Smal

You can't always play direct though (and... we don't) because of how the opposition plays. Perhaps they sit deep and allow no space, or they play a high line with their keeper sweeping everything up so that you can't play in behind them, or their defenders are fast and able to deal with your attackers. The point I've tried to make is that Elanga doesn't really give us any of the added versatility that we need. If we want to keep progressing we can't just have a squad built for one game plan when there are games where that game plan identifiably doesn't work. Sure, but good technical/creative players can help with both. If Bournemouth or Fulham come to SJP to press us, and our usual plan of going direct isn't working, I think a player like a Lee Kang-In or a Kulusevski gives you a different way of being able to play through it to what we have in the squad. I don't think we are bad in possession considering how we play by any stretch, but there are definitely games where it's frustrating to watch our more technically limited players losing the ball because they can't play with their backs to goal and/or in small spaces. That's the kind of profile and versatility the squad needs imo.

against teams that press us, yeah we do struggle imo. In terms of build up, for passes completed outside of the opposition 3rd we rank 11th in the league with an 83.33% pass completion rate. For reference the top 4 teams are Man City (90.5%), Arsenal ( 86.95%), Liverpool (86.73%) and Chelsea (86.58%). It's definitely something we could do with improving on - the likes of Murphy, Gordon and Joelinton all frequently give the ball away pretty carelessly.

We have to ask ourselves which teams we struggle against, and it’s not imo the kind of teams where Elanga would make any difference whatsoever. Do we beat Everton, Bournemouth, Fulham, these kind of teams because we have Anthony Elanga instead of Jacob Murphy? I don’t see how. I don’t think he’s better than the Murphy of the previous two seasons, and he doesn’t provide us with anything we’re missing in the squad in terms of profile, so we’d still need to sign another £40m+ player in that position if we want to actually compete for things imo. I also think with some time and coaching you could ask Gordon to play on the right and you instantly have someone who is better than Elanga ever will be in pretty much every regard. So, £10m-15m as a rotation option that eventually replaces Murphy as second choice? But we already have Osula who can be that anyway Long story short I don’t think it would be a good signing at all, sorry

this would be a waste of funds

Muniz would be an excellent second choice striker. Scored plenty off the bench for Fulham this season. A goal every 119 minutes played in the PL.

Miley needs to actually perform when he gets brought on as a sub before he gets more starts tbh

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.