Mat Kendrick's Dentist

Not very!

Agreed, there are exceptions, but they're pretty rare. For every Vardy there are 10 Jordan Rhodes. Obviously, if we sign Watkins I'll back him and hope he's more like the former, but for £24-28m I'd be hoping for much more pedigree than 1 good season in the Championship. Kevin Volland went for just over half that amount the other day and is a fantastic striker

Edouard has massive pedigree with France underage sides and has huge talent and potential. Watkins is 2/3 years older and was never called up by England at any age grade. Not writing him off, but we'll be taken to the cleaners if we pay what's been reported IMO

FFS

Probably take a while for anything to happen. Takes ages to get a loan for a Hause nowadays

He was actually 6 judging by the date

I totally agree that Jack should be in the team, let alone the squad, but Southgate hasn't swallowed his pride, and his selection was far from inevitable. Jack wouldn't have been picked if 7/8 others hadn't been unavailable/pull out

??

Fair play mate!

I won't believe a word unless it's by Arlind Sadiku

Another day, another dollar. You have to give Cash some credit if he's able to step up and pay back his fee with interest. ATM, I would note that, till now, we don't know if we have managed to register a bid or if the two teams have been contactless, but if it amounts to anything we'll be banking on our investment paying dividends, like Raheem Sterling. If we ease him into the team in a tender manner, he could open his account early doors and be worth the entrance fee on his own. If not, we may pay the price. At any rate, with our current finances, £15m shouldn't be any big drachma. As with all transfers, it's a flip of a coin, but at this stage of the window we need to put our money where our mouth is. After that, euro'ping for the best

They got more points than us post-lockdown and we were supposedly good!

My blood pressure was high enough without

1.72 was the first 10 games of the season, 1.22 was pre-lockdown overall, 1.04 was the 10 games pre-lockdown, 0.7 was post-lockdown

Sorry for the confusion. I just meant that your metrics showed evidence of our defence improving post-lockdown, while the reverse metrics can be used to show that our attack worsened as the season progressed. In other words, with largely the same personnel, we were creating more chances, and scoring more goals earlier in the season. But we were leaking so many goals that we had to set up more defensively, which in turn made us less potent in attack. In any case, I totally agree that a good striker and an improvement on AEG/Trez is paramount. But I also hope we have enough in the kitty for some defensive reinforcements, as over the course of last season, we conceded a farcical amount of goals, and I don't want to bet the farm on our performances in the last few games of last season (against sides with little to play for)

We were actually on a very poor run before his injury IIRC, with terrible performances against Sheff Utd, Watford, and Southampton. I really think we need better than Wes. He tries hard, but had far more poor games than good last season, and showed no signs of improving (no goals in 12 pre-Burnley). I'm not writing him off, and I'd love for him to come good, but I don't see it. I would love Edouard, and hopefully with Celtic out of the CL we can nab him

We were terrible going forward and at the back immediately before lockdown. We had gone more defensive with 5 at the back after getting battered by Watford. Anyway, we've both given our views so no need to keep going around in circles

But by your own metrics, we had a far better attack before lockdown than after (with the same personnel)! I think we need to improve offensively and defensively, but obviously there's only so much that can be done in one window

The ideal is somewhere in between. When you consider we have an absolutely exceptional player in Jack Grealish, and we still stumbled to 35 points, you see that many positions need to be improved upon. I agree with Philosopher in that we currently have 5 good players who have enough quality to be in a good PL side. I don't think we'll solve all of the other positions in one window, but I hope we improve as much as possible, including in defence.

Agree with every word

You can pick out anecdotal misses for any part of the season. In our last 10 games our expected goals = 1. In our first 10 games our expected goals = 1.72

1.28 up to/including Burnley/1.22/0.7

1.22 goals scored per game pre-lockdown, 0.7 per game post-lockdown. Almost halved. We had largely the same personnel for both samples. How is that a myth?

Nah, you're just incapable of grasping a simple point

This proves my point. Our scoring dropped from 1.22 per game to 0.7 per game post lockdown. In other words, we played more defensively, meaning we conceded fewer, but also scored significantly fewer. If we had better defenders we wouldn't need to play as defensively, and we'd score more while conceding fewer. Again, we obviously need a good striker/winger, but to push on and keep players like Jack, we also need some better defenders