MotoMkali

The one thing that this round badge does well is that the lion is clean af. I don't understand why they threw the baby out with the bath water so to speak you put the new lion in claret on hecks badge and whilst the balance is still of I bet it looks about 10 times better than it does now.

I think city would probably win the league next year. Klopp leaves Liverpool they will be a shambles. Spurs they will probably be around where they are ange has only been there a year though. When Poch left spurs regressed heavily too. Arsenal arteta is interesting given his Peps protege he could definitely be a guy who leaves the team with a well established and versatile system that only needs a few adjustments to suit the new managers preferences but maintain continuity in a way other systems and managers do not. I think any manager who takes over city will find an easy time getting his players to accept his ideas, adjust to his schemes and have a strong understanding of what exactly is being asked of them and how to control games.. Something that I think gets underrated is the so called institutional knowledge of the players. Think about how we played when we first hired Gerrard it was smiths tactics but Gerrard galvanised them. I think instilling that institutional knowledge is what pep does better than any other manager.

Of course the clubs he takes over have their shit together. But pep implements a philosophy that has led to historic runs of domination from his 2 former clubs. You have a wenger or a ferguson and the club capitulates when they leave. Pep doesn't drain the club in the same way.

As I said we do need a DM, but like our depth at CB is shaky if we are relying on Konsa at RB and Cash is always our worst player when he plays. Even vs Lille he was at fault for the first goal and hamstrung our attack the entire game. Sure he made it up with a goal and scoring his penalty but we probably wouldn't have needed either if we were playing with a more tactically strong RB. Whether that RB is good in possession, defensively stout or a flying RB. Cash is a C+ grade at all of these things which means he can do an OK job but the team would be far better if we could bring in a player who is B+ in 2 of these areas and sacrifice a little in the other area. Similarly LB, Moreno and Digne are fine they don't need to be replaced. But again they are the obvious replacements. Digne has been fantastic and his experience in European competitions is valuable so maybe we should keep him, I do not know. Digne is perhaps more of a B grade in all these areas and Moreno when he was fit last season was one of the most potent wingbacks in the league. But we do not know whether moreno will recover his pace, or his touch or his dribbling or his crossing. Plus both are in their 30s. At minimum one of them should be moved and we should bring in a younger understudy. If we sign someone like Hermoso as you mentioned then we should move on both and sign a wingback to complement Hermoso.

Cheeky Bid?

This is pretty worthless without emery's taking to go with it.

I think what is missed about pep is he leaves his clubs in a better state than he finds them. The system he implements provides a platform for league dominance in a way no other manager has achieved. Barca and Bayern went on to win like 20 combined titles in the 11 years after he left each of them. And barca at least faced stiff competition from the Madrids.

You say this but look at our team where are you upgrading if not at the full backs? We aren't signing someone better than torres, we aren't signing someone better than Dougie, or Bailey, or Watkins. So we are talking full backs and DM but only because Kamara is injured and we need more depth there. LW as well I suppose is another area we could target but with JJ, Mcginn, Rogers, Diaby and Tielemans all being able to play there in our system it's not an area of concern unlike RB. Also Kosta has been injured for the last 9 games and seems like he will continue to be injured. He's also still only 18, I suspect he's more like a Duran signing where if he is going to be in our squad he will mostly be getting minor appearances until his 3rd year with us or so.

We also sold them azaz for fairly cheap who had 3 goals and 3 assists in 13 starts (also made 5 appearances off the bench). Only 2.5 mil for a 23 year old who had 7 goals and 5 assists in 26 matches for a relation battling team.

Was 34.6 Million initially, rising to 44 per ornstein who is by far the msot reliable reporter on the actual details of the deals. https://theathletic.com/4707121/2023/07/20/moussa-diaby-aston-villa-agree-deal?source=user-shared-article I suspect the figure bandied about by sky, is euros and inclusive of add ons. As 44 million quid is 51 million euros.

My personal preference would be our current lion, on a unique crest whether it be the heck proposed one, the Lerner crest or a gaslamp one. Theb preferably the lion is not yellow. Just doesn't work unless the badge is claret which then doesn't work on the shirts.

Wonder whether we might be interested in singing someone like Modric on a 1-2 year deal. He's 38 so obviously a bit of a risk, but others have pointed out we do lack experience and control when we've been in Europe. Modric could impart his knowledge and be a model professional whilst not being asked to play too many games but still being able to play at the highest levels here. Obviously wage demands could be an issue.

