TheBrownBottle

He did his job and helped us stay up. With Isak and a fit Wilson he was absolutely surplus to requirements, and PSR means we couldn’t leave him as third choice. Always appeared to be a good pro, and a decent bloke, so good luck to him - but I don’t look enviously Forest’s way.

Gateshead really should move into a proper football ground at some point

Pretty much - another boyhood Evertonian

Boyhood Evertonian. It was the least successful Liverpool side of the past 60 years he was a part of, so I can understand if there’s not a huge amount of sentimental feelings towards him.

We should not play more often

In all honesty the league is so tight that feels like a better result - Bournemouth are more likely to fall away of course

Free header in the six yard box, Sels looking exactly as he did for us there

There we gan

I still think we’re more likely to catch Forest than Liverpool, so as miserly as it seems I’m not happy that they’re winning.

Likewise. This does have echoes of when Leicester won it - all of the Sky Six were in a ‘transition’ season (ie were shite)

There’s no way the lad was valued at that at the time.

It’s really annoying when clubs do dodgy things to get around PSR. Apropos of nothing, Elliot Anderson was definitely worth £35m and that Greek goalie was definitely worth £20m. Definitely.

Must be good having two young players that you hope might play for England one day. We’ll just have to put up with the three young players who are now England regulars. Ah well.

Never felt like a straightforward place to go, but it’s still a plum tie and I fully expect us to be in the hat in the 5th round

Didn’t look right at all vs Bromley, this isn’t a surprise but it’s a pisser. I like what the lad offers, I love his directness. Shouldn’t impact it - he’s only out for a month, and Joelinton can certainly play LW if Gordon is out

There’s always an English premium, but regardless Rice is a superb midfielder and we’ve seen that when he played against us in the past for West Ham and for Arsenal. Bruno and Tonali are clearly excellent midfielders too. Push comes to shove I think Rice is just about the best player of the three, but there’s not much in it.

It’s all speculation, but there isn’t any other reason I can think of that the club would pay more money for the remaining six months of a player’s contract unless they said they were off. Clubs in Europe have been able to do this for nearly two decades now, but there seems to be a collective agreement not to take players under these circumstances (because they’re all vulnerable to it - and of course it impacts selling and buying clubs).

Haha yeah, MOTD commentators would get far more moved by ‘cheating’ (ie going down easily) than common assault 😁

Ah, the days when a deliberate headbutt would fetch a belated one-match ban

The wingless wonders Clint man

The formation was a mess and Pistone kept moving out there first half.

The happy days of playing in a cup final and chanting ‘attack attack attack’. Gutless stuff. Tbh Barton often would effectively end up RW as Pistone (who was right footed) had a habit of playing both wings. Barton did regularly play RW for Wimbledon before we signed him for an exorbitant fee, so his being out there wasn’t that crazy. I still hate Dalglish after all these years, mind

No, he played RWB. I was at all of those games - Dalglish often played 3-5-2 (or, because it was Dalglish, 5-3-2). His tactics and shape were often a complete mess by the end of 97/98. Sometimes they would erroneously show Pistone at LW. He wasn’t. Beresford did play LW a few times that season, oddly enough - and bagged a few goals (he didn’t score often before that). Screengrab from the 1998 Cup Final line up:

Because the Webster ruling means he can buy out his own contract and piss off to Saudi straight away, which gives him leverage. Clubs in Europe have been reluctant to do it; perhaps KSA clubs wouldn’t give a shite.

Warren Barton never played on the wing - though I was at Anfield when he briefly played up front. He scored Dalglish signed Speed and immediately put him on the left wing … let’s just say Speed wasn’t a popular player on Tyneside until Robson started playing him in the ‘right’ manner