Jagten

The expected goals will be violent.

We've really struggled to progress the ball like

Sancho can be elite and should be excellent in transition. For the right price, there's huge upside in buying him. Ten hag is a known weirdo.

Nah. Arsenal clearly better.

He's not especially progressive, can't be a lone pivot. The comparisons aren't important I just don't see the obvious point especially when he's the only starter you buy. Contrasting profiles of Madison or Lavia would have made more sense to me.

Yeah, for sure. Couldn't find anything else right now but the sentiment was not uncommon. I am not sold yet.

People keep saying this re Tonali but he cant do it. If that's the answer already we got the Tonali talent ID totally wrong.

I agree with this. He's being asked to do lots of things he's not especially good at.

Very early days, but I think this might end up being quite a bit lower than some of these ratings. I think we've spent a lot of money to - at least, right now - not make us much better, or address our weaknesses. Takes like this re Tonali seem plausibly not untrue: https://www.scoutednotebook.com/i/135916597/disappointment-of-season-sandro-tonali

Tonali not a 6.

We are struggling in transition so much

I slightly disagree re squad composition. We have one progressive passer, which is evident when teams sit off us. It feels to me like we've witnessed a subtle recruitment step-change since Isak, and signings have been more about enabling Howe-ball. I don't want an oppositional sporting director, but I do want a directorship that appreciates risk management. The most likely outcome is that Howe eventually fails. I hope we keep this in mind.

Howe has been fantastic. I am not suggesting we should have appointed anyone else. Results thus far could not have been any better. My point is we should be making lots of asymmetrical - ideally uncorrelated - bets. Whilst I am not privy to our internal decision making it feels like Eddie's influence has grown, and our largest bet has increasingly become him. Tonali and Barnes, the two most likely starters, feel like accessories to his style above anything else. Taking such a concentrated position is generally how you blow up.

Mostly OTT takes in a game where we weren’t great but were still unlucky not to win. That said, we have doubled down on Eddie – hired his family and gone to the limit FFP in pursuit of his style. I hope it does not become relevant to ask whether we could have hedged our advantageous position better.

Bruno was alright? Tonali was worse

Any legit sources for US folks, more importantly

I think when we're a Fabian Schar injury away from Lascelles we need a CB.

He has an asset (his contract) worth ~30m. Why would he swap it for one worth (I'm guessing) 15m?

No. I think approximating latent properties of noisy processes is interesting. If you don't that's OK.

e.g., average of publicly available expected points models had them last.

Bournemouth's underlying numbers were terrible and they probably should have been relegated.

I don't think our mistaken identification of his profile as a striker and the low-probability occurrence of a successful position change 18 months later generalizes well to all future transfers. (Not comment on Tonali, hope he's great)

We can ask that question at any point, with increasing certainty in our answer. I think this was a miss, but don't know and want to be proven wrong.

Not sure about the vitriol but it was, and still is, fair to ask if the club missed on this one.

They might be when he performs for Newcastle United, which he presently has not.