Finnegan

Was he not behind in the polling up til yesterday despite every media outlet dog piling Biden and ignoring all of Trumps gaffes, glossing over Cannon and the Supreme Court corrupting the justice system for him and fresh allegations of crimes alongside Epstein?

No shooting does that. Him legitimately losing the election because the American people overwhelming vote against a rapist, fascist, traitor with extremely blatant links to Vladimir Putin is what does that. Actually locking him up for the very real crimes he's committed does that. Shooting at him just strengthens his position and inspires god only knows what in revenge from his hardline support. It's a completely senseless and unpleasant thing to do.

That's a little bit of an extreme reaction. I probably should clarify that at the time of posting there were no known fatalities. In light of deaths in the audience I absolutely agree it is highly unlikely to be a political stunt. But you'd probably have to be quite naive to think a fake assassination attempt isn't something Donald Trump and his inner circle would absolutely conjure up. This is an organisation with a considerable record of attacking democracy and this will benefit his campaign.

I think what I wrote pretty much answers most of what you did. If you have anything specific you want to ask that you think I missed then by all means, I'll more than happily keep this conversation going just for @Adster to be fair.

You've been a member for 14 years. Have you learned nothing

Would you really bet against it being staged?

If people stop using threads about EVERY other player to call Patson Daka shit then I'll stop using threads about EVERY other player to argue.

I think our more expensive purchases will be Soule, a striker and a centre mid for half decent money. As you've pointed out a few times (I think it was you, I apologise if not) our amortisation as well as our wage bill have radically dropped. I think we'll spend more than some people imagine and it seems a striker will be on the list. We tend to hyper fixate on one transfer at a time. The amount of noise on Soule at the minute, I'm sure this is the deal we're actively working on and then it'll be on to the next name.

You're both right to an extent. 9.4 is xG, 7.1 is npxG (non penalty.) Daka was in the 99th percentile for npxG per 90 minutes last season but the 45th percentile for non penalty goals. His finishing definitely was somewhat wayward this year, particularly after he came back from international duty, there's no arguing that and I never have.

Which is the first year that he's done that here and it came from missing several absolute sitters in a run from that howler st Leeds onwards. It definitely rocked his confidence. As I've said before, I totally can't defend them and you could absolutely see the stark difference in quality even at 38 between Vardy and Daka in that regard. But I still maintain Daka's all round game was a better fit for the system than Vards and I think we'd have had a less turgid start to the season if Daka hadn't begun the year in the dog house while Iheanacho was floundering a bit. What he needs now is either Cooper to come in and say "you know what, you're first choice this year, 100%, we will back you to be the man" or he needs to find a club that'll do that and he can go kick start his career. He strikes me as very much a confidence player and continuously being dropped in and out of the side just won't ever benefit him.

He scored 7 goals and contributed 5 assists in 15 starts racking up 1086 minutes of football. This means he returned a goal every 0.58 lots of 90 minutes and a goal contribution (goal or assist) every 0.99 games. A goal a game. A better return than every other Championship player, in any position, to play more than a thousand minutes - except Jamie Vardy at 1.02. Even for goals, he was the 7th most efficient striker in the league to qualify. For context, Jon Rowe was scoring a goal every 0.53 games, Adam Armstrong every 0.50 and Che Adams every 0.63. But honestly if you want to quantify how he actually "fit" playing as a solo or "lone" (I hate this term) striker you want to look at more than his output. He's in the 76th percentile for passes attempted amongst strikers, the 92nd for pass completion, the 86th for touches in the penalty area and the team scored more goals per game when he started than when he didn't. But most of all, I just absolutely loathe this idea that any modern striker "needs" a striker partner or can "only play in a two" or "can't play as a lone striker." There are no lone players on a football pitch and if there are, the manager is doing something very wrong. We didn't play a "lone" striker last year, we had one central forward yes but he was part of an attacking unit of five with two overlapping, extremely advanced midfielders for support as well as two extremely advanced wingers. Often, our strikers were the deepest of all of them, dropping in to collect from Vestergaard, Hermansen or Winks and start a move with the likes of KDH and Mavididi getting on their bike to fill the gap behind. Never was Daka or Vardy or Iheanacho isolated and "alone" and both Daka and Vardy ended up really fitting and I'd say thriving in the shape by the end of the season. No striker "needs" another striker as a partner but ALL footballers need bodies around them if they're going to actually function. Our biggest problem under Rodgers is he became so terrified of our defensive frailty with no idea how to fix it that he increasingly restricted the number of bodies he'd allow to get forward and support whoever of Daka, Iheanacho or Vardy was left just stuck up front feeding off scraps. That was never the problem last year.

