Keegans Export

I really don't see him chosing us over City. I don't think playing with Bruno + more minutes in the PL is going to trump challenging for titles and guaranteed Champions League football.

Will Shelvey even keep his place in the 25-man squad if he's going to be out until the World Cup? Obviously if there's nobody to fill the space then he will but they might just leave him out then add him back on in January depending on how the squad shapes out.

Any more links to Gouiri? I remember seeing his name pop up fairly regularly but that seems to have died down.

I've said it before but nobody who was at that Cambridge game and witnessed the unstructured mess that was our formation up-close will criticise the Wood signing. Is he a £25m player? Christ no. But which other options were available for that (or less) that wouldn't need any time to adapt to the PL, with the added bonus of weakening a direct rival? Not a great signing. Maybe not even a particularly good one. But definitely not a bad one.

That's the problem - it's disguised as that, but it isn't. Clubs are still going bust, they're still being laden with debt (eg Burnley) and the top clubs are only "sustainable" as long as they are consistently sitting at the top end of the table.

The idea that they called it Financial Fair Play (when it is anything but) then Profitability & Sustainability (see debts at Man Utd, Spurs etc) is a bit of a joke. If they just called it the Annoying Upstarts Prevention Rule then at least I'd appreciate their honesty...

Pretty sure it was a new one, it was black-and-white stripes last season wasn't it? Fairly sure they weren't wearing that.

I think taking out the top six, plus West Ham and Leicester I'd be a bit disappointed if we didn't finish above the rest. Injury crisis aside obviously. The Cups are harder. If we draw City away in the third round then that's just hard luck. I'd say as long as we don't get knocked out by someone below us in the table that would be OK.

There's going to be some serious seethe when they reveal that he's got a £20m signing bonus and that's used up our FFP budget for the summer.

This is something I posted a few weeks ago in response to that lawyer guy being appointed. Looking at how tight we are still (currently) holding the purse strings, I'm even more inclined towards this theory. Obviously our activity over the next few weeks (and ultimately next summer) with either support or oppose it so I'm interested to see how it pans out.

I don't know which is worse, the fake ITKs or the absolute doylems who reply to their tweets with stuff like "Any news on Maddison mate?" I mean, you must know they're full of shite? And if they weren't, they're not going to give Daz in Heaton the inside scoop are they

I wouldn't swap Wilson for Scamacca or Antonio as it stands. I'd swap any of our wingers for Bowen. ASM/Cornet more of a toss-up. Combined best front three is Bowen, Wilson & ASM/Cornet but West Ham's depth is considerably better than ours.

It's not very well worded but it's not inconceivable that we are undecided about either going in with another bid or whether we just move on. Although the way he's worded it suggests Ashworth is just wandering around with a dazed look on his face

I'm probably alone in not being that disappointed if we miss out on Maddison. Quality player no doubt and he would improve us massively but I never anticipated his name even being mentioned. I hadn't even expected us to attempt to sign a central midfielder. So comparing to what I hoped we'd do in this window (LB, CM, RW, CF) missing out on him - in isolation - I can deal with. Obviously my overall opinion on how well the transfer window goes will depend on if/how we fill those RW/CF spots but I'm not going to get too down heartened about not being able to sign a player that a week ago I wouldn't have even considered us bidding for.

He always seems to be the first to report the backroom additions too. Think he was first with the other Carrick, plus the lawyer bloke. Obviously it could be that others get that news too but don't bother reporting it, but it does suggest he has some good contacts somewhere within the club.

Same feeling. Big difference between "around £40m" and "£50m with add-ons"

Stats back it up - Mount has a higher tackle % against the dribble, higher pressure success rate and nearly twice as many pressures in the attacking third. Obviously part of this is how the teams are set up and there's nothing to say Maddison couldn't press more but that's what the numbers say.

Is that £50m with add-ons, or £50m including the potential add-ons? If it's the former, I reckon we could be getting pretty close...

It's very uncommon for a team to table an official bid for a player without having a rough agreement on personal terms. Even Ekitike admitted he would have come here if it weren't for PSGs interest. We'll have a pretty good idea of what he's going to want from us so if (and it's a big if) we can agree a deal with Leicester there's a very good chance he'll sign up.

It was noticeable in one of the Austria games (the second I think?) that we were very much 4-3-3 out of possession, but when we had the ball Anderson was pushing up into more of a #10 position. If we pull off a deal for Maddison I can see him playing that same role.

Always ignore the headline, rarely written by the article writer

His pace on the break means he can misplace the final pass or shoot straight at the keeper even faster

I think Werner operating in a sort of inside-right position with Wilson to his left and Trippier to his right could be quite a handful. Add ASM doing his various madness on the left and that would be an exciting front three. He's also more similar to Wilson than Wood (obviously) so we wouldn't have to change our 4-3-3 to accommodate him when Wilson is out. Wood just isn't capable of playing the lone CF in that system.

Maybe it's time to log out of NO/Twitter for a bit? There's enough to get annoyed about out there without football adding to it.