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The Douglas Luiz deal is initially a loan and they've made quite a lot from sales, most notably Elanga - they've a lower net spend so far this window than all three promoted teams

You can't deny that historically our fans have only ever had time for foreign managers. This is why nobody ever really took to Martin O'Neill or Nigel Pearson but by contrast were devastated to see Claude Puel and Paulo Sousa leave

I don't have a great deal of faith in our full-back options at all - one of the main reasons I'm not jumping for joy at this one no matter how good a deal it is for us. On the right Ricardo I think is probably still one of the best players in the league but sadly I don't believe we can rely on him, Choudhury I'm still not convinced by (good at the weekend though), Coulibaly plainly has no future here whatsoever. On the left I remain really unimpressed by Thomas, Kristiansen I'm not sure is any better and as with Enzo I don't know that he really fits with what we want from our full-backs, Aluko looked handy in pre-season and I hope we see more of him in the future but he didn't get a minute in the cup and hasn't even been in the squads for the league games.

Decent money for a player whose contract is up in a year aside, I'm not entirely sure it is being drained just yet. Maybe I misunderstand but when people use that phrase I always assume they mean they want rid of the malign influences who contribute nothing and seemingly couldn't really give a shit - Coady, fine, but does that describe Hermansen, Ndidi, McAteer and now Justin, potentially El Khannouss? If we reach the end of the window and the likes of Soumare, Vestergaard, Ayew, BDCR etc. are not only still here but still playing then that's still not a very nice looking swamp to me. I won't be too disappointed to see the back of JJ and it's a welcome departure from the former strategy of just letting everyone walk on a free but as long as the money for these players doesn't seem to be actually getting put to any use, I can't get too excited about it.

I've no wish to start any forum drama but I think you will definitely know them when you see them and particularly their signature. Maybe one day someone will bait them into ranting about how Pearson was a bully and the game will be up

There is one in particular who is definitely the same, deeply odd person, and not subtle about it either

One in the eye for the "just put your foot through it" brigade

Very small sample size obviously but some of them don't make for hugely impressive reading given we've played embattled relegation favourites, a team who finished one point above the drop last season and the League One play-off winners. Some highlights: xG against - 4.7 (joint 6th highest) Post-shot xG against (basically, how good are the shots we're facing?) - 4.6 (6th highest), Stolarczyk 2nd best shot-stopper in the league so far using this metric Shots against - 41 (joint 10th highest) Shots on target against - 13 (7th highest) Average distance of shots against - 14.6 yards (2nd lowest, obviously low = bad in this case) Attempted crosses into our area - 55 (5th highest) Completed crosses into our area - 9 (joint 7th highest) Opposition dead balls/set pieces leading to shots - 14 (highest) Tackles + interceptions - 53 (joint 22nd highest, not necessarily a bad thing) Opposition touches in our area - 73 (joint 6th highest) Fouls committed - 22 (lowest)

That's as good as official confirmation in my eyes

Who have you heard this from then?

Second half I thought he was very good, led by example

Feels like it could be really open this season. Very early days of course but I'm not yet convinced by any of the favourites. I hope we can put ourselves in a position to take advantage.

Stinking performance but a win's a win. Choudhury and Stolarczyk very good, Ayew and Skipp very not good. Completely unconvinced by the squad and equally sceptical that we'll add sufficient quality to it over the next week or so.

He wasn't

Soumare assist klaxon

A paranormally shit footballer

He did but to be fair people are always complaining about managers being too dogmatic and saying they should tailor their style to the players they've got. We've got crap, half-arsed players so crap, half-arsed football it is

Great strike Jord

I did think I covered that when I said the squad he's picking from is also bad

I'm happy to see Monga and Page starting but I also think the lineup (and squad) as a whole is miserable. Somehow, I am able to hold these opinions at the same time - what a marvel

Unfortunately I can't see them being in any rush to buy a second Dane off us after these two performances from their first one

He's brilliant. Would you have expected him to end up at this sort of level based on what you saw of him?

Hadn't thought of this until now but Ipswich have got quite a few Ireland internationals in their squad so maybe that played a part if he gets on well with them

I know their objective is to buy and sell assets more than it is actually building a football team but even so, spending more than a billion over the last four seasons to end up playing him in goal with Tosin and Chalobah centre back is remarkable stuff

I'll be pleasantly surprised if we end up spending that much but it is definitely very possible to get good Championship players for less than that