Holmesy

I completely agree but it's either get some money for them now and gamble or get nowt later on. We could use Osula as Elanga competition and possibly the young Korean lad. Then we spend the £25m from selling both on a new youngster. I've no doubt Eddie will want to keep them because he trusts them but that decision should be taken out of his hands IMO.

They'd both be good pickups for newly promoted teams and would get plenty of game time. The biggest issue with them still being here is Eddie will be tempted to use them rather than moving on. Get rid while we can and bring in younger blood with a higher ceiling,

Mental that Kelleher went to Brentford for £18m. He'd have been ideal for one of our options.

It's Dan Burn as backup LW i'd be more concerned about. He's already pencilled in as backup LB and striker apparently

I'm joking obviously

Manager?

I'm never normally fussed about GK signings - they're boring AF. But having seen our two brainfarts clown-show their way through this season, i'm more excited for a new GK than any other position.

They're different versions of shit though aren't they. You have one manager who by his own admission doesn't believe in tactics and one so wedded to his tactics that he becomes his own worst enemy. The latter is obviously the lesser of two evils but to an extent they're just two variations of cluelessness. You cannot compare Bruce and Eddie from a talent POV and to do so is unfair, but what we have seen this season has highlighted Eddie's limitations where Bruce's limitations were established decades ago. At least Eddie has the intelligence and talent to potentially turn this around - whether he does or not is completely down to him. Regardless, the football this season has been turgid and you can probably count on one hand the games where we've actually looked convincing.

I think Jones is a good talent and would be an adequate replacement for Tonali but as others have pointed out, he's nothing we haven't seen before and we're pretty well stocked in the box-to-box midfielder department. Just shooting the shit but if you consider what midfielders with specialist positions like Wharton + MGW would do for our midfield options instead (unrealistic I know), we go from being able to field different personnel in a flat midfield 3 to a lot more variety. I know, elephant in the room, right...

Yeah, seems odd. Reassuringly the article picks up on pretty much every one of the things that have been discussed at length on this forum. If Eddie is ok with them, let's fucking go. If it proves too much change and too little control for him, we move on.

Looks like a busy summer. Sorting out our striking options is a puzzle as well. Can't imagine we'll start next season with Wissa and Wolte as our optons again.

You'd have to think selling Tino and Gordon would net us £150m, plus whatever else we have set aside, so it could be another £250m summer.

Maybe we're eyeing him as a Tonali replacement.

Current England international, 25 years old, PL-tax but his contract ends next year. Maybe £40-50m?

Unless we have some sort of agreement with Liverpool after selling them Isak, he'd cost a fortune and we're back to hoying loads of money on PL-proven players. I think he'd be a decent signing but doesn't seem conducive to the rumours we've been hearing about our transfer policy. I'm sure he'll have better options than us as well.

Yeah, I think replacing Tino is the least of our worries. Great defensively when he's not distracted but offensively I think we can find better, and make a tidy profit

I think it depends what you mean by technical players. You could argue that Barnes, Gordon, Tonali, Hall, Thiaw are, Bruno definitely is and Isak definitely was but it's more how those technical players are deployed. Asking technical players to play a running game renders the 'myth' wrong technically (excuse the pun) but it doesn't make the point wrong in reality. We could sign peak Ronaldinho but if we're asking him to play a high tempo, high press running game, we're not maximising his technical attributes.

Bullet dodged. He looks like a proper carthorse

It’s the big conundrum isn’t it. We’ll just have to see. It’s the right call going younger/cheaper and you can only assume Eddie has given some assurances he’ll integrate them into the first team but old habits die hard, hence Burn, Willock, Murphy and Joelinton being in the starting lineup on Saturday. Maybe we do a Moneyball and sell them all so he can’t play them and has to adapt.

It's nuts when you look at how far last summer has set us back. I'm not assigning any blame and it's not an Eddie bashing post, I was just thinking about it now - it's water under the bridge anyway. £250m spent and not one of the players has improved us. Thiaw has done well but any better than Schar would've done? It's just so much money to flush down the toilet for a team already hampered by PSR. How many more windows will there be when we can spend that kind of money? We haven't even stood still because those players that needed replacing still need replacing and others are a year older, so we're net a lot worse off. Can't help thinking we would've been better off just signing Jackson to get us through this season and muddling by, keeping the rest of the budget for this summer when we had the proper infrastructure in place. Obviously hindsight is a wonderful thing but we've left ourselves in a right old pickle.

Ah, of course. 👍🏻

Can’t think of any either. And I think it usually comes down to a number of factors - things get stale, players get bored/resentful, the same voices don’t carry the same weight, tactics get found out, players heads get turned, for certain foreign players, the lure of home becomes greater etc. It’s why sentiment like credit is the bank is so risky and why ruthlessness is so rife in football. All we can hope is that Eddie can buck the trend but if those factors mentioned have contributed to our demise, rather than the mitigating factors that many on here cite, it’s a very difficult ship to turn around.

Who was first choice RW? I thought it was always Elanga

Put a dedicated #6 in there and it could make a big difference in giving the others licence to get forward, not that it necessarily stops them now but one covering with two attacking leaves us less vulnerable than the current free-for-all. We looked loads better when Tonali first dropped into that position. I'd love to see a crafty #10 option to open tight defences when the relentless wing play doesn't work but I think that's wishful thinking. Some of Wolte's touches around the box have shown us (in glimpses) how impactful that could be. Maybe a #6 is the key to Eddie unleashing Wolte in that role long-term.