Viana

He'll get a bit of a kicking in MLS, but the fans will love him. He was doing alright in Liga MX tbh, it was the racists that ruined it.

If we're being honest, he's not played well enough to get a big move. Some of that is injuries, which isn't his fault, but when he's been on the pitch we've not seen the rampaging defender we first signed. Hopefully he gets his head down, less games to play, and kicks on next season.

One other aspect worth noting; this is another player we've developed and sold on to a 'bigger stage'. I'd imagine it gets easier to convince lads to join when you can point to someone like Gordon, and say, if you put the work in there'll be chances to achieve whatever you set out for yourself.

I would say he lacks Tonali's reputation, but from everything I've seen (highlights + data) he looks to be a ball winning machine.

He's been good for them, but he's just a very good attacking midfielder. You're going to have to build around him to get the best out of him. He's not a standard raiser in my opinion.

Yup. One of the challenges for Wilson is that you might lose out on lads to Bournemouth for those aforementioned reasons. Now say Rayan does great and we try to sign him, he might fancy Chelsea or Man Utd over us. It forces us down the narrow scope of Elanga and Wissa which I'm hoping he'll avoid like the plague. We have good talent ID we just need to be swift.

Throw in the fact the league is more physical and you've basically got 12-15 lads who can run you into the ground and play a bit.

It's weird to say of a player leaving for 80m, but his departure won't sting me anything close to what Isak did. For all the improvement Gordon has made as a footballer, he doesn't feel like one of the pillars of the club post takeover. He missed both cup finals due to his own stupidity and while he did very well in the Champions League this season, the penalty against Qarabag really did feel like him drawing a line between himself and the squad. Maybe that's the ruthless streak you need to reach a team like Barcelona, maybe it's not. Either way, the money we're getting for a player who clearly felt like his time here was done is brilliant.

Are we considering this an early win for Ross Wilson?

- Don't get me started on PSR profits. The mob use more transparency in accounting than half the PSR bollocks -I said 200k when he plays because that's with bonuses included. It was said to be 250k at the time. - That's sort of my point, you picked up an 'investment' that we intended to be our starting number 9 right now. It's all about resources my man. The big clubs have the scope to acquire more. -As I've said previously it's not about an inability to spend money, it's an inability to compete from a salary POV for the likes of Mbuemo. If you can offer Sesko, someone you consider a project player for the long term, more than we offer Woltemade and Wissa, the system has a flaw. -If you want a laugh, Man City won the FA Cup in 2011. That summer, they signed Gael Clichy from Arsenal, Nasri from Arsenal, and Aguero from Atletico. We weren't getting near that level of player this past summer. If anything, we were fighting to keep the team together. Man City's big departure was Jerome Boateng, who had struggled. -We've gone abroad, or at least tried to. Sesko was one. Ekitike was our Isak replacement. We thought that was done and then we were beaten out by the team who ended up buying Isak too. - I'm not blaming every single thing on money. We made some bad calls in Wissa and Elanga. But we've also seen every commercial deal run past the league and its teams. We've seen preemptive rules introduced to stop us selling to Saudi Arabia (when many of our rivals have happily dumped bad transfers there). I'm all for playing by the rules, but I need to believe we're all playing from the same set.

A lot to unpack here. -Being desperate to sell and not actually selling are two different things. Of that group only Hojlund has been sold to date. And even then you took a £26m loss on him. -As for comparing Anderson to the list you did, I would say only Garnacho and McTominay can be considered as having any footprint in the first team, and I don't remember an outcry when either went. Again, floating the idea of selling Mainoo and selling him are two different things. -We'd been hearing about the need to make a big sale for a year or two at least. The vultures had been circling to that end for a while with speculation about it being Bruno or Isak or someone else that had to go. This year it's Gordon. I think to simply explain it as 'they don't want to play for you anymore' is misleading. -I mean sure, but that's also the problem here, is that Mbuemo is pulling in close to 200k a week when he's playing. Sesko similar. If you're offering 160k a week to the lad who's been on the bench half the season, how do we compete with that? That's what I think you're missing here, it's nothing to do with the transfer fee sum total, it's everything to do with the players that are ring fenced off to those of us trying to break through. We settled for Elanga and Wissa because the others weren't available. When Chelsea and Man City had their sharp rise they were allowed to financially compete with the establishment. We're forced to play some janky game whereby we try to hit every note in succession to 'build a club' meanwhile knowing the players we identify are out of reach, and our best players are subject to bids from the same teams we're competing against. Don't forget Man City went out and bought Sterling from Liverpool. There's no way an up and comer like ourselves is doing that to say Liverpool or yourselves.

The rules are beyond stupid. You can't try to force parity at this late stage in the game. Not when someone like Chelsea has racked up a billion's worth of losses under Abramovich. If anything, these rules force teams into more bad financial decisions trying to balance the books alongside staying competitive. Selling yourself a hotel or a women's team isn't a sign of financial stability. It's the equivalent of running to Cash Converters. Now they're trying to instigate what is for all intents and purposes a luxury tax. And through all of this, it's not like we've cured clubs fucking up their finances. Whether it's West Ham, Leicester, whoever, they're all still having to frantically course correct after one bad season.

Fairly sure Dortmund made a big play for him at 17. I think even comparing the lad who arrived to where he's at now, he's taken a big jump. Nothing to say another step up wouldn't draw out the same improvement.

