Laughable Chimp

I'd give this one a miss. His stats are surprisingly poor for that price and will probably demand a decently sized salary.

I think quite a few high profile players have had issues with him and his coaching style. Certainly, more than other coaches.

He was 22 at the time, looked like a physical beast, had just won the young belgium player of the year award. Hell, even the fact that he’s Brazillian might’ve helped made him look better. Goal return was still good for the league, just not exceptional and he did supplement it by bagging a decent number of assists too. Even without watching him play in the league, its not hard to imagine people coming to the conclusion that this might be a rising football star with incredible potential. He already had links with pl clubs and we probably figured if we didn’t move now and stump up the cash, we were never gonna get him. And he probably did look like a rising football star even if you did watch him play. I’m sure he looked a lot better when playing against jupiler league defenders. He wouldn’t be the first player to look like a monster in a lower league but at utter donkeh after taking the step up. all this is to say is, I don’t think its the worst signing in the world at the time. We did screw up by trying to play him as a target man though. Either our scouts were bad and didn’t do their due diligence, or the club attempted to forcibly mold him into one simply because they felt that would be the best way to take advantage of his pjysical gifts. Similar thing happened with Joelinton back them iirc.

2 of those were against Norwich actually

Felix is not just valued higher, they’re not even in the same stratosphere. He’s a footballing superstar who has multiple years of cl experience, won numerous trophies and accolades, a player who moved for 120 million euros in his teens.And unlike Coutinho because I’m sure someone will make that comparison, he’s only 23 and will only get better. The comparison to us signing Kamara is ridiculous. And on that topic, I do think people are overrating how valued Kamara was when we got him. CL clubs weren’t exactly falling over themselves to get him, he was just a highly rated prospect that was on their radar mostly because his contract was ending. He probably ended up with us because no one else was willing to gamble on him and offer as much money as we did. Or you could take him on his word and believe its because of stevie g but I’m sure no one wants to give him any cresit for that edit: ah what the hell, the coutinho signing was never that crazy too. People just got blinded by the name but he was wank for Barca for years and they couldn’t wait to get rid of him.

Is this guy really comparing us signing Boubacar Kamara to us potentially signing Joao Felix?

Even if we could attract him here, the finances required would be insane and I’m not sure he’s worth paying close to 100m euros for not to mention the wages he would be on. He’s not pulled it all together for long enough or consistently enough to be worth that kind of financial outlay.

This was back in 2015 though so got to take inflation into account. Apparently we paid 6m for gestede. Top championship strikers go for way more than 6m nowadays.

He played a lot more than you think based on his appereaces alone. For example, he had more minutes for us than Rudy Gestede did for us back then and no one argues Gestede should’ve been given more time. To this day Wesley still has 2 and a half times more minutes than Davis has for us in the PL.

Tbf, that’s not a high bar to clear. I just went through their under 21 squad, almost every single one of them is currently playing for some scandinavian team I’ve never heard of. By far the 2 players playing at the highest level are Sinisalo and another keeper they have called lucas bergstrom who’s also been playing in league one with peterborough.

Also with regards to jack, the underlying stats beyond the goals and assists is good and he’s been unlucky to have so little of them. Its not like he’s completely regressed, he’s still involved in creating a lot of chances.

Barkley is an attacking midfielder. Him being a box-to-box was a bit of a myth that should’ve been dispelled once we saw him performing for us. He never had or had long since lost the work-rate to perform that role.

If Jack made his name in another club instead before he made his move to City, everyone would be all in for it. I’ve seen how this forum reacts whenever we get linked to a big name player. I saw it with Drinkwater, Barkley, Coutinho. People are all too willing to ignore their recent poor form, no way they would turn their nose up at a player who moved for 100 million pounds only 1 and a half years ago if he didn’t used to be one of ours.

Its a bit of a pointless rule because no one would ever admit to doing it and it would be practically impossible to prove if that happens.

I didn't even realize we had some of these players out on loan. Went down a rabbit hole researching more about some of them and why they aren't playing. Like with Sinisalo. Seems like he got put on the bench after having had a bad game and being a goalkeeper has barely played since. This was the game. First goal was genuinely funny to me. He basically does a token effort dive in trying to save the shot thinking it would comfortably sail over the bar only for it to bounce back off the bar and he's now scrambling to get back up because of it. Second goal wasn't much better, shot goes through his legs despite having enough time to react to it. I genuinely didn't know who Lindley was. Seems like he played a few games at the start of his loan before just completely disappearing for newport. Don't know if its an injury or what's happened there

Even if we primarily played with 2 strikers, Archer likely won’t play. What will probably happen is that we’ll just shift to a one striker formation instead and that extra striker spot becomes an extra winger/attacking midfield spot. I mean, that’s how we line up whenever we go for a one striker formation. Archer isn’t just competing with the strikers, he’s competing with the likes of Bailey, Buendia, Coutinho and Ramsey. And that was never a competition he was likely to win. It was obvious he was never going to get much game time regardless. Not unless he somehow scores in the few minutes he gets at the end of every match and parlays that into a starting position and continues to maintain his form. And I’ve seen Davis try to do that enough times to know that its unlikely to happen.

If Ings gets injured, Watkins replaces him. If Watkins gets injured, Ings replaces him. The only way Archer plays is if both get injured at the same time, which to my knowledge has never happened once since Ings has signed for us.

His stats seem pretty bad

He’s already shown that he’s good enough for league 2, no point in loaning him back there again. if he is ever going to make it here, he now needs to show that he can do it at league 1 level. Whether that be at MK Dons or any other league 1 club

Not sure how Preece got that stat. Even if I wanted to be extremely generous by ignoring his minutes in the cups and counting the penalty he won as an assist, the lowest I can get is a goal or an assist every 180 minutes

We’re not exactly spoilt for choice in terms of wing options. On a free its a no brainer for a team like us.

The fact that we bought Carlos clearly indicated we intended to replace at least one of them from the starting lineup. My money is on that person being Mings, that's the true reason for why Gerrard stripped him of his captaincy and why Mings didn't start our first match. Meanwhile, he always seemed to want to start Konsa whenever possible. Time will till though if Emery thinks similarly.

FiveThirtyEight predicts us to finish on 48 points and just squeeze the top 10. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/soccer-predictions/premier-league/ If you look at their probability distributions, they predict that there's a 90 percent chance we end up somewhere in between 16th and 7th. That's a massive range of positions but I find it hard to disagree with. Midtable is often tight and we're only one third a way through the season, a lot can happen still.

Sanson being gutted at not getting on against Brighton.

Tbf, the price we paid per player was pretty low too. Was always going to have a higher miss rate