weedman

Really? I mean I'm not sure about anyone else but I barely followed the PL at all when we were in the Championship, surely the only people paying a tenner to watch a championship game are fans of one of the teams playing, and as fans surely they wouldn't be swayed into missing their team play and paying £15 to watch a random PL game instead? When we were in the Championship if I was given a choice to watch a Villa game for £10, or any other PL game for free I'd choose the Villa game, make the PL game £15 and the number of people making that choice must be so miniscule as to not make a difference to anyone. Also as a fan of a PL team the chances of me paying £10 to watch a championship game are equally minuscule. Saying all that, I really don't care about 3pm Saturday games, I work Saturdays and tend to miss the 3pm ones, the ones that kick off later I get to see so I'm all for them!

I mean, literally all I'm saying is its good he's going out on loan as it might give him a chance to play regularly and see if he develops? And it won't affect us this year as Elmo is capable of being backup? Given the amount of well run teams that have let great players leave and horribly run teams that have managed to bring in absolute gems completely under the radar, no-one fancying the guy as a PL footballer after 1 season at the 4th worst team in the league in his first year in the country isn't necessarily the banker you seem to think it is. No one in the game fancied Tyrone Mings as a PL footballer until we signed him on loan in the Championship. Jamie Vardy was considered not good enough for Leicester in his first season in the Championship (I believe the general concensus was, he works hard, but they need better quality if they are to have a crack at promotion). We didn't consider Gary Cahill or Marc Albrighton to be good enough. Both have won the PL since leaving us. There are many, many more examples. People in the game get things wrong all the time, I don't see what the big deal is about giving him a loan and seeing if he develops? It's not like we really lose a lot if he doesn't, cost a relative pittance and can't be on too high wages, what is there to be gained from completely writing the guy off after 1 season?

I didn't realise he was 26, still, not exactly over the hill is he? Ligue 1 has about 3 decent teams in it as well and is nothing physically compared to English football, so he is still relatively inexperienced in that regard. I think it's fair to say he still has room to develop and that's far more likely to happen playing regularly than sitting on the bench

From a medium term viewpoint its better to have a young player out playing every week and developing rather than sitting on the bench, especially when Elmo has probably got another year in him as a backup. I think we'll benefit more from Guilbert developing while playing every week in an unforgiving league (the league we signed him for) rather than having 2 backup right backs in the squad

That does just cover the obscene wages that you have to pay in the PL though, the parachute payments aren't there to reward failure, they're to ensure the relegated teams don't immediately go into administration for being unable to pay the players. I'd wager Brentford must have more cash in their bank accounts than most relegated teams do, despite the parachute payments Admittedly clubs like Norwich have manipulated the system by coming up, spending no money and going back down just to get the cash, but not too many teams do that as most want to be competitive in the top flight

I don't get this. The main problem we made last season was throwing everyone in at the deep end straight away, by the time they got up to speed we were nearly relegated. We are in a great position of not needing to do that this year. If Traore needs a bit of time to get up to the pace then fine, we're able to offer him that as Trezeguet is playing well and we're boasting a 100% record and 2nd in the league.

I always thought it was because a lot of black people naturally develop more musclular physiques earlier than other ethnicities and as these top level sportsmen are all elite athletes having that added athleticism would be a huge benefit in breaking through. I'm sure the numbers of black people at all elite sports are way above the average (except cricket, which I never really noticed before, perhaps that is a bit of a class divide as you say)

Gareth keeping faith with the 7-0-3 system that's never once worked, this time trying it with 3 right backs, 1 center back and 3 DM, clearly a tactical genius at work

I'm with you on this one. There really isn't enough time with the squad to work on little stylistic changes, those things take time to get right, a good international manager would be someone like a MON or, dare I say it, a Steve Bruce, someone who doesn't worry about the future, just puts the best current players in the team, picks a formation they are all familiar with, riles them up and sends them out there to give 100%

Its a "registration" window, you can buy players whenever you want but can only register them during the windows

I think it is, need to maintain our 100% record as long as possible if we're going to challenge Everton for the title!

Surely you realise though that the lockdown period was the first chance he had to actually sit down with the players and implement change? I mean he took over a mess mid season and transformed us taking us up, then the summer was a scattergun of signings none of whom had time to settle in and no settled squad over the summer to actually implement any changes before a full on PL schedule that included a great cup run. Lockdown was the chance to actually change things around tactically and have the time to get the players used to that and he took it, making us look a much better team for the run in, culminating in our last 4 games keeping us up, so far this seasons it's been more of the same I'm with mjvilla I really don't know what more he could have done within the constraints he was working

I bought the last one and just logged in to check. It's still an "active subscription" until the 2nd but there seems to be no option to actually watch it. As a guess I'd say you won't be able to go in and watch it later but they have a support email address carabaocupsupport@streamamg.com so prob worth dropping them an email before risking it

I really wonder if Tuanzebe would ever get mentioned as a potential signing if he hadn't played for us, any other player with his record would be immediately ignored. Imagine being linked with a defender who had half a decent season on loan in the championship, never given a sniff of PL football before or after and has been injured for like 2 years He's probably better all rounder than Hause but worse in the air, and, like Hause, is miles behind Konsa or Mings, would just be a waste of a loan signing Sessegnon I'd be interested in as a backup, he's surely better than Taylor and plenty of time to improve but still wouldn't be worthwhile as a loan (for anyone, he wouldn't get enough game time to develop for his parent club and isn't good enough right now to make much difference to us), wouldn't be against signing him permanently. Don't know much about Loftus Cheek tbf, would prefer Barklay if we're shopping at Chelsea but wouldn't be against it due to my limited knowledge of the player, he could turn out great!

I'm with you here, if he can only add goals (and he's close) he's got everything else in his locker and will be a class player. I genuinely don't think there's been a player I've wanted to succeed more than Keinan, just love the bloke.

So...Emile Heskey?

I'd imagine it's per 90 mins as he wasn't a regular starter

I mean it's relative though isn't it? When people call him fat they aren't saying he's fat compared to you or I or the average Joe, he's fat in the same way Rooney was called fat, he's fat compared to the other elite athletes in the PL, fat compared to say Tyrone Mings or Jack Grealish. He is clearly not in as good a shape as he was at the start of last season or when he first joined. That's what people mean when they call him fat. He needs minutes on the pitch and the training ground to get back to that shape so we'll probably have to deal with 4/5/6 games of sub standard McGinning until he gets there, but it'll be worth it once he does as he is an absolute game changer (one of very few in our team) when on form.

Seems to be an obsession with moving players positions as soon as they start performing well in one. He's excelled as a DM, why move him? Just buy another box to box player if we need one

This, everyone talking about wanting Grealish in the middle means we would need a midfield 2 of Nakamba and Luiz. Luiz does the play making and Nakamba the tackling, both from deep to protect the defence. The only way you give Jack the freedom he needs in the middle is by having a Nakamba type next to Luiz in the middle

I'm sure this might mean something, but if I was pretending to be itk I'd be pretty confident claiming it was done right about now, given that all major news outlets are pretty much saying that, I might even go so far as to tell people to expect an announcement in the next day or 2 "unless there's some unforseen hold up"

What if they asked for £38m a month ago?

And signed a RB for £16m