Thumbheed

Reckon I might trust Howe and Mitchell on this one.

Not necessarily suggesting he's our starting midfielder from now on but he's got a lot of qualities that aren't best utilised at left back and would be more affective in midfield, so stands to reason why Howe might seen enough in training to play him there yesterday.

*A few games in midfield

He reminds me of Botman

Saw clips of this lad a while back, plays like an Isak regen

Think we'll get sponsorships by virtue of association with PIF alone tbh. Loads of companies will be looking at a gateway into KSA given the opportunity to do so, we'l be the vehicle for that I'd my guess.

Would raise the expectations of other players, would be the main drawback.

Rational he says

Guess we'll see but I'd be surprised if we don't. An injury prone Willock + Longstaff and Miley doesn't seem like the depth we need in a critical area of the pitch. Especially if Bruno was to get injured.

From the tap in merchant Romano. But either way, your insistence on us not being after a midfielder is getting a bit weird now. Perfectly feasible to want a CM.

CM on the agenda then. Excellent!

Tbh I was just highlighting the fallacy of just using stats to judge a okayer. I'm sure his assist record is very good? But to answer your question, a significant number of our players have scored career high goals over the past couple of years by virtue of our style of play. Neto would not be the exception to that. He's a superb player who's only drawback is his horrific injury record.

The rich tapestry of consequential actions that lead up to goals not scored or assisted by said player.

I did mainly nothing much at all

Yeh I have. But is he getting into the teams who regularly make up the top 4? If you think yes he would then fine, our opinions are completely divided, if it's a no then surely you can see the logic in having a first choice option off the bench who might have the quality to get into those sides - it's not like we haven't got precedence of signing those exact type of players. Bruno would, Tonali has pedigree at a top club (although still unproven over here) and I would argue that Joelinton has a place in those clubs given he's good enough for Brazil. Look at our back up options for our defence (Kelly, Tino and potentially Schar) all of those are good enough for a top club. That's the quality of depth we should be aiming for. Don't think it's that controversial.

I think my reservation is what is the plan if Tonali doesn't make the grade? Seems to be alot of assumptions that him being Bruno/Joe class is a given when it very much isn't. Should he not quite make the grade are we happy with an injury prone Willock and/or Longstaff as the replacement in a run in for CL qualification

Don't think I have, I don't think he could take any of the top teams up a level but the likes of Joe could. Still a very good player and contributed in the same way Longstaff did in the CL year and whilst I rate him higher than Longstaff their impact at their best has been almost the same. Have to bare in mind Isak, Gordon and Bruno are the level we're aiming for. There's no reason therefore why we still can't go after that calibre of player in every postion. Tino and Barnes being good examples of players signed who would be good enough for a starting postion inspite of having similar quality players in front of them.

Willock, Longstaff and Miley are too much of drop off in quality from Bruno and Joe, with Tonali still unproven. (Miley still a way to go to fulfill his obvious potential) Going from Big Joe to Willock is like going from Botman to Burn. Good back up but not the quality we need to maintain a high level for the sustained period we'd need imo.

Soulè reminds me of Olise

There's at least £60m to play with for that position, of that we can be almost certain of.

Thought that Conceição looks a tidy player for Portugal but my YouTube scouting lead me to Edon Zhegrova of Lille and he looked like he had some real quality about him. Neto would be perfect if he wasn't always injured.

We have 2 inverted left wingers and 1 inverted right winger who's likely gonna be sold and he was the preferred choice until latter end of the season. We also play with overlapping fullbacks so yes I think the point still stands. I don't think I said either or, we all agree we need more good players but it's naivety to say whether they're left footed or not doesn't factor into recruitment thinking. We saw that with how they specifically went after a left footed CB.

Balance and tactical. Literally the very reason inverted wingers are the default tactic.

We need a left footer in that front 6.