Finnegan

60% of the time it works every time.

And that's still better man management than Brendan Rodgers.

Probably not super surprising, ex Arsenal academy lads that both went on a tour of mainland Europe before winding up in the Championship in their mid twenties.

I dunno. I've mellowed a bit on Akpom. I think if he's the best we can come up with it says more about the overall financial position of the club and the overall management of the squad than simply our scouting. Now, do not misunderstand me, if this was the summer and a permanent transfer I'd be fuming. It's so little imagination and future proofing it hurts. And as an aside, I completely agree with you that it's baffling we don't have the same scouting ability in South and Central America, Asia, Africa or even Eastern Europe that we do in France, Benelux and Denmark. It would have next to no impact on FFP / PSR to expand our scouting and recruitment globally and what we did spend on searching would probably be offset by what you save buying from developing leagues. Sure. But I do think there's a time and a place to risk bringing in a @Tommy Fresh Bolivian teenager (wait, that sounds horrendous, sorry Tommy) and I'm not entirely sure it's now. It absolutely pains me to say this but if we're looking for a get out of jail card, I'd probably rather an experienced professional that has previously done alright in this country and won't need time to settle in or experience a culture shock. In terms of long term squad planning I'd say we're on the same page but right now? Eh idk.

Ah, my bad, I missed that bit. To be honest that makes it almost more baffling though really.

But we don't need to. He's no better than Daka and probably not even a great deal better than Ayew and we only need him if Vardy is injured anyway. He's 29 and the problem isn't his fee, as ever, it would be the years he's then contracted stinking out the place doing nothing. If this is the market we're shopping in for strikers then quite frankly all the money should go on loan fees and other positions. The money would be better spent in the summer, whatever league we're in. Akpom doesn't save us either way.

Oof. Ouch. Too accurate for me.

Just memeing dude.

**** it man, Daniel Amartey is out of contract, Cags is also stuck back in Turkey and Panathinaikos owe us one from the summer so they might as well send us Tete. Get the whole damn gang back together with Danny Ward.

I originally removed this. I got out ranked In fairness, if I'd seen it came from O'Rourke I'd possibly have stretched to T3 and left the thread up. Footy Insider is like HITC, occasionally an aggregator and occasionally unsourced click bait shit.

Personally think this is an absolute nonsense rumour that screams of his agent trying to shop him around because his contract is up. It's a couple of weeks too late for me to believe it.

I'm sorry but having a gay brother doesn't mean you can't think and say misguided things. What you've said on the subject here is a little thoughtless at best and extremely insensitive at worst. Unless I've missed a quote somewhere, and I retract all of this and apologise if I have, he hasn't come out and said "oh yeah what scamps us gays are, all out there doing drugs and partying!" and pushing old 1980s stereotypes. He's implied that he turned to substance abuse to cope with the extreme stress and the pressures of being both a referee and closeted, both extremely difficult things to deal with in modern football. Whilst I think he absolutely will have engaged the services of a PR firm who no doubt are coaching him through some damage limitation, unless you're suggesting he's only pretending to be gay to get his job back (which would be mental) then there's probably a lot of truth in what he's said. A lot of the "other gay people that don't do blow" almost certainly aren't living and working in a community that's that intolerant and that scrutinised. It's generally open season on referees, gay or not, and they probably receive more open abuse than anyone else in the sport. Christ, it's even normalised for twenty odd elite athletes to all gather round them at once and scream collectively in their face on international broadcast. You have absolutely no idea the stresses impacting his mental health just because you have a family member or friend who is gay (brother, it's 2025, nearly all of us do.) You're coming across as rude, dismissive and judgemental and absolutely nobody in here owes you the apology you think you deserve for calling you out.

Tbf, the fact the only example we have is a kid that's almost exclusively only played in the Northern Premier League that most people haven't heard of sort of enforces the point. If you're looking at statistical averages you'd probably expect at least a hundred or so gay or bi men in a sample size as large as the number of footballers in England's top three or four leagues and that's just looking at the first team squads. The chances of there being literally zero in the Premier League and Championship is pretty small and if there really aren't then it opens up a bunch of other questions about why. Football's diversity and it's acceptance has improved a LOT in our lifetimes but it's still got a long way to go. Certainly doesn't help that we're putting on rainbow laces one moment and then selling the sport to oil states where homosexuality is punishable the very next second.

And here we see Ricardo Pereira in his natural environment...

Mate he's only 33 and we'll sign anyone for attacking midfielder, **** narration, get him a shirt.

I think I've worked it out. Top's latest money making scheme is to sell Netflix the rights to make a pioneering new show going behind the scenes at a professional football club's medical team, narrated by Darren Anderton. Not content with Wilf and Ricky permanently occupying the injury room, we're adding household name, ex Liverpool and Arsenal star Alex Oxlade Chamberlain to the team sheet alongside perpetually wounded, eternal prospect Tariq Lamptey. Fortunately for us, Filip Benkovic is back to free agency so that solves our centre back problems. And just to really round things off, Franny Jeffers is out of work when Ruud gets sacked so we can have someone at the helm that really adds to the narrative.

Tbf, we've only really thought about what Cannon and Hamza free up assuming we're looking for a net 0 January. What we haven't considered is that maybe we need a net 0 post-August season. We might need the savings from Hamza and Cannon to offset sacking Cooper and putting something away to potentially replace RVN if they go full panic stations. Then of course there's the losses relegation would bring. We're ultimately all just guessing. It'll come down to the age old toss up, do you risk investing to stay in the league and what you save from staying up makes what you spend worth while? Or do you cut your losses and brace for impact? Either way, I'll be amazed if we do much more in the next few days. Probably a winger on loan at most.

At the risk of defending Spurs fans, there is a bit of a caveat isn't there? They pay something like the second most in Europe for a season ticket. The product being sold to them is unbelievably expensive, through no fault of their own (or, only as much fault as any fanbase) they're being charged the money you'd expect the absolute elite of clubs to be charging. And what they get for that is mid table mediocrity.

RIP rugby union in the UK. Literally nobody wants this. To be clear, mind, the Rugby Pass story is rubbish and nothing has been finalised. But it's been coming for ages and it'll happen eventually.

@Mark it's already in the twitter thread and this is just the same nonsense source. Can you merge and delete my comment please.

Just accidentally stumbled upon Wayfinder. Apparently it was originally an MMO that flopped massively to the extent DE walked away from it. It's been re-built as an ARPG that feels like a weird mix of Diablo and Borderlands, had all of it's live service elements taken out of it and it's actually really quite good? Definitely not something I think I'll end up pumping hundreds and hundreds of hours in to but for twenty quid it's got a really fun core gameplay loop.

Why not both?!? Ayew Willian, Ox, BDCR A front four like Micky Adams never left, what a time to be alive.

Enzo seemed very complimentary of Glover. Gave him personal credit for Fatawu. Given Enzo's preference to be a head coach and work with a DOF, I can't imagine him getting overly hands on with targets beyond we know he asked for Winks. Willing to bet Mads and Mavididi (say what you want but he was great in the Championship and cheap) probably also came out of his shop.

Oxlade Chamberlain Have IT checked to make sure Steve Cooper doesn't still have remote access to bigjonsbigtransferlist.xlsx