As I thought.

I actually think he passed the eye test last year a lot more than I was expecting to be honest. For the record, I think the "eye test" is an absolute joke. History is full of technically gifted players with a good centre of gravity who looked pretty in possession and contributed **** all. Dennis Praet is probably one of the best ever examples of the eye test in action, he looks like such an elegant footballer AND he runs around a lot. Double eye test points. He does absolutely nothing of worth on a pitch. But yeah, that said, Patson Daka's season last year was a really good example of confirmation bias. Now I'm aware someone will reverse that on me because they think I'm in love with him and it's become a bit of a meme. But actually his all round contributions to build up play were really smart last year. He had some really good touches and carries dropping in, taking the ball well, holding it up, put in some really neat passes. I thought Enzo's system looked it's best with Daka playing. But people just didn't see it. His good contributions are completely invisible to people who have made up their mind and only see it the odd time he mis controls or has a scruffy shot. I thought he'd be a weak link in the build up under Enzo but he looked a much better technical footballer than he had under Rodgers tbh. But it doesn't really matter does it? It's not just his "tap ins" is it (and we talk about how many scruffy tap ins Haaland scores and the art of good positioning) but he actually put in a good number of assists per 90 minutes too. Numbers matter, stats matter, productivity matters. Far more than aesthetics. Rachid Ghezzal is an elegant footballer, would you take him over Marc Albrighton?

I'd like to hear your reasoning and evidence for that. Take as long as you need. I'll happily respond in kind.

I'm assuming that doesn't entirely matter. I don't think the club is actually particularly cash poor or financially unstable. Yes, we probably have a mountain of loans and debts but almost every club in the world operates like that. Our biggest issue is what we're allowed to spend and if we've got contracted sponsorship deals to the tune of X million then we're allowed to spend X million. If we can prove to the league we're due that income then all is good. I highly doubt we'd be penalised in terms of PSR / FFP if a company contracted to pay us breached that contract by failing to do so in time or at all.

I'd like to hear your reasoning and evidence for that.

.... Wait... sorry, what. The sale of the women's club can count towards their Premier League PSR/FFP? Surely that's just click bait, has anyone bothered verifying outside that tweet? There's no ****ing way, surely?

He's from Northampton.

He's only a year older than KDH was before he went out to Luton. At the time I remember distinctly saying I thought we were ****ing around a bit with Dewsbury Hall, that if he wasn't getting anywhere near the first time by then we should do the right thing and start considering letting him go permanently and that we were hoarding players that had no pathway to the first team and should just cash in for whatever his current value was. Whilst, in fairness, we'd just finished 5th and Maddison, Tielemans and Ndidi were at their peak as one of the best and most settled midfields in the country, it was still one of my worst calls ever on here. There's flashes of something with McAteer. He could end up being nothing more than a League One utility player that once had a purple patch in a side far too good for the league it was in. But could also grow in to a very efficient, late blooming finisher with an impeccable work rate and aggression and we've one of THOSE turn out really well before. Just loan him out. Find him a Championship club that will play him all season that aren't awful and don't just park the bus 24/7 and let's see where he's at. His value could grow noticeably, we've not got a lot to lose. He's hardly likely to go for a major fee now.

In fairness he was out on loan at one of the smallest clubs in the league that went down fairly pitifully with 8 wins all year. He was generally their stand out player and he created a lot of very good chances that were largely wasted by Frosinone's poor array of forwards.

Roma might be a famous club with a billionaire owner but he's a billionaire American owner. Like a lot of American owners, he's not exactly going wild pumping his own money in for transfers. Since he's owned the club, they've only spent 20 or more twice. Once was Tammy Abraham, the second they've only just done. They spent 25m on Le Fee. It'd be a big shift for them to spend more than that again on a 21 year old in the same summer. Not saying impossible but it seems unlikely. With Juve desperate to get as much as they can for this, if we've identified him as a priority target it wouldn't surprise me if he winds up here.

Only way this doesn't happen imo now is we get third partied but it won't be by an Italian club. Nobody's paying 30m for him there. Juventus can play tough all they want, we know full well they're desperate for the cash for Sancho.

FBRef's progressive carries are defined as one that moves the ball 10 yards towards the opposition's goal "from it's furthest point within the last six passes", or any carry that ends in the opponent's penalty area. Excludes carries that end in your own half.

If you watch his highlights from last season you'll realise he should have had a shit load more assists if anyone else at Frosinone could shoot.

Please stop doing this man I love sports interactive and I've got probably over ten thousand hours in the franchise in my life. They've always been famously and fairly hilarious inconsistent with their profiling of young players.