I'd much rather it be the LB doing that. Torres as the LB doesn't inspire any trust in me. Whereas Konsa as the RB is good defensively.

Yes, if you click on the attacking midfielders/winger comparison though He's 94th percentile for goals, 98th percentile for expected assists, 74th for shot creating actions, 75th for progressive carries, 80th, 82nd and 83rd for Take ons, touches in opposing penalty area and progressive passes received. Foden is - 97th, 85th, 77th, 51st, 53rd, 88th, 76th in those categories respectively.

He already experienced a dressing room like that at arsenal. I doubt he wants a repeat experience. Maybe once some of the more influential players have left he might consider it. But I doubt he's going to go now considering how nagelsman got fired.

You can't get suspended for a final via accumulation.

Mings is returning from a big injury and Carlos has been injury prone this season. We need at least one more player who can cover CB, because otherwise if torres gets injured we could be left with 1 fit CB for a decent stretch. Hell it doesn't even have to be torres getting injured but if the new RB, Mings and Carlos are injured then that means we'd only have 2 players to cover 3 positions. And so we would have to play a youth player or a player out of position. Hermoso has been rumoured on a free for instance and he can either play in a similar full back role to Konsa, or he can play as a centre back too. If we are in the champions league next year it's not just a question of depth but a question of quality in depth. We could end up playing Bayern, Real, Barca, Bayer, Lille, Sporting, Stuggart and Bologna in the group stages. And if we don't go out with a whimper in the league and fa cup as we did this year we are talking somewhere in the region of 52-54 games vs significantly better competition than we had the extra games this year. At minimum a 5th CB is necessary whether it is keeping chambers or whether it is having a trusted youth player sit on our bench all season, bringing back Lenglet or signing someone on a free.

I don't know how true this is for football. But in basketball when a player is forced off with a muscle injury it's usually because they will have to miss 2-3 weeks. Obviously with basketball you can a sub a player out to let them recover, and then bring them back in so it's different. But it could easily be a week or 2 for porro.

Last season Harry kane had 30 goals and 3 assists, Watkins is hopefully going to better that this year with zero penalties. It won't have been since 20/21 that Kane will have had more goal involvements than Watkins in a premier league season and not since 2017 before that. I think it's fairly reasonable to begin questioning whether it should indeed be kane starting upfront despite his prolificness in the bundesliga.

I think it's unfair to phrase it like that. It hasn't been great in the sense of like a genuine world class player and he's a number of poor games. But despite that he's got 13 goal contributions which is tied for 23rd in the league. He also forced 3 own goals. He's also only played 1850 minutes. He gets a goal contribution as frequently as Julian Alvarez 145 minutes per goal or assist each, Solanke is only at 1 every 140 minutes, someone like havertz is at 156. Diaby has overall been very impactful this season. And had Bailey been a lesser player this year I'm sure diaby could have been pushing for 10 goals and 10 assists himself.

16 goal contributing actions in just 16 games worth of minutes in the prem. Been massively influential.

Kamara and Mcginn and Kamara and Tielemans is still a mile off Luiz and Kamara.

It's Luiz and Kamara by a mile. Personally for Chelsea I think I might put Luiz further forward. Tielemans and Mcginn seem to have developed a nice chemistry as a duo in midfield that Luiz doesn't have with Mcginn or Tielemans for whatever reason (probably because Tielemans isn't physical enough and Mcginn never drops to receive the pass which prevents Luiz from being higher up himself to make the passes he wants). Either way though Luiz is the best player of the 4, the question how we can unlock him not whether or not he shouldn't be starting.

Yes but we play Chelsea before spurs play again. If we win that game, spurs might capitulate as it will be a nigh insurmountable gap. That being said we need to go out and beat Chelsea.

We absolutely need both. Do you forget how great we were before Kamara got injured. We won 13, drew 2 and lost 4 from 19 games he was fully available for (lost United game after he was injured so won't count that). 41 points in 19 games. That's looking like it might be enough to win the league this year. Plus we will have champions/europa league next season, which is against harder competition. And I would prefer if we weren't so pathetic in the cups. Plus Kamara won't be back until December so we will be without both if we sell one in the summer until January basically.