SteV

I know (a little bit) one of those blokes. He’s a nice enough fella, so I’ll take the liberty of assuming the ‘bantz’ of that group isn’t as horrendous as it looks.

We should be all ov… Good player, but more left-sided really isn’t he? Not much use to us anyway. Tbh, I always seem to watch him and think ‘he’s really good, but I want him to do a bit more’. Plus the memory of that honking pen will linger for a while.

Will have to pay world class money for a world class talent.

Have we ever had another keeper who’s played for Benfica before?

He’s currently Spurs highest paid player. Not much chance he goes from that to a ‘pay as you play’ type job. You’d think a club that see’s marketing potential as much as playing ability will make him a substantial offer (MLS).

“Newcastle kept their negotiations with AC Milan for Italy international Sandro Tonali a closely-guarded secret two years ago, deliberately leaking alternative names in order to distract from their ultimately successful attempt to land the midfielder.” First ever confirmation of a smokescreen?

Brighton signing that Greek kid, and the odd loan made permanent (Todibo, Alcaraz). But not really, no.

Nah, I don’t think we could have. He chose Bournemouth cos they were prepared to give him exactly what he wanted. More and more young players and their ‘advisors’ are going down the Bellingham route of choosing clubs to be a stepping stone on the career path they’ve mapped out for themselves. Occasionally, you might find an instance where that works for you, but I’d be wary of it. At least whilst Eddie is our manager anyway, as that just doesn’t align with his MO. As, for Bruno’s release clause, I’d say that was IMO high enough (reportedly anyway), as to be transformative, so those ones I can probably live with.

Do we want players that will only sign if you give them a release clause? Don’t think we do really (unless it’s a transformative amount), as Eddie often stresses the need for players to be ‘all in’.

Looked on a different level physically tonight. Like a racehorse amongst ponies.

And according to Liverpool Twitter they’ve started speaking Spanish.

Now Olympiakos are flush with cash, I wonder if they need a keeper…

If they’re going to sort of out some kind of loyalty/hierarchical structure for members, they need to do have it sorted for home tickets, before worrying about away tickets. Waste of time trying to sort something sensible when you’ve got ~3k tickets available, if you can’t get even get it done when there’s ~20k available. Once you got it working for home tickets, by all means look into what can be done regarding away tickets.

Depends how you look at it I suppose. You’re quite right in what you say - but - if we look at what Villa did last season, they significantly strengthened themselves for the second half of the season, without the massive outlay it would have cost to do that permanently. Ultimately it failed as they didn’t make CL, but it was a reasonably calculated risk, that almost got them back to the CL riches. I prefer our/Eddie’s way though. In a world of everything revolving around transitional and periodic financial strength, it’s (almost) wholesome to buy a player and watch him gradually improve with the team (even if you did pay millions for him in the first place).

It would take a fairly significant change in mentality from Eddie. I know the financial arguments that would be put forward for it, but as adaptable as Eddie has been to certain situations, the ability to develop players and reap the rewards from that, feels like one of his key principles. Can’t see him changing that.

People need to realise that Eddie isn’t interested in loans where there’s little to no chance of the player becoming a permanent signing. That’s not how he works. He’s completely different to someone like Emery. Grealish has two years left on his contract, so ignoring the arguments about his abilities (or not), and how he fits into our team (or not), the only way it would be viable is if Man City paid at least 50% of his wages for a season whilst on loan to us, then sold him to us for a reasonable fee with one year left, and he was willing to take at least a 50% pay cut. Anybody think that’s very likely?

Burnley losing Egan-Riley to Marseille for nowt. Might need some funds for a replacement…

He’s got two years left.

It’s 350k?

In that Charlton game, you got paid out if you backed Phillips to score first, even though he only got the fourth goal of the game

Dubravka’s 36 with one year left on his contract. Anything over a million and we’ve done well.