gjohnson

Deeney always has a field day against us no matter who we play

It's a sad state of affairs when we are looking for Dummet to be fit

How do you pronounce his name? Is it Ekeeteekee, Ekiteeke, Ekeetike? Genuiunely have no idea?

So there are ways an owner can funnel money into a club without drawing attention

Pretty sure Chelsea were on the verge of going in to administration before Roman bought them and then spent an amount on players that was unprecedented at the time. Yes they did buy success initially, but success breeds success and now they can survive without a billionaires help

If anyone ever watched Ideal, there's a great comment from Johnny Vegas on Burnley. "Burnley? What are you doing in Burnley? Hope you've had your jabs"

I would say he's rated exactly as he should be. At a certain point in time he had a good set of contacts and knowledge of players contracts which served us quite well. However this clearly was not permanent and becoming more and more apparent that it was due to being mates with certain agents

This is spot on. We live in times where 20M is now quite a small fee for a good player. We've had 14 years of conditioning to believe that 7M is still a big fee when in reality that would probably struggle to get you a backup Championship defender. Maybe it's a leftover from the Shearer signing that's just been ingrained to our support where anything more than 15M should be a superstar

Ultimately Carr lost his mistique/x-factor or whatever when he was put on the board. Yes he was still finding good players, Aubameyang/Lacazette (at the time), but was totally hamstrung by Barnes/Ashley refusing to pay, and the hidden gems no-one had really heard of dried up. Yes Cabaye had just won the league at the time we got him, but I seriously doubt anyone actually knew how good he was beyond the obsessives who insist on being football hipsters

Carr had his good moments, but clearly wasn't whiter than white given his Ashley association. Cabaye was probably the best move he ever made, and we probably could have got another 10M if JFK wasn't involved

Playing ASM up front was an obvious mistake immediately. It's the kind of thing FM experts try on the PC and big it up as a good idea, ignoring the reality that ASM doesn't have the awareness or shooting ability to be the main striker

Are they still clinging to the hope that Sartori is suddenly going to pour millions into them, and they can do a friendship thing with Monaco where they get first choice of the best players from there

well he might need some practice to show he can do it at Stoke on a cold Tuesday night? PFM Pundit requirement for a good player. Ignoring everything bar his Atletico time of course.

He wasn't wrong... Even driving from London to Middlesboro takes longer than driving from London to Newcastle.

Because they assume the Dreyfuss kid has access to the entire fortune, and not just the interest from the trust fund his mother allows him to have, while at the same time most of them not realising Donald still owns a significant part of their club (probably 49% given Dreyfuss refused to disclose that he had anything more than a controlling stake)

Well it is if you consider it in terms of time actually travelling by anything except a private aircraft.

Swedish fan in peyce. Marra :-)

I'd love to ignore them as irrelevant as Hartlepool and Darlington, but they're just so entertaining. It's like watching a series of Shameless.....you know you should be disgusted by the behaviours, but can't help laughing at the same time.

Transfers can work out really weird sometimes....there's all sorts of non-direct factors which can absolutely bugger them up, or make them far more successful than anyone ever expected. Who would have thought Griezmann, Coutinho and Dembele would have flopped so badly for Barcelona? Before going there that trio should have guaranteed them success. Totally different scale, but who thought Sibierski would have been as good for us? Who thought Bellamy (and Robert) would transform us from a mid-table team to an almost title challenging one?

He was decent but not great....just happened to form a great working partnership with Quinn that was massively effective

I'm totally failing to understand how they can even see that as remotely relevant. It's not like they can sell it to anyone ? Going by that logic our stadium is probably worth 20 times their record signing. How that matters to anyone is beyond me

Probably is, however we may as well just let him go now....we don't need the cash, he's not getting in the team soon barring everyone else getting injured, he's not been great when he has been in the team, it is highly likely that we'll spend significant amounts of money on midfield if not now, but in summer when he's out of contract and not likely to get a new deal from us.

Well even Championship midfielders go for 10-15m now

If a PL team wants to pay 1m for a midfielder, they should be expecting a 16 year old or someone of League 1 standard (which Sean is).