Finnegan

Moronic posts like this are where the phrase happy clapper comes from. We're grown adults, we've all been educated, we're supposed to be capable of critical thought and appreciating nuance. Yeah, that was a positive half of football but there's nothing wrong with pointing out things that might be wrong. Soumare and Vestergaard look poor and half arsed and Fiorentina don't even really look like they can manage half arsed themselves. It doesn't make you a bad fan to point those things out and to have concerns that when the season starts things will be much, much different.

God I've missed Fatawu.

Stephy looks much faster than he did for all of last season.

Early impressions: like Cifuentes, the patterns of play, the speed of moving the ball, the set up of the positions, all good. But the squad feels so, so much worse without Vardy, Ricardo, Winks and KDH. This is going to be a slog of a season if we don't sign any attacking talent.

Ayew up front really actually is heinous tbh. Literally the only people in that team I actually want to see play football are Fatawu, BEK who is leaving and maybe Mavididi who has been in honking form since we were last promoted.

And they managed about 0.7 xG against Well and Martin is already publicly attacking the players attitudes

It's just a game of chicken though isn't it. Who has the bigger need, who blinks first. We have players we need to bring in and don't seem to be doing that til we sell. If Hermansen goes for a tidy wedge and we haven't lost as much as we think for relegation then maybe we can afford to turn down money for BEK. Risky, though, given he pulled a Fofana to get his move to Leicester. Imagine he'd do it here too.

That would make a lot of sense with what's going on. It means both things are true, that he has a clause and that clubs are trying to negotiate with us. Clearly people want to bid a bit less than his clause.

He signed a new long term contract with Peterborough. I'm locking the thread.

Very little chance BEK is still here in September. His agent appears to be actively trying to get him a move and we seem resigned and willing to sell him if we can recoup our losses with a small profit. He'll go for ~25mish (may even have a release clause.) Leeds have allegedly already agreed personal terms with him and the sources for that are very strong.

In either instance, we're about to sell Hermansen and BEK. I'd be extremely surprised if we don't buy one or two players for ~5ish each.

It's absolutely crap.

Home is ****ing dreadful. Seriously this entire season of Adidas is rancid.

Begrudgingly not going to delete this because I don't think there's any point, people are going to keep re-opening this thread all summer until he goes to Swansea or whoever. But Peter O'Rourke is less reliable than Alan Nixon. His entire job, for the last decade, has been to drive advertising revenue by making up rumours for engagement. He's one of THE worst false rumour mongers. Pretty sure he's linked Kone alone to about 10 clubs.

I wish he wasn't going I really do. But Schmeichel went and was replaced by Ward in the Premier League. Mads (worse than Kasper) is going and is being replaced by Stolarczyk (better than Ward) in the Championship (worse than Premier League) it's not quite the same.

We just simply don't have anyone else we can sell to make the kind of profit we can off Hermansen. It's alright saying he's worth 8 points but, for all we know, selling him might be the difference between us getting an 8 point deduction or not. Relegation means this is going to be yet another year in which we're sailing perilously close to the wind with PSR. Plus, there's loads of holes in our squad. Who do you think, on current form and confidence, is likely to cost us more points this season, Stolarczyk or Daka? I've defended Daka more than anyone else on here but even I've got to admit he almost certainly can't be our main striking option this season. We've got to find a forward from somewhere good enough to get us out of the league on money we can afford. Like I said earlier, Stolarczyk is worse than Hermansen, of course he is, but he'll "do."

@Lambert09 (I removed your thread, there's no actual link to us, O'Rourke is an absolutely appalling source and it's in here already.)

Yeah but like I say, we can't just stop signing people entirely because the situation isn't great. Bit by bit we've got to slowly get the overpaid and underperforming players off of both the wage bill and our amortisation considerations and replace them with better. It'll be a gradual process. Obviously if we give Brownhill shit loads of money and a 5 year contract it'd be terrible business but if it's a fairly sensible deal then it's a fairly good one, especially given he's essentially a like-for-like replacement for BEK who we'll make a bit of profit on, is probably on comparable wages and I'm not convinced will actually be better in the Championship. I'd be 100% in agreement with you if this was another horrorshow appointment like Ayew or Reid but I don't think Brownhill is in that league. Probably my only real hesitation is the fact he just isn't staying with Burnley.

Also of note, he was their club captain, he's not exactly slow for a midfielder and he can finish off both feet.

Man, foxestalk would ****ing love him. All the professional armchair critics here with their famous eye tests. Soumano makes Daka look like prime Mahrez in terms of elegance, proper scruffy footballer.

I dunno. Depends on the contract length we offer. What are we supposed to do, sign literally nobody? The guy just got 24 combined goals and assists, with 18 of those being goals, in 38.6 lots of 90 minutes in this league last season. Even if you take out the penalties (3) that's a goal or assist every 0.54 games and a non-penalty goal specifically every 0.39. KDH only scored at 0.28. We can bring that in for 0 up front transfer fee when we're massively lacking in attacking stats in the midfield, he'll be replacing BEK who is leaving for something like ~10m on book this window and will probably be on lower wages? As long as any contract is <= three years then frankly I don't think it's especially bad business? Coady, Hermansen & BEK are about to imminently clear off the wage bill and two of those don't need replacing at all. I'd be pretty happy with Brownhill on a free allowing us to put the lions share of the money towards a solid striker and off-setting our PSR losses.

I try not to "dislike" people for arbitrary reasons, certainly not going to say I dislike another grown adult just because I don't think they're good at football or they don't play particularly well for us. But Danny Simpson is a wife beating **** that shouldn't have a TV / media career and I really hate that he gets trotted out so much to talk about us. That said, he was a massively under-rated defensive full back and comparing his defensive abilities to some of the full backs we've had since only further highlights that. He offered no attacking threat but these days you don't actually always have to. Ironically, Enzo probably would have liked him.

It's pointless closing it, someone will just re-open it the second some twitter troll links him to one of the big three: Barcelona, Real Madrid or Accrington Stanley. I will keep on top of updating the signposting on the thread, though, so you can just ignore it unless something happens.