Erikse

Atletico went big on Sørloth (32m euros) and Alvarez (95m euros) last summer. Is it realistic to count them in?

I think it's a very real possibility, even if we have several targets. That's why most clubs doesn't buy in january. I don't think it would be an excuse though, the real mistake was to seemingly not have enough targets in the summer. I can understand not wanting to waste money by overpaying in january.

Sure, but if all the players we go for are being priced too high, we might still wait. I think we tend to focus on the long term when it comes to transfers (despite our accident with PSR), like doing nothing instead of overpaying (like we did with Guehi).

Another question is whether we even want to do deals in january, unless it's absolutely necessary. In the window where we signed Gordon, I'm confident Ashby would've been our only signing if Gordon didn't ditch training, despite our push for top 4 at the time.

Probably yes, but I'm talking about exactly that. We're not forced to sell unless he makes a huge deal out of it, and that's very unlikely.

Were there no rules against this behaviour? Could he not have told the main ref to send him off? Admittedly I'm not sure what consequences this got, but I don't think Klopp got sent off many times at all.

Even if he really wanted to leave, which hasn't really happened yet with any of our stars despite numerous of articles saying so, I think we would be able to get atleast £90m. A fee of 90-100m is a possible outcome in that case, IMO. I just don't think that he would want to leave that badly next year, even if we're not in the UCL.

Seeing people are arguing stuff like "he can't play twice in a week", as if it's either 180 min or nothing. It's not like he HAD to start both, even just coming in after 60 would atleast show that he somewhat prioritized it. Seeing the presser with Solbakken is allways infuriating, the guy gets way less critical questions than any other manager in a similar position, and still starts crying and attacks the journo everytime someone asks him something remotely critical. Most of the time there's nothing wrong with the question, it's just that he doesn't want to answer the question, so instead he becomes super defensive. Eddie Howe conducts himself infinitely better when he gets asked questions that are 10 times worse. Worst part is, the NFF are just as toothless as Solbakken himself, and that's why he's still there.

3-0 at half time, and then a certain Uruguayan striker comes on. We all know what happens next.

Pretty sure any of us can do the jobs that football journalists do nowadays.

Any bets on the next story? Lewis Hall to Real Madrid? Or just the same old Bruno stories?

Bet he'll leave pretty quickly if it keeps going like this. Just for the sake of his own image and reputation.

Feels like it sends a really bad message to the rest of the national team. Their captain prioritizes his club over them. He could probably still decide to play for Norway, no way Arteta can punish him for it.

He can't really refuse Øde to play for Norway, though? You mean since he used him for the full 90?

0 senior CBs on the bench next game. Scary.

The things they do for retweets and clicks nowadays.

He tries really hard to appear humble, but in reality he's far from it.

Ah, yeah, I see now that it was actually 8-3-0 in the league with him starting at LW. Not 7-3-0. My OCD had to correct it.

I think my stats from last page was Premier League specific, the one you linked includes the cup. Nothing wrong with including the cup though, we met lots of PL teams in the EFL cup.

Was the perfect opportunity for players like Anderson and Tonali to make a name for themselves playing every week, though! Oh, wait..

Yeah I think the expectations before the season didn't end up being correct, but the Willock injuries were so annoying. I honestly think we would've had to deal with rumours of all the top clubs wanting him right now if he stayed fit. A bit extreme, but he was only 22 in that 22/23 season and he already had some very exciting abilities. The sky was the limit for him. I think Maddison would've been fantastic for us personally.

He might have had something to do with the Hall transfer. That's all the credit I'm willing to give him. Even that is hard to tell from the outside.

We hit really good form at the end of last season, went from ~16th to 10th in the away table. We were winning both home and away at that point. Before january 30th our away for was quite dreadful with just a couple of exceptions. I think the performances at Bournemouth, Wolves and Fulham alltogether gave us a bit of flashback to the first 2/3rds of last season, except from the fact that we actually beat Wolves.

Bend it like Joelinton

It was part of the reason that I was a bit surprised when we bought Barnes, like I kind of just accepted that we weren't going to play Joelinton that much at LW anymore. Thought it was because we needed him to cover CM for depth. Happy he's back and performing at LW like in 22/23. That said, do we how well he works at LW when Willock isn't there to interchange? Did we try that? I think his strengths are still best suited for the wing anyways.