YouUnastanFren

True but Jota was a bit part player for them last year and seemed to have regressed from his first season and yet they still charged Liverpool £40m. Doherty for £16m seemed a poor bit of business for them but with hindsight they ended up with Semedo for just £10m more and based on how good he was on FIFA for Barca (a semi-joke) they did alright. I'm not saying they won't sell if it makes sense but Neto has been their best player this year and it would be a top 5 all time PL fee to get him to move imho. Agree he's definitely better value than Traore but I don't think this is the summer NSWE spend £70m+ on one player, I think that's next year when our squad is a bit deeper after another 4-5 quality additions for smaller fees.

Wolves reportedly wanted about £70m for Traore last season after he got 4 goals and 9 assists. Neto has 5 goals and 8 assists already this season so I can only imagine they'd want even more than that. Obviously they aren't going to have an exact goal contribution to value ratio but it seems that Neto has been more important to them this season than Traore was last. Also worth noting that their owners Fosun are eyewateringly large and not in any need of cashflow.

So the club only disclosed Konsa's new 5 year deal with his permission? That is interesting. Seems like it would be in Heaton's interest for other clubs to know he was available though

I remember at the time he signed not being able to find any suggestion of how long the contract was for. I wonder if the club's accounts have disclosed it at some point

I've had a very similar debate. I think it's their version of "We're not English, we're Scouse". The lad I had that discussion with tried to liken it more to being Catholics in Northern Ireland though. I said I hope there hasn't been quite as heated of a dispute about it as that one.

After seeing about 5 minutes total of him playing I've decided I want us to sign Daryl Dike. Barnsley have an option to buy for £14m and if they don't come up I'm sure they'd be happy to sell it to us for a profit.

That's exactly how I watch them. Tbh, that's the case for most games now. Counting down the days until Amazon's alternative audio for their streams goes back to being just stadium noise with no commentary rather than having to hear the commentary and just choosing whether or not to have fake stadium noises added.

End of season Trez is becoming almost as mythical as contract renewal time Adebayor. They weren't even in the top 10 best chances he's had this season and he's bagged them both and earned us 3 points. Maybe he is worth a place in the squad. He needs more goal contributions over the course of a whole season but maybe they're about to turn up in the next few weeks.

Had some good deliveries into the box and switches of play to Targett (the ball to Trez for the 50p head header especially) but the shimmy through two players for the assist was **** sublime. Dribbling the ball past defenders and creating goals is exactly what I want to watch and with Grealish out he's the only one who can do it. A joy to watch.

It's basically a semantics debate but I don't agree. AFAIK something being fickle means that it is prone to change frequently or at short notice so only people basing their opinion on whether or not to sack a manager on a tiny sample size of games would be fickle.

Took a punt on Jota based on his form and wrote it off with all the rest when I saw he wasn't in the starting lineup which seemed to be the theme of my week. Only just now realised he came on, scored two and is on for two bonus. Almost makes up for Rudiger, Gundogan, Struijk and ESR not playing

Yet another excellent move by the people running the club. His level of performance has been so consistently high I think it's possibly only been bettered by Dias at City among all PL centre backs. The fact he hasn't so much as made an England squad, let alone been capped is yet another sad indictment of the Southgate era.

Obviously you need more data to compare "performance" as a whole. As @useless mentioned, it's just his goal scoring rate that is of any use. He does nothing else, Watkins has so many strings to his bow as well as the fact that his goalscoring rate was actually better than Gayle's a few games ago and it's just being skewed by being quite a small sample size of minutes. I don't think anybody who watches football other than DG's mom would think he's a better player than Watkins. My only point was that minutes:goals ratio is the clearest way to compare goal scoring rate even without the context of games started, minutes played per game and games played per season. It doesn't compare workrate, defensive contribution, injury resistance, hold up play, assist rate or any of the other things Watkins is clearly miles ahead on but I would've thought that went without saying. Fwiw I think it's quite likely that OW will finish this season with a better min/goal than DG has in his career anyway.

Goals:Minutes ratio is a useful metric, context always helps but as far as comparing goal contribution rates the data doesn't get much more clear. Dwight Gayle has scored a goal every 226 minutes in the PL, whether that's over sets of 90 minutes or as an impact sub that's a decent return. He seems to be past his peak though and his numbers are trending downwards. Signing him on a 3 year extension looks like a bad idea. Not sure I follow the second part. Keinan Davis has played 618 minutes of PL football and has 0 goals so he has no ratio.

I don't think that's accurate at all really. He put in more than 3 good performances in a row over Christmas imo, let alone in total for the whole season. I'd say he was definitely not "rubbish" against Wolves, Burnley, West Brom, Palace, Chelsea and United in a row. That's basically every game from when he broke into the starting lineup right up until the whole team got covid. Arguably played well against City and Newcastle after covid as well really. Just seemed a lot less energetic again. Definitely not the case for me. A number 10 is way more important imo, Barkley has been a failure and we have nobody else even threatening to play that role well aside from the two first choice wingers. I would like more depth on the wings instead of Trezeguet but I think we need depth elsewhere before that. Full back for instance.

Lyon fans are the United fans of Ligue 1, I wouldn't put any weight in anything they say. Glory hunters that started supporting when they were winning the league every year, now they win nothing and are very bitter about it. I saw one on Reddit say Traore was the worst player he'd ever seen and another say he couldn't trap a bag of cement. There's a reason Liverpool were circling him a few seasons ago and were only put off because they couldn't negotiate down the €40m price tag, he has a very high ceiling imo.

Trez's workrate is good but his first season he looked exhausted after 20 minutes every game like Traore did at the start of this one. To his credit he seemed to have worked hard over lockdown and came back fully fit. After a full preseason Traore's workrate will be similar I'm sure. The difference will be that Traore can convert chances into goals as well as converting possession into chances. Trez can do neither.

Was Trezeguet OK in a team playing well or did he only manage 1 assist and 0 goals while missing chance after chance after chance? Traore hasn't currently been good enough to carry our attack singlehandedly and output the same excellent numbers he was before but that doesn't mean he's on the same level as a guy who has missed more sitters than I've had hot dinners.

I think he's been roughly as inconsistent as AEG so far in his Villa career. In Trez's case consistent is not a compliment

Not only is Traore miles ahead in terms of end product he's also way more entertaining to watch.

Yes please. Every time I'm passing

My initial reaction to any pro getting Von Flued is that they should know better than to hang on to the guillotine with no guard but after getting slammed and being trapped right against the fence like that letting go of the head would've left him vulnerable to take an unrighteous amount of damage so you can't really blame him on that one. In other news, local boy Edwards is fighting Nate Diaz in the first non main event, non title fight 5 rounder in UFC history. Definitely worthy of 5 rounds imho so I'm glad they've done it.

If we're going to buy back ups they need to be back ups like Konsa. Young, talented and with a potential ceiling far beyond the original first choice.

A CB?! Clearly he's more suited to the LPDC role. Round pegs in round holes Steve ffs

The new F2 regs have effectively devalued the F2 title. If they don't change then the likelihood of the best driver winning is pretty slim I think.