Erikse

Pretty sure Murphy will start due to pre season form.

Reece James, Luke Shaw and Callum Wilson all injured already. DCL next, and then the new season starter pack will be complete.

Just like Ashworth was deemed a liability in here after going.

I heard he's worth just £35m.

I remember getting a bit annoyed at him allways looking for the killer pass, and instead give the ball away in nearly all of those efforts. I remember ~55% pass success rate in a CL game. He also had a couple of failed block attempts where we conceded that looked very half assed. He was probably affected by the situation he was in.

Not sure if you remember, but we were discussing the bookmakers having Howe as favourite to go first, and expressed our opinion about it.

Most football owners in general are somewhat impatient. They have already proven that they are not hotheads, but that doesn't mean that Howe is immune. I'm sure they consider the injuries and other things last season, but likewise we now have a fully fit squad and no Europe. So currently there's no excuse to a poor first 2-3 months of the season. We would probably have to be mid table or so for it to be a discussion (apart from the usual media gibberish), so I definelty wouldn't put my money on it, hence why it's still not reasonable to have him as the nr 1 most likely one to get fired.

Considering that we now have a near full fit squad, no extra games in Europe, and that we lost out on Europe last season, the owners may not be as patient this time around. But, for the same reasons, and the fact that Howe especially thrives in these circumstances (fit squad and no Europe), I really doubt that we will do poorly.

I noticed that too. Will probably get even worse. I suppose he needs to compensate with physicality and smart movement.

Yeah, I saw that. No idea why it made the preview. Ratcliffe probably messed with the algorithm.

Oh, I actually didn't notice. What a coincidence. And of course, Ratcliffe somehow became the preview image for it. New level of entitledness.

West Ham has such a good team now. If Lopetegui can get them going, they will be a real force. By the way, I've wondered why we don't have a PL thread here, where we can discuss other teams in the PL. We have one for other clubs transfers and FFP for example, I just think it would be interesting to have one for other PL teams in general. Allways feel like I have to put it here, due to lack of a thread for it. Not sure if anyone else is interested in this, though.

His pace must be taking a real hit with all these injuries, especially considering his age.

Ah. Thought he was captain for a moment. He would probably be a great choice for captaincy tbh.

By the way. What exactly does "leadership group" mean? Excuse my ignorance.

Don't worry. In january the media will be back again. Edit: nevermind, they didn't give up yet.

That guy complains whenever you don't spend atleast £200 mill in a window. He has even complained when you did.

I can imagine how clickbaiting Liverpool supporters would yield the best results tbh.

I was a bit concerned that someone else would join in, but he kind of lost me when throwing in the whole Gordon Gomez thing. That was just a PSR deadline thing, wasn't it? Seems like the jornous doesn't know (or just chooses to ignore) that.

True. But I was thinking, do Eddie trust Hall yet? I'm still not convinced that Eddie prefers Hall over Burn at LB, due to tactical reasons. If Kelly gets injured, we just might see Burn there. But now that I think about it, this wouldn't change by signing Guehi either.

I like this one personally. In a dream world we get to sign an exciting CB from abroad for £40-50m, who fits the profile perfectly, and he happens to fulfill the demands of playing in the Premier League rather quickly. I think the club knows how difficult this is by now, especially in todays market. By paying that extra bit of money on Guehi, we know that we will get someone who has been performing both in the PL, and at the Euros. Someone who is proven at this level, and who is still young. We will never get the perfect player, even at this price. Sometimes you have to make some compromises, also in terms of price. And speaking of the cartel clubs, they routinely spend that little bit of extra money when they feel like they really need that player type. They often spend more to get proven PL players aswell, even when they are not the biggest names yet. I agree that another season of Almiron/Murphy would be pretty irritating, but so would Dan Burn at LB. The chance of Burn being a regular at LB decreases with a solid CB signing if we are more comfortable with using Kelly at LB over Burn.

It's also nice to know that we now have youngsters that might be able to do a job if another injury crisis happens.

And Dan Burn aswell.

It did seem like Gordon got offered to other clubs pretty late though. As if we were really struggling. Who know if that was true, or how necessary it really was. (I'm not refering to that BS report from the transfer thread that I saw just now)

I think you need to read my initial post again then. You're talking about something different here. I was saying that we must have done something wrong to put ourselves in a position where we are dependant on a proper bid for Minteh to save ourselves from a disaster, if that was the case. Judging by your replies, it very much seemed like you disagreed with that, by basically saying that pointing our the risk was just "ifs and buts". And that's being too results oriented imo.