As I said, give it 12 months and we'll see what his ceiling is. I can acknowledge the comparison feels a bit cack handed now, but that's why I said parallels and not exact, because I think we lost out on him because of bad timing. That said, I'm in danger of sounding like a broken record so I'll politely cease my case there.

I think you've seen with ourselves and Villa that we're operating in a different financial cycle to say someone like Man Utd. No one is looking at Man Utd asking which big player they'll sell to balance the books. In essence, you've created a financial bubble that allows you to sign a few duds knowing that you can take the hit. Sancho and Antony costing circa £160m and only returning £20m 4-5 years later is a great example of that. We were forced to sell Isak, but then when it came to reinvesting we were competing with yourselves, who spent touching £250m on Cunha, Mbeumo, and Sesko. Chelsea nabbed Joao Pedro and Liam Delap ahead of us. Players would rather be second choice at Chelsea or Man Utd than first choice at Newcastle. That tells you the system is broken somewhere.

Yeah, I think this is just one we won't agree on, but that's the beauty of football. In a year I may look really stupid (or stupider depending on your opinion ha). As for comparisons with Miley, I think they're very different players. Miley has this uncanny knack of just maintaining his level anywhere on the pitch. He plays the same at CM as he does at CB. That's the sign of a very good footballer. I would also say he has definitely shown his ability and potential at a younger age. I think Anderson took more time to show that first team level ability. As for the price, I don't think many players are worth £100m, but the market dictates the price.

I'll politely disagree with there being no similarities at all, for the reasons stated. I think if you rewatch some of his games for us you see flickers of the player that he has become. He was also in a tricky position rotating between CM and LW. In much the same way, I think calling him a 'water carrier' is incredibly harsh. Man City aren't buying a water carrier. His range of passing and ability to keep it in tight spaces make him a very good midfielder. He's not complete. but I think you're going too far the other way calling him a 'water carrier'.

This should be our Gordon replacement.

That the timing just wasn't right. We needed to sell someone and it had to be him. Now we'll see him do his best stuff somewhere else.

I'd wager the truth is in the middle of what you both say. For all the stick we as a collective have given Howe, it's worth acknowledging that he had to redefine the team's attacking structure last summer. In Alexander Isak he had a complete centre forward that could do a bit of everything on top of being deceptively quick across the grass. The fact he had great chemistry with the team's wingers and midfielders only helped matters further as they knew what to deliver. Compare that to Nick Woltemade and things change quite drastically. Woltemade is technical, but he doesn't have the instincts of a traditional number nine, nor is he as quick or physically robust as Isak. Woltemade's habit of coming deep to link play is so different to Isak in terms of natural instincts. I will say, Isak had the benefit of Callum Wilson doing the heavy lifting early on while he settled and Nick has had no such luxury. The reason I bring all this up is to consider the ripple effect. It's easy to revise the past with Howe, but there were many a game I can think of whereby we scored in bunches and killed teams off. I'd be very interested to know what the average time was between us scoring a first and second goal, and how that compares across the last three seasons. I also think there is an intangible impact involved when switching from Isak to Woltemade, like defensive lines feeling more confident stepping up, and putting more pressure on us. People keep saying we had a shit summer window, but seem to disregard the fact we were rejected by a number of top targets. What makes it weirder is that for the early part of that window us being rejected was all they'd talk about. Right before we signed Woltemade we were said to be close on Benjamin Sesko. Outside of being tall lads in the Bundesliga I don't see many similarities. If anything, I'd say they're opposites. Woltemade is a refined false 9. Sesko is a brute force centre forward.

A brilliant footballer. Torn between sad we couldn't keep him, but also believing he needed to leave to become this player. It's easy to say play the youth but when Tonali, Joelinton, and Bruno are ahead of you it's always going to be a tough sell. The parallels with Gascoigne are there, if not identical.

I watched his highlight reel from this season, and when he's bothered he is a bit of a menace. That fact alone makes me want him gone quicker.

So I can see two schools of thought on this; they dominated the ball, or you let them have it. Either way, they had more of the possession and the teams who let you have it last season tended to do better than those who tried to play through you. I don't disagree on your point re: AFCON, but I will be interested to see if you shop abroad as much as you did last summer. You only signed one English-based player and he flopped quite hard. As I say, this is all new ground for the club so it's all quite intriguing to watch from the outside. Chances are you'll learn a lot of lessons, much like when we returned to the Champions League. Ok, I mean it's small potatoes. I could argue 56-44 with 10 men is dominating the ball, but it doesn't change the overall flow which is, you play your best stuff when working against the ball.

There's every chance they avoid second season syndrome; their recruitment was good last year and it seems they have a very clear idea of the type of player they want to sign. If I'm playing devil's advocate, however, they went on a pretty wretched run from January until mid-March. A lot of their early success this season was built on physicality and winning second balls as well as letting the opposition have the ball. Even yesterday, Chelsea dominated the ball but a silly red card and an own goal has them losing 2-1. You can argue it's Sunderland forcing mistakes, but if they're the ones with the ball the chance of mistakes increases. If those intensity levels also drop (partially due to the Europa League campaign) things might start to shift. Momentum is one of the hardest things to maintain in football. A bad summer window, a few more injuries after games on Thursday and Sunday, and they will start to be tested. We saw it first hand with ourselves.

Forgive me, what am I missing?