Erikse

Well, why would he lie right after signing him about personally watching him play with AC Milan and signing him because of the way he played there?

When he signed: Newcastle boss Eddie Howe has revealed he signed £52million midfielder Sandro Tonali after he “fell in love” watching his play for AC Milan last season. “We pursued him for a long, long time, paid a big fee for him because I fell in love watching him play the game last year. “He’s an outstanding talent. He can do a little bit of everything. Very similar to our other midfielders, he’s got a combination of a lot of attributes that I think will suit the Premier League.

But he kept going on about how he watched him before we were in for him, and how he fell in love with the way he played?

From the start it felt like a signing that would be decent for what we used to be pre takeover, or for what Bournemouth used to be when Howe was there. One of those that we would've been hoping to move on a couple of years into the new ownership if he was here when we got taken over. He's a squad player, but I really hope the wages aren't as crazy as some of the reports say. Even Krafth at CB seems better so far, like..

And Howe wanted Tonali (55m), but would rather play Longstaff.

West Ham knew exactly what lineup we were going to play, and exactly how we were going to play it. It's not really a secret that we will go the exact same route for the next one when we win. It has worked before, mind, but feels like it's getting too predictable at this point.

Seems like it, but the whole Burn thing was every game regardless of result and performance. Will be interesting to see whether we make a change for the next one. Generally I'd like the lineups to be a little more proactive.

I don't understand why we never really rotate based on opposition, isn't that a quite normal thing to do when you have the players to do so? We've improved our squad depth last season, but we're not really taking full advantage of it imo. For example Burn automatically playing at LB every single game over Tino, even when he was bound to get bullied by a fast winger. We're playing Longstaff over Tonali in games where we're likely to have the ball quite a lot. What is the tactical reasoning behind that?

He has been available to play since august. It's rare that any player gets benched due to international games, let alone one that played in Europe. There's no reason to manage minutes anymore, it's purely going with the winning team, and going with who he trusts from the past.

He'll nick one in, and be off with a fractured forehead.

I do have all of those. Except I have Son instead of Saka. Unfortunately I have 0.0 in the bank, so I can't switch. Saka seems like the better option for sure, but I didn't consider this issue when I spent all my funds before the weekend. I realised it right after, before the gameweek even started. I'll probably roll and see if I still want to make the change after, then I can use 2 free subs for it. My defence is pretty cheap bar Raya and Gabriel, that's how I managed to afford it all.

And some more highlights if you can take it (wouldn't be shown as embedded for some reason) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwJ8kvM9TKA&ab_channel=BarcaGravity

Need Ray Hudson in the Premier League.

Not sure saying luck based game was the right term, that seemed like a contradiction, but I think everyone gets the point anyways haha. I really want Pedro myself, but I have Jackson, Isak and Cunha. Wondering if I should've just gone for Pedro over Jackson for the funds, but spending a transfer to get rid of an in form Jackson doesn't seem like a great idea. I suppose I'll just have to hope Pedro doesn't go crazy. If any of my strikers gets injured or I need the funds, I'll do the transfer later. Just sucks that his price will go up very fast.

Haven't watched Chelsea that much, but.. is Madueke really playing that well? He seems to be preferred over all the other great options, like he hasn't been rotated in the league yet (apart from not playing gameweek 1). Palmer, Jackson and Madueke seems to be the regulars, with Neto, Sancho, Nkunku, Felix and Mudryk fighting for the last spot.

Like with every game based on a lot of randomness (poker for example), the higher the sample size, the more telling it is. You're supposed to maximize the odds in your favour, and pure luck usually evens out quite a lot over time. Monthly winner is mostly luck. The season winner is way more skill. Ofcourse you're also dependant on a bit of luck if you're competing against other highly skilled players, but luck by itself won't get you that far. The biggest luck factor must be the first few gameweeks, as those are very important. But here the best players does a lot of research before the season.

Sometimes I consider focusing more on Serie A rather than PL. Might even follow a team there. The only top league where several teams can still win it, and where the winner changes regularly.

Amorim out! Get van Nistelrooy back in there!

Yeah, input is allways great though. Difficult question, but do you expect Johnson and/or Maddison to match or get more g/a the coming games? Son is a difficult one for me to predict this season.

How often does anyone do that in january? That's completely unrealistic imo. See what I posted about their spending. They won't change completely and go crazy just incase they have a small chance of catching up. They're not acting like Chelsea, and even if they were, it doesn't necessarily work. It took Chelsea a long time to make it work, and they bought some seemingly great players. Quick fixes are very hard to pull off in january, for any team.

This is purely based on transfer fees, they've obviously spent a lot more in other ways. 10 teams in the league has spent more on transfer fees in the last 5 years. Those teams include Forest, West Ham and even Palace(!). Even Ipswich gets kind of close just with their summer window before this season. I don't think they will panic and overspend in an expensive january window, it's not like they are that depserate for another league win (especially being that far behind anyways), but I also wonder why they are not spending more.

They spent 120 mill euros on Doku and Nunes last season, while selling Palmer for 47m.. Gvardiol in for 90m, massive price, but he has been good enough. This summer was strange. They sold players for a total of 141 mill euros, but yet all they got was Savinho for 25m euros and Gundo for free. Their net spent for the last 2 seasons is close to 0 in transfer fees. What's going on with that? Is their wage budget and ammortization from older signings causing trouble for them in terms of PSR? They should have lots of price money aswell.

This is the first time since Guardiola took over that I'm basically writing Man City off before christmas. It's not just based on the fact that it's an 8 point gap, they just don't have a good enough team to catch up this season, as they would have relied on Rodri. Rodri was a massive contributor to all of their comebacks in the past, the few times they've had to play without him, their winrate has allways been very different. Arsenals and Liverpools starting lineups are currently consitenly one step above Man Citys in quality, and this has never been the case before during Guardiolas time here. Basing your opinion purely on historical events is meaningless without all the other context. I'm not writing Arsenal off yet, though.

That's just how they roll mate.