Erikse

When he makes wild claims like "Man Utd are about to go bust by christmas" and all the other wild claims in order to push an agenda for his own benefit, it's not exactly surprising that he would say anything a long as it suits his own agendas. That's why those other claims were problematic. Not because they were so damaging in isolation, but they told us something about his mentality, and what kind of person he is. Which most other fans could see from the start when he came in the door at Man Utd. The recent quotes are not surprising at all.

Ah, so you're not defending everything that he says anymore.

Man City got Exeter (h) and Salford (h). We got Bournemouth (h) and Villa (a).

Talked a lot about the midfield depth before the season. We ended up with a midfield crisis last time in the CL. Since then we've sold Anderson and Longstaff, and brought in Ramsey only. Midfielders do so much work, they'll end up either knackered or injured from playing 2 times per week. On top of that, 3 of our 6 midfielders are injury prone. I'm more surprised about the fact that we didn't end up with another midfield crisis through injuries in december or january.

Who knows, maybe Tonali will look better when Bruno isn't there. Time for him to step up.

Right goalkeeper is the new trend, keep up.

Sure, but all 4 players I mentioned could have been getting good minutes for a top team anyways. Botman being a question mark due to injuries. In a hypothetical world, more of these signings (Isak, Bruno, Tonali, Botman before injuries) would help us make the next leap, although I respect that it's difficult to nail them every time we've done before. I just think that if you compare our signings from abroad to our PL signings, it's pretty clear what we've generally been more successful with.

Yeah, that's why I originally didn't include him. Dan Burn was also a rare one. A geordie wanting to come home (which helped us getting him in january for a cheap price), and exceeded everyones expectation by a mile (not exactly the norm for a PL signing of his profile with age and everything). It's hard to find an equivalent in the PL. I also forgot to mention Thiaw earlier. We signed mostly PL players last summer, but our best signing (so far it seems) came from abroad.

We could include Trippier amongst the overseas players then. Joelinton and Schär aswell, although they were Ashley signings.

Sure, he was a fantastic signing, but the players I mentioned are the type of players that bigger clubs would at some point pay a lot more than what we paid to buy them from us. That was never the case with Burn. I guess it was the case with Gordon once upon a time.

We signed Isak, Botman, Tonali and Bruno from overseas. All signed for smaller fees relative to their quality, and all has played a huge part in our success. I don't think we would get any of those if they were already in the PL, especially not for that price. The only PL signings we've made that can compare to these is Hall and Livra, both bought as talents with high future potensial. When you see underdogs punching way above their weight in the PL, it almost allways involves bargains from overseas.

Here comes @Froggy with the "he didn't say that"..

4 managers in the same season is wild..

Wissa was quick, direct, and had a great shot in him at Brentford. He has only been playing for 2 months after the long spell out. Every striker has a bad couple of months every now and then. Currently the problems with Wolte goes way deeper than it does with Wissa imo, and I think the chance of Wissa hitting some very good form for us is a lot higher. I think he was streaky at Brentford aswell. Ramsey doesn't have a high ceiling, but he has also been performing over longer periods in the PL. You'd hope for a bit more consistency perhaps, but those are hard for us to find, especially when we end up signing PL players that the cartel doesn't want.

He has a point here, though. The cartel is really made of 5 clubs, not 6. Tottenham have a bigger budget than us, but they have still struggled to land top signings in the same way that we do, due to wage cap etc.

Ange is loving this. Instanly going on the Overlap to talk about how hard it is for managers there. Ofcourse he has a point, but he was still shit.

Sure. I'm talking more about fit for the league and/or us, not any ability whatsoever. Physical attributes, for instance. Are there any successful striker in the PL who lacks both speed and strength to the extent that Wolte does?

Both Ramsey and Wissa has shown that they have qualities that suits the system and Premier League in their previous club. I expect Wissa to also find some form eventually. Less confident about Woltemade. The players you mentioned from Bundes have different qualities to Wolte, and were vastly more impressive for their previous club.

I mean you can't blame him, can you? He probably didn't think it would blow up initially, and is he meant to stop because it did?

He's 24. You made it sound like he's 20.

What happened to the 5 cm rule?

That's mostly how he got so many assists at Forest. By crossing it to Wood.

The hair will stay. Again.

Great play by Gordon aswell.

Cheers for the jinx