Smal

City been linked with Gvardiol as well for a while. They'll be rolling in cash.

I thought they changed the FFP rules around 8 year contracts etc. in February? Yeah, they did - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/64383217 Uefa is to change its Financial Fair Play rules in response to Chelsea's recent trend of signing players on long-term contracts. Signing players on extended contracts enables Chelsea to spread the player's transfer fee over the life of that deal when submitting their annual accounts. That means £89m signing Mykhailo Mudryk will be valued at £11m a year over his eight-and-a-half-year deal. Uefa is to set a five-year limit over which a transfer fee can be spread. Clubs will still be able to offer longer deals under UK regulations but will not be able to stretch transfer fees beyond the first five years. The change to FFP rules will come into force during the summer and will not apply retrospectively.

respect him a lot for going to the retirement league for a season or two and then deciding it was too easy and he needed proper football again.

just watching this again because

I imagine it's for his own safety more than anything. I'd have preferred it if they'd left him to get the shit kicked out of him, like.

this is proper sus refereeing like . Should be 2-0 to City and Man U with 10 men.

I think/hope we will continue with the same principles, but with added quality we'll naturally gain more possession and control too. Adding more comfortable ball players than (as much as I love them) Dan Burn, Sean Longstaff Miguel Almiron and eventually Nick Pope will automatically give us more security in possession. We just have to make sure we get the upgrades right in order to maintain the same strengths too.

yeah, I think the most important thing is we keep the identity of the team with physical, high energy players. If there's style in recent years that we're most similar to it's Liverpool when they were at their peak before the midfielders all left or got old.

the stuff laid out in that video is exactly why I think we'll do better than expected in Europe next year. I don't think European sides will quite know how deal with the tactical nuances and flexibilities of our play. I think we'll have to be patient in the league 'cause we'll have less preparation time than usual to deal with other Prem sides, but I reckon we'll get out of the groups in Europe.

OBV measures actions which reduce the team's chance of conceding as well, yeah. On set-pieces, a player is assigned a negative OBV score for a corner taken that doesn't find a team mate as it has reduced the chance of scoring and increased the chance of conceding.

football metrics definitely aren't for everyone and a lot of people just quote them to fit a narrative but I quite enjoy them all the same. I guess we have all these useful metrics like xG and xA etc. but they are exclusively measuring goalscoring and assisting. There are a lot of other actions in a game which increase/decrease the chance for your team to score which aren't measured by xG/xA (think carrying the ball to a more dangerous area, or passing the ball from a less dangerous area to a more dangerous area) and that's what all these possession value metrics (xThreat is another similar possession value metric) are trying to measure. The limitation is that it doesn't really tell you how good a player is. It tells you what their role is in a team more than anything. So Trippier is making much more valuable contributions than the average right back largely because we send a lot of our play through him - much more than the average team does anyway. Kevin De Bruyne is used as City's primary creator and penetrative passer so he scores highly, Brentford give the ball to Jensen to get it forward to Toney etc. They're mostly high risk, high reward players. If we used it as a measurement of ability then well... using xThreat we'd think that Ashley Westwood was one of the most threatening players in the Premier League a couple of seasons ago. It's useful to use to identify players who can fulfil a certain role though. If you want a left back who can do a similar role to what Trippier or TAA do on the right then Borna Sosa could be that guy etc.

some quotes from Eales in this Mark Douglas article - https://inews.co.uk/sport/football/newcastle-transfer-news-nice-midfielder-list-of-targets-magpies-summer-swoop-2381156

Lascelles is coming into the last year of his contract now. I think next summer would be the natural time for him to leave.

I’m all for it. Keep this group around for as long as possible.

To Swiss media: “For me, this has been the best and most beautiful season of my entire career. “I have never felt more comfortable in a place than in Newcastle. “The cooperation in the team and with the coaching staff is unprecedented. “I feel a great sense of happiness and a lot of gratitude for being able to experience this phase. “If you think about where we were a few years ago, no one would have believed us capable of such a path. “The fans are in seventh heaven – and so are we, of course. “It’s unbelievable that we were able to maintain our pace for a whole season in this strong league. “It was also an incredibly good season for me personally. I was injury-free in almost every game. “For almost 15 years there have only been two teams outside of the top [‘Big’] 6 to reach the Champions League – Leicester and us. Knowing that is good. To have prevailed over 38 games against these competitors can hardly be overestimated. “Eddie Howe is the best coach of my career. “It’s difficult to define in just one area. He has so many good facets. His training theory is first class, there is not even a hint of boredom in any meeting. “What he announces always makes sense. “The way he meets me on a personal level suits me extremely well. People are important to him. This is an outstanding component for him. He also asks a player on a day off; you can discuss very private matters with him. I’m in a very familiar relationship with him. “The many good characters [of the squad] also simplify the inner workings enormously; the fun factor is not neglected. “The new owners have invested very carefully and made clever transfers. There was no sign of a spending spree. Instead, some funds have been put into infrastructure. They did a really good job. The change of strategy was necessary. “At the moment the fans are just grateful. Everyone knows where the club came from. For years Newcastle suffered [under Mike Ashley]. “I’m really looking forward to that [Champions League with Newcastle United]. “There will be a breathtaking atmosphere in our stadium. “For me, another dream is coming true. “A year ago, I wouldn’t have thought such a thing even remotely possible.”

I’m so confused by it. He’s been good but the way the media go on it’s like he’s been prime Maldini, and they still think he’s been underrated. All this whilst nobody is talking about the guy next to him who has defended just as well but has also been spraying a plethora of defence splitting passes about as though he was Xabi Alonso all season.

again he didn’t look out of place at all and I thought he managed to play the role a bit more like Howe would want him to this time. Got the assist and it was very Willock-esque play by overlapping the winger.

considering Joelinton only started playing in midfield 18 months ago it’s pretty incredible he’s up there with those names

glad he got a goal. Ending on 0 g/a would've been pretty disastrous. His performance.... meh.

proper poor performance, like. Not that it matters much.

press has been a bit non-existent. Wils getting annoyed.

ooof, unlucky Lewis

Wilson and Miley on please.