Checko

With frees I guess you accept you pay over the odds in signing bonus/wages, but of course you save on the big upfront cost of a transfer fee. When selling you then might get less to subsidise the player losing relatively high wages (assuming they leave to take a step down), but you've already benefitted from a lower initial fee. Even if you're paying an extra £50,000 per week on wages, say, that's still only £10,000,000 over 4 years. Can probably more than offset that on a good players by selling them, even if you take a slightly reduced fee due to the high wages. Basically, if you sign someone decent on a free you're probably fine. If you sign Jeff Hendrick god help you.

Just think of the profit from shirt lettering going from Pope to Mamardashvili. I mean yeah, there's not going to be that many buying 'keeper tops, but still, enough to offset much of the fee probably.

Ultimately it's a Football Manager world and every player over 30 needs to be sold before their physical stats tank.

If we really want him then I'm sure PIF could offer him two private toilets. Or even a toilet and a urinal for extra efficiency. He's a hard worker by all accounts one account I read, so that might really appeal to him and show that we're suitably ambitious.

Palace have been outstanding recently and looks like they've found a system that really suits their players. Wouldn't surprise me at all if he thought, 'you know what, maybe I'll just stick around and see if this squad I've helped build can really go somewhere.' On the other hand, perhaps because of the above, his stock's particularly high at the moment and it might be a great time for him to get a new job. At the very least he's probably given himself the leverage to negotiate his own private toilet from Parish, and who wouldn't want that? Well played Dougie, well played.

Pretty sure you're thinking of Alisson tbh

No idea tbh, all I know is that I'm team tram all the way. Trams are what happen when model rail enthusiasts decide to do something productive with their time and build some actually useful transport infastructure instead.

Well more fool you for not getting a tram, that's what I say.

"Transport (... Currently, the stadium can be reached by different kinds of public transport. By buses: 103, 403, 435 and tram 18, 21 from the north side, and by the trams 3, 10, 20, 22, and bus 128 from the south side.[22] [...]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrocław_Stadium I fucking love a tram me. They're like hyper buses.

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/giorgi-mamardashvili/verletzungen/spieler/502676

Hell yeah! If in-house media doesn't do a Tonali 80's training montage then quite frankly they should all be sacked.

Yeah I knew about the others, in fact I knew about the goal kicks in the past, but just had a bit of twatbrain thinking 'keeper's booted it forward & he's in a offside position. Bastard.' No time for proper consideration when there's outrage to be had!

But isn't this basically the point of xG? It's to analyse each individual shot and say, regardless of what the shooter actually did, was it a statistically good goal scoring chance? Rather than just relying on a cruder law of averages. xG doesn't say who deserved to win on overall play (a particularly good GK should mean you outperform your xG against, a particularly clinical striker means you would outperform your xG). A defensive howler could gift you a gilt-edged chance or a penalty out of nothing that gives you extra xG the quality of your play didn't deserve. xG, as far as I understand it, just tells you: based on the shots this team took, this is how many goals we would expect them to score. There's useful information to get from that, but also limitations. Just like any individual statistic.

Ah is that right, for some reason didn't know that

There's also some subtle stuff with VAR - like less outright diving in the box because players know it'll get picked up on. Yes there's a bit still, but probably less than there was before.

EDIT: I'm wrong about this, as craigmadge points out For their second goal, Toney wins the intial flick on but he was about 5 yards offside when it was played forward to him, (see 8.10 when the goalie launches it forward), so that shouldn't have stood. Would have been a shame as it was an outrageous finish but still, rulez is rulez.

Europa League at the moment, but if Man U win the FA cup, Man U get the Europa League spot and Chelsea drop to Conference. I think that's how it is.

If his technique was as good as his knee slides he'd be some player.

Nice to see Pope back, though he hasn't played in, what, over 5 months? There is a bit of risk of lack of match sharpness tbf. Also we're crap away from home so I'm not very confident about this. Murphy, Longstaff and Krafth as our right-sided trio has been found a little lacking in the past.

Feel like they should have been saturday kick offs. If you win the league on the final day surely you want saturday night to enjoy it.

Tbf the entire gambling industry works on the principle of 'you give us some money, on average we'll give you less back.'

Out of curiosity, which team got the goalkeeper?

I'll never look at granny's doilies the same way ever again.

If they're fresh chips, like Villa's this year, I don't think they should be begrudged enjoying them for a bit. It's only when the chips have been around for a little while and gone stale that they need pissing on IMO.

That one took me a moment tbh