Checko

"sources have told Telegraph Sport that the seven players to miss out are Grealish, Maguire, Maddison, Curtis Jones, Jarell Quansah, Jarrad Branthwaite and James Trafford." - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2024/06/06/england-euro-2024-squad-harry-maguire-injury-southgate/

Is Dan Ashworth allowed to have a list?

Ornstein says Maguire has a calf injury still

Willock does a quality knee slide to be fair, and adds the 'shhh' gesture for higher difficulty value.

I think the biggest problem with football at the moment is the enourmous disparity in income between a very few teams at the top and the rest. I've seen people saying the Palaces, Bournemouths etc. can't compete because of FFP restrictions on their spending. Bullshit, they can't compete because they have half a billion pounds less income per year that the very top teams. Take all regulations away and you still basically need to be a sovereign wealth funds to compete. Shouldn't be like that. It doesn't make it more fair for everybody. I'm sure I'm in a vast minority here, but I think there need to be more rules to reduce inequality, not more unfettered free marketing, which basically always just leads to market dominance for a handful of entities, even if we hope to be one of those.

Yeah, at his age he just needs to play, spending a lot of money for him to sit on the bench most of the year wouldn't do him or us many favours. He'd only played in League One before this year. A year in the Championship would do him a lot of good, assuming he's good enough to be first choice at Burnley.

Yeah he looked really good when he played us. Speed kills, as they say, but speed of thought and action is often most important - passing quickly with just the right weight and accuracy gets you that extra second or so that's worth 5-10 yards of space and is so hard to defend against. Think our squad really needs another top tier passer.

I had a look on a Brentford forum to see what they thought and they love him. Think he's very underrated in wider media. He works hard defensively, and apart from his injury this year has basically been indestructable. He's not traditionally been particulary clinical in front of goal - has scord 17 non-penalty goals in the last 3 years and they say he can miss easy chances. We're not shopping at Man City levels overall no, but most of their squad was bought in the 40-60 million range, our biggest signings each year are in that range. When City wanted a winger last year they got Doku for 55 million. If we're spending 50million + on Mbeumo, we're in that ballpark. I think he'd be at least a good, pretty low risk upgrade. But for 50 million plus, that's star player money (for us). Would he be one of our real stars? I dunno, haven't seen enough of him to know, but his stats are a bit weird in places - his passing stats are quite poor, miscontrols and gets disposessed a lot etc.

What we need are not just players who could potentially play in a top 4 team, but players who can drag the team up to top 4 level. Harvey Barnes could probably play in a top 4 team. Is he likely to elevate us to that level in the way Bruno or Isak can? Probably not IMO. That's the question here for me: is Mbeumo a guy who could play in a team at the top, or is he a guy that makes you a team at the top? Bear in mind he's probably going to cost 50 million plus, which is an absurd amount of money for amost every team in the world. He'd undoubtedly make our team stronger than it is now, but if we're spending 50 million+ on a RW there's an awful lot of options in the world. Is he the best one?

Chelsea have been linked to this chappie (because of course they have): https://fbref.com/en/players/0166a73e/Alvaro-Valles Alvaro Valles, GK plays for Las Palmas, contract expires in 2025 so they need to cash in this summer. Only played 1 year in La Liga, but has had three years in a row conceding far fewer than his xG would suggest he should - 3rd best in La Liga this year per 90 behind Big Mama and Unai Simon Proper sweeper keeper - 99th percentile for defensive actions outside area, 96th for average distance of defensive actions. Comfortable on the ball (Las Palmas are super possession based). Stopping crosses average to slightly below average. Kind of a Pickford profile but with longer arms and not a mackem. Wonder if he might be worth a punt over Big Mama as a cheaper, better ball playing and sweeping alternative. Perhaps we're trying to bait Chelsea into buying Big Mama so we can nab him.

Is he related to Lord Buckethead?

In addition to financial/enviromental reasons etc, when you have a kit for a couple of years it can really define a period a lot more as well I feel.

Makes sense, Hall's the future and shold be the present IMO. Feels like Targett's the sort of lad who'd want to play. He's been unlucky with injuries - lost his place with a dead leg for a couple of games. Burn came in at LB and we basically didn't concede any goals so he stayed in. Targett didn't do anything wrong to lose his place IIRC. In football manager terms he's a guy who gets 13s in most key stats, not amazing at anything necessarily, but no real weaknesses and comfortable on the ball. Definitely a solid premier league fullback when fit. When fit's the key - he's obviously had a few troubles last 18 months. He hasn't been particularly injury prone for most of his career though. One bad hamstring in 16/17, apart from that nothing over month until December 22. I wonder if the lack of first team football means he's not been at his most physically resilient. I hope he gets himself a starting job, he's a solid player and handled losing his place very professionally as far as I can tell. What do we reckon for a fee? £5-6 million? He'd probably be decent value to a side that needs a PL fullback in that range. Wonder if Southampton might want him back.

That's exactly what makes his name so happy for me!

I'd love Oscar Bobb on a permanent deal tbh. No idea how good he is but he has such a happy sounding name

Figured the Big Mama deal was already dead from our end. Went quite a while ago & wasn't there something saying he only wanted to move to a team in Europe?

Could we at least be Sainsbury's in the analogy?

From Chelsea's perspective I imgine it will be: 1. Sign him on a free, freeing up some transfer budget to: 2. Sign more footballers 3. Sell one of their other CBs 4. Buy more footballers 5. Next year or two, sell him for £15/20 million and an FFP profit. 6. Buy more footballers

Dummett one year extension in 5...4...3...2...1...

I don't think you're being new money arrogant tbh. The higher up the football pyramid you get the fewer players are going to be able to take you to the next level and we need to be really quite discerning as to who's going to get us there.

He'll have great fun starting new manager threads!

Be disappointing if he does go to Chelsea as he would add pace at the back, which we lack, and would beef up our squad at a good value. His ability to pass the ball forward would fit us well. Still, for a bit of copium, here's a short thread on him leaving on a Fulham board: https://www.friendsoffulham.com/forum/index.php?topic=93853.0 General consensus seems to be he was a good value signing, & premier league quality player but not as good as he thinks he is. Good enough for them and mid table but he'd be on the bench in a Europe chasing team. Can be good on the ball but can also be careless and has a mistake in him defensively (from FB ref his short and medium passing completion is well below average, though his long passing is good). 22/3 he only played 61% of the time even though no injuries so often wasn't first choice in a mid table fulham, though largely first choice this year. Obviously if he does end up signing for us all this changes & he's unequivocally amazing, but I don't think we've missed out on the next Jaap Stam at least.

He's 0/2 now it seems - better hope Lloyd Kelly comes off!

They can offer more money, immediate European football and he won't even have to move. Not particularly suprising. Obviously they'll be looking to sell him for an FFP profit in a couple of years but hey ho.

Had a little look at some club badges and found Barrow AFC: It's got a nuclear submarine on it, a Richard Osman's House of Games clue (bottom left), and an old-school football. Love it.