Holmesy

The manager dictates the style of play, the tempo, the tactics and the gameplan, and you think someone else should have final say on the players he gets to do that with?! WTF?! That’s absolutely mental!

Even if we do we're unlikely to see them in the first team for a while. It would be a crying shame to start another season with the same shit right wing options but that looks like the reality

This is utter guff! Football has changed. It is more about running, stats, POMO, cynicism etc. All of the players mentioned from past eras are better technical footballers than anything in the current France national side. Modern players are fitter and capable of playing the game at higher intensity but that comes at a cost technically. They're also protected to a ridiculous level which means they're all soft as shit. Mbappe is considered world class now because players in general are shitter, not because he's a generational talent - who exactly is he competing with to be world class? It's not Ronaldo, Messi, Zidane, Ibrahimovic, Totti, Van Persie, Henry, Iniesta level players. Nowhere near in fact! And I'm not harking back to the 70s here, those are modern era players. Most of those players retired in the past 10 years.

Yeah, I don’t buy this at all. Technically, English players have moved on enormously in the past 10 years or so. We have 6-7 top quality players in that squad who are as technically sound, gifted even, as anything Spain put out on the pitch. When people talk about Man City, who is credited for making them amazing - Pep. Man United’s dominant reign? Fergie. Chelsea’s dominant reign? Mourinho. Etc. when teams are excellent the manager is hailed, when they’re shit people start talking nonsense about the players. Southgate is a tactically-poor, risk-adverse manager with no discernible style of play and a weak character, pandering to players like Kane and ignoring better options in favour of his little golden boys. He can’t win big games and his record against more tactically astute managers is shit. Good managers make teams better than the sum of their parts. Shit ones make groups of talented players look wank!

It was a bit tongue in cheek to be fair, but he isn't a scratch on any of France's best forwards in the past 20-30 years. Football has changed - he isn't playing against the calibre of players that likes of Henry, Anelka, Trezeguet, Wiltord etc were.

Zidane, Henry, Trezeguet, Pires, Galas, Evra, Vieira, Makelele, Ribery, Abidal, Thuram, Djorkaeff, Karembeau, Petit, Benzema, Giroud, and you could name another 20-30. None of the current France team would get in any France side from probably 96 onwards, with the possible exception of Kante, and i especially include specialist sprinter, Mbappe in that.

What no one seems to be talking about at the moment is that Southgate has managed in an era where most of the big international football teams are worse than they have been for decades, arguably except us: France - worst French side player-for-player for probably 25 years Germany - probably the worst they have been for 20 years Italy - bang average Netherlands - bang average Belgium - golden generation aging - missed their opportunity Portugal - decent side to be fair but pandering to Ronaldo. Still nowhere near the Figo era Spain - despite winning it, probably the worst Spain side for 20 years Croatia - worst team for 20 years Etc. Look at the players each of these teams had at their disposal when Sir Bobby, Capello, Venables, Ericsson etc managed. Different kettle of fish. Obviously you can only beat what's in front of you, and it would be overly harsh to suggest Southgate is totally shite, but the media hardly tell the full story. Southgate's overall win ratio is 59%. His win ratio against top 10 FIFA ranked teams is 30%, in an era where they are all the weakest they have been for a long time.

Wasn't there a comment recently from the club about not being afraid to go deep into the transfer window to secure better deals?

Awesome! Can he play right wing?

Hopefully nothing to worry about. So who will be the new face of the club? Eals? Mitchell?

No, but he'd be a hell of upgrade on Longstaff

Bowen would be great but he's shacked up with the most cockney lass on the planet and they've just had twins. I can't see her being desperate to move 300 miles north.

Our links to him are irritating because I don’t see how he improves us in any way, and every time we’re linked with him the price tag quotes is higher than what we paid for Bruno. if he was a £10m squad filler I’d have no issue with the links.

Isn't he a left winger?

Look, those things were said tongue in cheek and there's every chance i sound like a condescending prick with this, but in well-functioning businesses, when incidents/mistakes the size of the Tonali one occurs, there's usually an internal investigation that involves deep diving your process and one of two things happens: 1. You ascertain that your process was at fault and you make it more robust to avoid the problem happening again 2. You establish that your process is as watertight as it could be, you accept that there is an element of risk involved that can't be mitigated, and you put an insurance policy in place to compensate you should that risk occur. This could be in the form of an actual insurance policy or a clause in the contract with the selling club (unlikely) What you don't do is just shrug it off as 'one of those things' and move on without change. We've no idea what our internal investigation found or what action we have taken as a result. Talk of phone tapping and P.I is said in jest but the suggestion that there's nothing we could have done and nothing we could do going forward is naive, and it certainly wouldn't satisfy the money-men at the club or the owners. I can say with 100% certainty that something will have changed following the Tonali debacle. We're too well run now for it not to have

I wasn't actually being serious about tapping his phone, for the record.

No mate, that would've been really fucking rude wouldn't it?! I was referring to the simpletons. No idea who they were..........but they do!

Taking a short break from smashing rocks with a hammer to comment on my post and give me dog's abuse

That makes sense! You can imagine them up in the background just long enough that we miss their financial deadlines. This whole thing just stinks to high heaven

I got absolute pelters when the Tonali rumours around his gambling were announced, for suggesting that our player vetting/research process wasn't robust enough - the usual simpletons on here suggesting I was saying we should get the CIA involved etc. But it's all too easy to brush off the financial side of things when it's the PL because it feels like Monopoly money - it was 50 million pounds!! 50 fucking million pounds! Anywhere else, where that amount of money is being spent, every minute detail is poured over to minimise risk. If we didn't have a leave-no-stone-unturned process before, I really hope we've learnt our lesson and do now. And yeah, if that means getting private investigators involved at a cost of £20k or asking Piers Morgan if we can borrow his phone-tapping equipment, just fucking do it.

Sports Direct going back up?

So it sounds like the whole of the PL was aware of our financial predicament and Man Utd tried to use it to their advantage in low-balling us. Since we raised the money needed they coughed up a reasonable sum? I mean I know it's business and all that, but that's a shady-as-fuck way of operating. No surprise at all but well done the board for not backing down. Plastic manc cunts!

Can you imagine watching him turn out for those scumbags. It would've been sickening!

It seems very unlike 'us' under our new owners to leave ourselves so vulnerable to PSR punishment. Were they expecting an influx of revenue from somewhere that failed to materialise? Could the new restrictions on sponsorship deals have left us with a big financial hole to fill? Either way, to leave it until the very last minute to sort it out is incredibly risky. It's the kind of thing you'd expect under Ashley, not Amanda and co.