Gerard

I was in a pub in Norwich and seen someone with a Tigers top on, I asked him if he was from Leicester but he was from Norwich and a Norwich City fan.

On Betfair we're already an implied 93.5% chance of being promoted, I'm not sure if spending £5m on a transfer fee and wages until the summer improves those odds that much and probably certainly not value for money to improve those odds by 0.5%-1%. He seems surplus at Inter so they're probably chancing their arm with a €3m asking price and no apparent suitors but us. Come the end of the window they may reduce that to €1m just to get his wages off the books. A bit like us with Praet, 6 months left and stealing a wage.

Not sure why we'd pay €3m for him when we can have him for free in the summer, it's not like our promotion challenge is faltering.

For anyone who can't get a ticket

The only regular in the first XI was Ricardo with 22 Championship starts. The other 10 players have 35 Championship starts between them this season.

Has a cheese and onion pasty ever been great in the whole of human history?

He's been a huge disappointment for me because I had such high expectations of him. He was the one player I was desperate for us to get in the summer. The Golden Boot and Golden Ball winner at the U20 World Cup suggested to me he was going to the top of the game and at 20yo he's not that young that he shouldn't boss the Championship. I think a lower end PL player at best will probably be his level at his peak. Looking at previous winners of the Golden Ball and Golden Boot he's the 7th player in history to do it joining the likes of Messi, Aguero and Saviola but also these two both won it in 2009 and 2011 and had nondescript careers so perhaps shining at the U20 World Cup is not a guarantee of quality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Adiyiah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrique_Almeida Tournament Golden Ball Golden Boot Goals Golden Glove FIFA Fair Play Trophy 1977 Tunisia Vladimir Bessonov Guina 4 Not Awarded Brazil 1979 Japan Diego Maradona Ramón Díaz 8 Poland 1981 Australia Romulus Gabor Mark Koussas 4 Australia 1983 Mexico Geovani Geovani 6 South Korea 1985 Soviet Union Paulo Silas Sebastián Losada 3 Colombia 1987 Chile Robert Prosinečki Marcel Witeczek 7 West Germany 1989 Saudi Arabia Bismarck Oleg Salenko 5 United States 1991 Portugal Emílio Peixe Sergei Sherbakov 5 Soviet Union 1993 Australia Adriano Henry Zambrano 3 England 1995 Qatar Caio Joseba Etxeberria 7 Japan 1997 Malaysia Nicolás Olivera Adaílton 10 Argentina 1999 Nigeria Seydou Keita Pablo Couñago 5 Croatia 2001 Argentina Javier Saviola Javier Saviola 11 Argentina 2003 United Arab Emirates Ismail Matar Eddie Johnson 4 Colombia 2005 Netherlands Lionel Messi Lionel Messi 6 Colombia 2007 Canada Sergio Agüero Sergio Agüero 6 Japan 2009 Egypt Dominic Adiyiah Dominic Adiyiah 8 Esteban Alvarado Brazil 2011 Colombia Henrique Almeida Henrique Almeida 5 Mika Nigeria 2013 Turkey Paul Pogba Ebenezer Assifuah 6 Guillermo de Amores Spain 2015 New Zealand Adama Traoré Viktor Kovalenko 5 Predrag Rajković Ukraine 2017 South Korea Dominic Solanke Riccardo Orsolini 5 Freddie Woodman Mexico 2019 Poland Lee Kang-in Erling Haaland 9 Andriy Lunin Japan 2023 Argentina Cesare Casadei Cesare Casadei 7 Sebastiano Desplanches United States

Do you know this for 100% certain? That makes "obligation to buy" a one sided affair. Player massively excels and then the "obligation" is taken from us as they sell to another club, player has a career threatening injury and we're lumbered with him. Just for example if Fatawa if POTT at the AFCON, come back and scores 20 goals and 15 assists between February and the end of the season and Real Madrid gazump us but on the last day of the season he does a "David Busst" (don't google it if you don't know what I mean), Real Madrid pull out and we're forced to buy him. It seems obligations are too heavily weighted against the buying team as you get all the downside and a limited upside.

Your avatar man.

We're not selling any first teamer in January for a value price. It would have to be a price that turns our head.

Never agreed with the signing at the time and nothing has changed. He was never getting in ahead of Maddison and peak Tilemans and spending £15m on a back up who was mid 20's and thus likely to never improve looked a waste of money at the time as it does now. Proven mediocrity, money should have been spent on potential to have the chance to eventually push Maddison/Tielemans or maybe a Bosman.

Manchester City only won the Champions League last season because Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich aren't quite the teams they were 10-15 years ago.

Yes, according to Betfair we're about an 87% implied chance of getting promoted. He's a 19yo who looks like he has every chance of going all the way in the game in a position we desire. He'd be a buy to cement our credentials for promotion and a after six months of bedding in PL quality with an excellent chance of selling for a profit further down the line.

Reading the Brazilians quoting on that thread they're almost to a man fuming at him going that cheap. Always a great sign.

Not that I want Ipswich to win or challenge us but I don't mind them matching us stride for stride as it's about finishing in the top two and them being alongside us gives us focus. If we get miles clear of second you would have to worry if our focus and hunger drops a tad, saying that I trust in Enzo to nip that in the bud early if it happens.

The year before all three promoted clubs stayed up.

You don't get seven goals in seven games and win the Golden Ball and the Golden Boot in the U20 World Cup without having a little bit about you.

Probably our strongest team?

Not Championship I know but does anyone know if "Old Bob" from twitter owns them?

Good, betting market now has Sunderland as 4th favourites after binning off Norwich and Southampton this last week.

We're not developing anyone's players for them, the relationship is purely symbiotic. If Maresca thinks we have better players in house rather than the loanees then they won't start.

He has decent pedigree coming through the Arsenal and Juventus academies but never threatened to break through in either. In Ligue One he's an 8/9 goal a season man if he plays a full season, 25yo but you would think he looks younger as he still looks a bit raw with plenty of ability. I think if we got promoted he's comfortably good enough to be in a side that stays up easily, perhaps even a mid table side. A very good signing on the evidence we've seen so far For once it looks like you can't complain about any of our business this summer, either they all look good or we haven't seen them yet like Cannon and Coady. Even getting some our loan signings on option to buy is excellent.

I googled their team last week, they have a lot of players mid 20's with quite average careers which you would presume they're just playing above their level or riding their luck at the moment . If their squad was full of players 22 and younger then they would be more of a threat as their players are unestablished and have some elasticity in their potential. Obviously like our title winning team the longer they stay up there the more respect you have to give them as a real threat but looking at their betting price and the fact that we know a lot of their squad have played for a good few years without furthering their careers then we already have evidence they're not that good but like our 2015/16 you never know with journeymen like Simpson, Huth, Morgan, Albrighton, etc.

You can still get 33/1 on Preston this morning despite them getting 19pts from 21, the market really doesn't rate them. Just a brilliant week for us though, this time last week the market considered us stand out favourites at 2/1 and Norwich, Ipswich, Southampton and Leeds all about 9/1 with 25/1 bar the rest. We've just gone and beaten two of our four biggest competitors away from home in five days.

I wouldn't worry about Preston, they're still 33/1 to win the Championship before today so the consensus is they're playing above their ability. The betting market has us as stand out fave at 2/1 and 25/1 bar apart from Leeds, Southampton, Norwich and Ipswich all about 9/1. Bad day so far us with Ipswich and Norwich winning at half time but excellent weekend regardless with us winning away at one of our biggest rivals.