Deuce

the spirit of Willian

Said it before but he reminds me of a foal learning how to use his limbs.

It’s remarkable how successful he is, when everyone knows that he’s almost exclusively a give-and-go winger. But he’s very smart positionally and times his runs very well.

Reading some of these comments…gee I wonder why our players may have their heads turned by other clubs. Some of you need to have a fucking word.

Sorry, but this is dumb. Every club below the “Strivers” is faced with very real financial constraints. They’re not commercial behemoths and/or owned by sovereign wealth funds. But they’re hardly rolling over and accepting whatever the Cartel demand. When they do sell purples to the Cartel, they’re generally extracting top fees. The likes of Glasner, Iraola, and Marco Silva are genuinely good managers (who will probably end up at Cartel clubs before long) and those clubs tend to cause a lot of bother. Despite their lack of financial heft, exacerbated by PSR, these clubs are competitive. Steve Parish personally is a weird little freak, mind.

can we please not?

not sure which is grimmer

Will be a very good day when this hairstyle that all the lads are sporting goes out of style

all things are possible through Christo

Don’t be playing with my heart. Would be a statement signing.

Depsite the fact this model doesn’t exist anywhere in American professional sports

Didn’t know you could sign with a consortium. Won’t be long before they argue that Chelsea and Strasbourg players are completely interchangeable. Because they’re all technically “BlueCo” employees.

you could find an example of someone saying this about every striker signing for another club. Ignoring how many of these completely flame out.

Barcola, maybe. Though he’s more of a wide forward than an out-and-out striker.

Wish they happened more often, though I understand why they don’t in football. Player trades are so much interesting than straight transfers.

Will have to roll with Gordon and Will

Calling my shot now. Jackson on a loan with obligation, Wissa on deadline day for £45m

Did we even submit a bid for Guehi last summer?

Yeah that’s the sign of a poor manager. Good managers adapt their tactics to the squad they have. Also, I have a hard time believing his tactics are so sophisticated that none of his other CBs can pick them up. edit: or he’s just full of shit and doesn’t want to say, “I want daddy to buy me a shiny new toy.”

We’ll end up with one striker signed and another on loan

There’s clearly a player there. Chelsea wouldn’t have signed him and he wouldn’t be linked with Bayern and whoever else if he weren’t talented. Strong argument to be made that his strengths haven’t been utilized at Chelsea (to say nothing of the general chaos that comes with buying and selling a billion players every year). I do think he’s probably a system-dependent player rather than a world class player in any situation; I wouldn’t expect him to consistently hit 20+ goals ala Isak, but he’s clearly capable of double digits and I think he’d elevate the players around him. A lot of the forum reaction is, understandably, 1) cope and 2) context/timing. A lot of folks would be higher on him if we had targeted him as Wilson’s replacement at the start of the summer and we knew Isak was locked in for the season. Now the link feels like a flailing, knee-jerk reaction.