian is sooooooooo shit

fight to the death pls

If we ever had to play Guehi and Schar together I think it'd be a bit of a disaster against the wrong opponent but hopefully we'd never be in that situation. Just had a glance at aerials this season and it's not even remotely close, this

The best counterpoint to this is that Liverpool signed Darwin Nunez off the back of one season where he scored 32 from 21.5xG for Benfica. He's not a good finisher to say the least! Good finishers and consistent goalscorers like Isak, Haaland, Mbappe etc. all tend to score pretty much in line with what's expected or just over. Just think we'd be paying a peak/inflated price for him because he's had a statistically amazing season. Same way it works with Schar. Burn or Botman do the difficult aerial duels and Guehi/Schar only get involved when they know they can win. Fabi's personal aerial statistics massively improved when he started getting partnered by Burn/Botman because he's allowed to pick his battles more. Before that they were really poor.

unpopular opinion clearly but slightly wary on whether Mbeumo will be worth the kind of fee talked about. He obviously improves us but I wouldn't necessarily expect another 20 goal season from him. 5 of them are penalties and then he's outscored his non-penalty xG by double. xG is not the be all and end all but consistently good players don't tend to outscore it by much at all. Prior to this season his hit rate is 1 in every 4.5 PL games which is not really £60m territory.

he did really well to get Shane Ferguson in from Birmingham to be fair

Eddie knows he has all the leverage now doesn't he . Fair play to him.

Yeah, and it's not even about becoming one of those teams that overplays at the back. It's just about knowing that your defenders can pass it back to the goalkeeper and the entire team and stadium won't be filled with anxiety when it happens. Pope has had a great couple of months and proved me wrong because I thought he was finished post-surgery (and tbf he did have a major weakness down to his left for months afterwards), but pretty much all good teams have a keeper who can control the ball comfortably now.

you should probably hand your license in to be honest

Knocked out of the group stages on GD in the end. Was a bit mad. We needed Italy to beat Belgium in the other game and overcome an inferior goal difference of 4. Unlikely but possible. We went 4-0 up by half time against Czechia, well on top. Unfortunately Belgium were leading Italy 1-0 in the other game, so England were out as it stood. Italy did us a massive favour and turned it round and went 2-1 up in the 78th minute. England were still 4-1 up at that point and looking good to qualify ahead of Belgium on goals scored. However England then conceded again in the 89th minute and therefore lost out on goal difference.

I'm sorry like, but even if someone's hitting your car you belong in a padded cell if you proceed to accelerate your two tonne motorised death machine into masses of innocent people. There's no justification for it at all ffs. Saying you can understand it because they've panicked is absolutely insane to me.

England u17s 0-3 up against Czechia after 35 minutes. They need Italy to beat Belgium in the other game to qualify from the group stage - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/live/cn9jyx5pew1t#player unfortunately Belgium are winning too. The kid Dowman looks like the player HBA could’ve been.

I think the fans of those clubs probably like getting to go to Wembley to be honest. Not sure it makes a jot of difference to the rest of us.

it’s just challenge between two players for the ball. Usually split between ground and aerial duels.

I’m not surprised. When you watch him play he charges around the pitch throwing himself into everything, and when he has the ball he’s not afraid of taking people on. It’s very similar to watching our Bruno at times. we got such a bad deal

Villa are close on Chevalier I think. Thought Arsenal were favourites for Garcia though.

very questionable whether you have been that whilst he's been at the club tbh. He'd have had a better career if he'd just done a couple of seasons as a springboard to someone like a Madrid, Barca, Bayern, Liverpool or City.

he would be the main creator in either of Barca or Madrid’s sides I think. I can’t believe he’s wasted this much of his career playing for Man U tbh.