HolteExile

Ah, fair enough so.

Does he actually score many free kicks? I know he banged on two pearlers against us last season. But Stuart Gray banged in two Brazilian efforts against Port Vale in the cup years ago and never got another one after that. Speaking of Brazil, Roberto Carlos was oft touted as a freekick specialist after his weird banana shot against France back in 97. He actually scored about three free kicks in his life. I'm happy enough with the route we've gone in recent years. And if we'd gone for a youngish CM/ defensive midfielder already playing to a decent standard in a good league (but not quite a 'name') I don't have an issue with that at all. But for the money it would prob take for Southampton to play ball, you could realistically target a Milinkovic Savic or players of similar calibre at the elite level.

In a market where Aaron Wan-Bissaka moves for £50 million with limited top flight experience and Burnleh were looking for similar last summer with Tarkowski, Southampton could ask as much as £70 million for their captain and current England international. They might deal at somewhere in the region of £60 million, but - unless he has a buyout clause or whatever - it just doesn't seem to be the route we'd go. Another possibility is we may have informally tested the waters with Jack, Mings or possibly even Targett asking him would he be up for it and his camp have leaked our interest to get him a better deal at Soton.

Guardian generally don't post speculative pap and Paul Doyle is also the Midlands correspondent for them. Not saying they'll sell. FWIW I don't think they will. But if he's writing that we have an interest in the player I think it's a bit more than Grealish's recent comments + WP's dead ball stats = newspaper filler.

Re Wilson: He's from Coventry and started his career with them. They can be a bit odd out that way. Many seem to have a visceral hatred of Villa. Despite them barely registering with us at all. Perhaps he was wary of pissing off friends and family etc.

Heh. I hope your interpretation is the correct one.

You take a move to the likes of Norwich with a view to one day - hopefully - getting a move to one of the big 4-5 in England. We might be viewed that way again in the not too distant. But it's a while since any new player viewed us that way TBH. If he has designs on regular international football with Argentina, making any sort of impact at Arsenal (even if he's not a first team regular) will be a bigger help to him than tearing it up with us. If he was a player already at another big club who had been in and out of the side and packed off on loan, the appeal of close to guaranteed football with us might sway it. But he's 24, still young enough to go there without the guarantee of a starting place and the determination to make the spot his own.

I've seen that sort of theory mentioned in a few places. But Martinez didn't want to leave Arsenal, let's not forget. He spent eight years of his career there and is still highly thought of in North London. It's just that Arteta needed the reddies for his midfield rebuild and didn't see a sufficient gap in ability between Martinez and Leno to guarantee the former the no 1 jersey. If Buendia ever got as far as asking Martinez about Arsenal, he might just as likely say "Brilliant club, if you get a chance to play there you must take it." Our Emi's own personal circumstances meant the time was right for him to leave last summer. In our favour is that I don't see Arteta guaranteeing Buendia first team football either.

Sport Witness, you say? Must be close then.

Aye. And tell them how to behave. "You can protest, but only this way." "Oh I've changed my mind. That way affects my delicate sensibilities as well."

Taking the knee itself was a compromise by Kaepernick as outlined here:

In my experience, it's not the finer points of Marxism that worries White Van Man and the others who see Tommy Robinson as some wise sage. They see white men taking the knee as somehow subjugating themselves to the black race. Domnic Raab summed up the views of Middle England/Middle Earth pretty well last year. But you'd expect that sort of awareness from a person who didn't realize how important GB's most important port may be to trade. It's odd to see it that way when it was Colin Kaepernick (mixed race) taking the knee during the US national anthem circa 2016/17 that inspired sportsmen of all races to do similar after Minneapolis last year. There's a conversation to be had about its effectiveness on its own (which is sort of what Zaha was getting at). But actually booing it shows those 'fans' up for the primitives they are. It's sad that the headlines now associate us with behaviour you'd expect from Millwall fans. We don't need that sort of profile, ta very much.

In a nutshell.

There's the rub. We've given out about the moves of the Wanky 6 this week being greed driven and immoral (which they were). But we'll be scoping the French and Spanish market for bargains owing to Covid and their lack of bloated TV deals.

McGinn is plenty good enough for where we are and where we want to go. There was a reason why Brendan Rodgers et al were sniffing around when it looked like we might drop. Total radical idea, but lets add to the quality we have rather than pile in on a good player going through a period of indifferent form.

Wonder if it's a Stan Collymore scenario - minus the extreme summer 98 meltdown. The talent is undoubtedly there. Based on his early success at Everton, his England career in a position with plenty of competition and his subsequent move to Chelsea. He looked like just what we needed for the first part of this season. But on recent performances it's as if there is no fuel in the tank. Whatever is causing that. Long Covid, shite attitude after being subbed/ dropped or whatever. A real shame. We need a player like the one who combined so effectively with Jack in Oct/Nov. I know it's almost compulsory to ridicule him now., but personally I'm glad for that early blast of form. It tipped the balance for us that early part of the season and means we weren't going down the home straight looking over our shoulder desperately trying to chisel out 37+ points. The counter to that is him maintaining form and Jack not being injured = we'd prob be roughly where West Ham are in this oddest of seasons. Which is where most of the frustration comes from I guess.

If they're talking about renovating rather than rebuilding at this stage, one thing they could possibly look at is removing the boxes at the North Stand and increasing the seating capacity from the lower North beyond there. Whilst also going a bit higher in that corner between the Trinity and North Stand. Not sure how much extra capacity that would give us, 3-4000 at a push maybe. But it might be seen as a reasonable short term option until even higher demand/costs etc are justified. Yes, we'd lose the commercial revenue from that end. But that stand was built at the time when we had very little corporate facilities at VP. Since then, we've had the Witton Lane stand renovated, executive boxes across the length of the Trinity and the super box in the corner of the Holte and Trinity. With those two stands alone we still have more corporates than most grounds in the UK. That sort of renovation shouldn't impact on the structural integrity or goal post structure of the North Stand either.

That's prob more like the sort of deal we'll do for a back up striker.

I don't see us signing 5-7 first team quality players at those prices this summer. Too much churn again. To need do that would be admission of failure in our current dealings. I'd be made up with 2-3 TBH (and a few promising younger players). Second striker, genuine centre half competition for Mings and a unit of a defensive mid or wide attacker. Ofc that can all change if we have a significant departure or two.

Another way to look at it is - as a manager (or head coach) under pressure - he may be looking to switch attention away from his own shortcomings. Get the support base talking about this supposed low fee, rather than him. 'Poor AVB/what can he do when the board sell his best players from under him on the cheap' etc.

Agreed. Nyland made the supporters nervous, so you can imagine what he did to the back four in front of him. The game in the top flight is hard enough without having to guess what phuckeries an erratic keeper may come up with this afternoon.

You'd like to think so based on current form. But he's a Blue (the Bluescouse version, thankfully) so if he gets a chance to go back there I have a strong suspicion he'll take it. As it stands though, a midfield of Luiz, McGinn, Barkley and Grealish (sort of) is as good as anything outside the top 5-7 clubs. Keep them fit and firing and we could be on for a great season.

If, for the sake of argument, he completes a season injury free with us bags 10 goals and near as many assists, no way will Chelsea let him go for anything less than £45-50 million. There will be plenty of other clubs queuing up willing to pay it n'all. Everton forked out £40 million plus for a plodder like Sigurdsson back in 2017, let's not forget. The market in England hasn't become more reasonable since then.

Still need a centre half IMO.