GREAT_BEARD_OF_ZEUS

45 minutes ago, duke313 said:

They’re scrapping the barrel here

There's barrel scraping and there's barrel scraping... then, underneath the barrel, 20ft underground there's this utter drivel

So the Daily Mail reckon that Utd are looking unlikely to catch us up in 5th, but they still have a chance of CL football by virtue of West Ham (a point behind Utd, played a game more and not won in 4), overtaking both Utd and us, getting 5th and then also having to win the Europa League at the same time.

F*** me, are we sure they haven't just pulled this from Viz?

7 hours ago, thabucks said:

IF we were to finish 4th and win the ECL and not inhibited by PSR does anyone believe we could attract a player of the calibre of Kvaratskhelia - or an other real top tier talent. 

Karadona? I wish.

I mean maybe there’s a small single digit percentage chance, but PSR does exist and so do many other clubs who would be before us in the queue.

I think the best player we have a decent chance of signing is Nico Williams from Bilbao. We’d need to have CL football of course, but the fact he has a reasonable buyout clause means we could afford him and then I think the Basque link with Emery might just help swing it.

Carlos is a busted flush, never gonna be fit

Henderson is such a whiney bitch

Stupid challenge

1 hour ago, Villatillidie95 said:

Ideally we will win this comfortably within the 90 whilst West Ham will go to extra time nd then lose on pens….thibking 2-0 to us 

Whilst I would normally have no desire to see West Ham go through either, we need them to so that the English teams coefficient rises.

So it's cam on you Ammers, up the apples and pears and what not.

They've only won back to back once this season, that was Nuno's first two full games (think he was in the stands against Bournemouth, could be wrong)... anyway, apart from me now jinxing that pattern, they do feel like a very up and down team i.e. they get themselves up for a game and win, then foot off the gas and relax a bit too much the next.

We didn't turn up at all at the City ground, so that might be in the players minds - plus we've had a weeks full rest.  No excuses here and a 3pm Saturday kick off in front of a full house should have them fired up!

54 minutes ago, zab6359 said:

Which begs the question why get rid? Other that the wages argument which aren't as high as some like to speculate on here him and Moreno as LB choices is pretty damn good. (other than both being over 30 but does that really matter?)

Cash I can see the reasoning he's not pulled up trees this season.

 

He's on £120k per week, so whilst it's not quite the highest, it puts him in that bracket.  Add that to the amortised transfer fee and he's second only to Diaby.  Selling Digne for anything more than around £5m, not only gets a £12m annual cost off the books, but it then technically represents a profit on the P&L at this stage.

If we were to able to shift Digne, Carlos, Coutinho and Dendonker this summer, that's close to 25% of the annual squad cost saved (when viewed as wages + amortised fees).  

To put it into context, that would give us the room to sign 6 new players on free transfers, each on £140k a week and still have change.

I’d try and sell Cash, Carlos, Archer (post buy-back), Dendonker (hopefully to Napoli as part of the option they’ve got). And send Zaniolo back.

That’s ideally £50m in old school money (I know it’s all about amortisation now).

Get a refund on Diaby, get the Williams brothers in and hey presto!

Oh FFS not to these c***s

6 minutes ago, May-Z said:

Is this Duran's replacement before he is shipped off to Chelsea?

Swap an attitude that is hard to manage with one eager to learn for about the same price?

Nah.  Duran up top with Rogers in the 10 role is a great future strike force.

Half arsed BBC punditry is even worse than the game. 

We're a long way behind other PL clubs when it comes to growing and engaging overseas audiences, therefore we need to play the cards we've got...

We have a huge geographic advantage domestically.  Middle of the country, with no elite competition around us in terms of clubs or venues.  Therefore we need to become the events destination of the midlands and beyond.  The best way to do that is build a new state of the art stadium, which shits all over everything between London and Manchester.  I'm pretty sure stadium build costs don't factor into FFP (I think Everton's fine was to do with interest payments on the new stadium, which for some reason do count) so we'd be flexing our financial muscle in a way which won't hinder us on that front.

Villa Park is iconic and we all love it, but it has too many limitations - not to mention any development of it will be slower and detrimental to the playing side of things.  Times change, this is a new era, let's not let sentimentality hold us back.

Well they’ve woken up haven’t they

Digne: fake to cross, come inside, give it away. Repeat indefinitely.

To a man they've all been completely awful.  Every last one of them, bar perhaps Duran.

Subs have done zero.

Get up Bailey ffs

1 minute ago, HKP90 said:

I actually think Langlet's been our best defender. I'd sooner swap Konsa atm.

I can’t recall him doing anything? But that’s probably enough to earn ‘best performer’ from the first half so yeh

I’d go with frugally constrained 

6 hours ago, Delphinho123 said:

Chiesa, Torres, Fati, Johnson. These are all players we’ve been linked with that haven’t moved yet. I’m sure there’s lots more.

Agree. I have no doubts we'll bring in a right footed, left winger.

Of all our 7 forward players, only Watkins and Buendia are right footed, it's an absolute must.

Also interestingly, only one of our 6 midfielders is left footed (McGinn), therefore I would bet on a lefty coming in who can play both central and attacking mid. 

My bet would be Lo Celso.

If the right right back isn’t available now, then I’d be ok going with Konsa and Cash as our two options until Jan.

Torres is a certain starter now, we need the aerial presence of Carlos in both boxes, and to be fair to Konsa he’s a very good player when he’s got a strong commanding centre back next to him, which Carlos is. 
 

I think we’ start regularly with:

konsa - Carlos - Pau - Moreno 

with the option of switching to:

Cash - Carlos - Pau - Digne

See if Cash can get back up to speed like he did in the few games after his injury last season.

TalkSPORT had their European football expert on the other day (Andy Brassell?) and he was talking down Kudus, saying that he was ok but not worth anything like £40m. Said it’s the Ajax factor inflating the price.

Just now, Farlz said:

Oh my god he's on 

Oh f*ck