Checko

Premier League players can't even sign a pre-contract with us for another month. Anything at the moment is agent talk drumming up the price.

Also worth mentioning, we can't even sign a pre-contract with him until the beginning of June, right? Though I guess he could informally agree first.

So much about being a good defender is about the mental side of the game and just being switched on and alert to danger all the time. An attacking player can mess up numerous times but do one really good thing that makes a goal and they've had an effective game. A defensive player can do really good things all game but mess up once and they're Titus Bramble. Labelling any mistake as a lapse in concentration, instead of, say, lack of awareness or decision making can be unhelpful, which is kind of timeEd32's point I guess. Take Isak's first goal vs spuds - from the moment Bruno wellies it upfield and for the whole pasage of play Isak's on Romero's blindside. Romero doesn't once look round and doesn't notice Isak until he's committed & Gordon plays him through. Is that poor concentration, poor awareness, poor decision making? Basically, he's a good defender until he's not, like all defenders. The question is, how often is the not?

See the latest page of the Longstaff thread, though I get your point.

Had a quick glance at a fulham forum and that seems to be the consensus there. Most don't seem to think he be a starter if he went to a Top 6 club, though there could be a slight degree of copium in the comments. Most seemed reasonably sanguine about things.

Good signing I reckons, though the article doesn't really commit much more than 'we're leading the chase'. With our injuries we can pretty much guarantee him a starting berth at the beginning of the season, which may help. Anyway, he was an absolute mainstay of my FM20 Burton Albion team (signed him on an end of contract then too) so I hope it goes through.

There's this, football insider again, but also with Kieran Maguire, who is basically the only person on the internet to confidently assert he understands how FFP fucking works. https://www.footballinsider247.com/newcastle-united-budget-to-rocket-under-new-rules-kieran-maguire/ "Maguire explained that the rule change would be “excellent” for Newcastle as the current regulations stop them from challenging the established elite. If anchoring rules are introduced to the Premier League, this will be excellent for a club such as Newcastle,” Maguire told Football Insider’s Sean Fisher. "They are very much constrained by the existing PSR rules which are designed to favour the interests of larger clubs. Giving all clubs in the Premier League the same ceiling means that Newcastle can take off the shackles that they presently have and increase spending significantly. However, it has to be kept in mind that Uefa are using a soft salary cap, so therefore any benefits given in terms of the domestic competition will be offset should Newcastle be playing in Europe.“ Of course given no-one else understands any of this he could just be blagging it.

And we probably didn't deserve the draw to Wolves or the win against Fulham. Forest away wasn't particularly convincing either IIRC. Sheffield United was good though.

Yeah, especially if we get Lloyd Kelly. Perhaps we're looking to get extra income for FFP by becoming a physio training academy. I'm very paranoid after this year, every time someone says 'he'd be a good signing' I have to go and look up their injury history

Colwill seems to pick up a few injuries mind, which is a bit worrying for a young player. A couple of months this year, a month the year before, couple of months the year before that. https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/levi-colwill/verletzungen/spieler/614258

De Zerbi wants to bugger off. I remember seeing in an interview last year he was saying he didn't plan to stay for long. It's tough trying to build something at a club where you know you're going to lose your best players every year. Still, his team's form's not putting him in the best position for a better job.

Bowen would be quality but after the season he's having he's probably at peak value right now so I very much doubt we could afford him. From Wiki he was a Man U fan growing up. If they can shift some players this summer he'd be a cracking Antony upgrade for them.

The club should put out a job advert for someone who's entire role will be: 1. To laugh hysterically down the phone at any club who enquires about buying him. 2. To then repeatedly call that club back just to keep laughing hysterically at them.

Yeah looked to me like he kicked it just a tiny bit too far ahead of himself and then had to stretch and caught his studs.

Yeah lack of control of playing time/needing a replacement etc. are certainly fair points. But I think the Championship gets underrated for developing players, just looking at recent England players, loads were developing in the Championship at his age: Maddison, Kalvin Phillips, Grealish spend 3 years there in his early twenties, Eze, Conor Gallacher spend a year on loan there before he was loaned to premiership teams. Bowen, Watkins, Toney etc all spent years developing their game in lower divisions until they were older than Anderson is. It's not ideal having him on loan, but my feeling is at his age (21/22) he's not going to reach his potential without consistent first team football (i.e. regularly starting in a settled position) and I don't think he's ready for that yet here. Not at the level we want to be at. You might find a bottom half premier league team for him, but as an attacking midfield I'd rather have him in a good championship team personally, and knowing he's going to be one to their better players is going to help ensure minutes. Even if it's maybe a loan till Jan with the option to extend. Alternatively he can be a useful squad player here. Ideally he absolutely tears it up in the final games and shows himself to be first team ready. I suspect he'll be a squad player next season as well though, which is fine. But he's in a very formative part of his development - he won't be seen as a young prospect for much longer, and I just think he really needs a year of being a consistent first team starter.

He's got a lot of good qualities but I still think he holds on to the ball too long all the time. Completely ignored a few good overlapping runs by Hall yesterday because he was too busy with his relentless shimmying. If I was a coach picking one thing for him to focus on it would just be 'pass the ball quickly.' I reckon he'd benefit greatly from a year on loan in the Championship. Consistent game time at a settled position would help him develop, and he's never had that here. He'll be 22 in November, and unless he can really nail the end of the season and force himself into a first team player, I can't see him becoming the player he could be just being a squad player filling in irregularly in a bunch of different positions. Of course that would leave our squad shorter if he went out on loan though.

He should take No. 9 He should take No. 9 to represent the 9 No.1 Singles Abba had in the UK IMO.

Think they were talking about him equalling Beardsley as our 2nd highest goalscorer in the PL era. Probably a few assists behind Pedro mind.

Didn't think that was a pen tbh, looks like he got the ball and just tangle of legs

The way we play we basically only have Bruno in the middle. The other 2 CMs both go and stand in a wide V ahead of him, often just standing there. There's no movement there at all. Then when we lose the ball there's absolutely no cover in the middle and we're so easy to counter on. This has been the problem all season. Would much rather see us play more of a 4231. Keep one of our other CMs deeper so Bruno actually has someone to pass to in the middle and cover if he goes forward. Particularly as we've got 2 attacking fullbacks, we need another CM to sit in. Think Tino and Hall have done well. Burn's made some brilliant blocks. Hopefully we step it up, but you feel like they have so much space when we lose the ball and our CBs are so slow that we're going to keep giving up chances.

Howay lads! Please be good at footballering today.

Monty Don's gonna be pissed off with that.

Hmmm, 'Drilldo gets the job done' appears to be trademarked: https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmcase/page/Results/1/UK00915894017

Nice. Trademarking that.

Agreed, we need to get into these fuckers like a pneumatic dildo.