lcfc_forever

Wouldn't surprise me if we weren't considering Andreas Pereira from Man Utd now he's been made available for transfer, especially with van de Beek signing. We have a record of having longer-term targets and following up on them - Castagne, Dragovic, Adrien Silva - and we've been linked with Pereira for a number of seasons. But would Man Utd sell to a rival club?

It's unlikely but having read the recent reports on how desperate Barcelona's finances are looking, it's not quite out of the question. If Messi doesn't leave or the contract situation gets into the courts, Barcelona will have to reduce their wage bill through sales or loans of other players. Looks like Rakitic is going to Sevilla but along with Messi, the other high earners include Pique, Suarez, Alba and Busquets who they may struggle to offload. And Barcelona's directors can be on the hook to pay back debts if the finances are mismanaged and they'll want to do anything they can to avoid having to do this. Bartomeu is someone who has gone back on his word regularly so wouldn't surprise me if he ultimately sanctioned a deal for us to sign Trincao. Also, don't get this 'we don't have money' claim - we supposedly bid 45m for Trincao even before the Chilwell sale.

Couldn't agree more. It's been frustrating coming to the transfer forum and seeing so little activity. But when you think about the players that we've been linked to by informed sources (e.g. Fabrizio Romano and Rob Tanner) - Gosens, Tagliafico and Trincao - it's reassuring to see the club is going after high quality players who will improve the team. Only Man City and Chelsea have spent heavily during this window, and we still have a strong first XI. We've done excellent transfer business since the summer window of the 2016/2017 season, and a lot of lessons were learnt from that. With a world-leading new training ground and European football to come, backed by a sustainable financial model, only a handful of clubs would not swap places with us if they had the choice.

Can't believe an article from the Daily Star has caused so much discussion, they're not exactly known for being a trusted source! I doubt we're after Targett. Looks like Tagliafico and Gosens are our top targets, based on what more informed journalists like Fabrizio Romano and Rob Tanner have said. The other player we'd been closely linked with is Trincao so there's no doubt we're looking for high quality players who will improve the squad.

That's brilliant, keep up the good work!

I think Ashley was first to say we'd bid for Chris Mepham before he joined Bournemouth too.

Really nice work, cheers for doing this @jeffschlupp. As @SheppyFox said, there are a couple or so of Foxestalk ITKs who've got things right a lot more often than not: @themightyfin @Ashley@Abrasive fox

Journalist Fabrizio Romano just said: “He’s always been the main target for Chelsea. Let’s see if they’ll complete the agremeent with Leicester - they’re in contact“.

There is nothing in this except a made up rumour by Sean from Enderby and a few gullible followers putting a bet on, impacting the odds. In contrast, a journalist (Rob Dorsett) suggested Villa, Palace and Sheffield United are after him, and didn't mention us.

So funny seeing Sean from Enderby backtracking after Rob Dorsett’s tweet, he’d suggested it was pretty much a done deal yesterday with terms and fee expected to agreed without an issue: https://mobile.twitter.com/seanfromenderby/status/1293183984512335873

I think Lampard and Solskjaer remaining managers of their clubs might well prove to be a positive for us. To have two such big football teams headed by coaches who have not delivered any major success yet helps us, especially when you consider the potential calibre of candidates available to them. Read an article in The Athletic about Leipzig and Nagelsmann. Lots of similarities with us, thought this bit was especially interesting (and a lot of posters here have said the same thing): They were top of the table during the winter break, then proved inconsistent, especially after the post-lockdown restart in May. Four wins in those final nine games (four draws, one defeat) left them feeling somewhat deflated. Some of the contrasting results can be explained by the vagaries of football, Nagelsmann says, pointing out that Leipzig overperformed their xG score before Christmas and underperformed it at the beginning and in the middle of the second half of the season. But it wasn’t just bad luck. “You could see that the games without crowds dwelled on our minds a little. We weren’t entirely free in our heads. We are, generally speaking, a very young team that’s also very quiet and calm. Something was missing there. And many of our players still need to develop in training. But there was little time to train because of the Champions League, and eventually those deficits catch up with you. Some people believe that footballers can become better without training, but I don’t. It’s not possible.” Injuries played a part as well. Less rotation meant more games for a core group of players who became very tired, he says, which, in turn, led to Leipzig’s game losing its attacking edge. “Some of the things we had worked on with the ball and which had worked out really well hadn’t become second nature yet. We fell back upon our old pattern, focusing on pressing and gegenpressing, but those elements need maximum freshness and physical presence, which we didn’t have at that stage. So both parts of our game — with the ball, and without it — weren’t that good anymore.” More work is an answer. But maybe not the only one. In his four years as a first-team coach, and in the time before that, Nagelsmann has learned that motivation is to a large extent intrinsic, and that teams need to push themselves to a certain extent to be truly successful. He’s beginning to suspect that Leipzig’s model of buying highly-talented youngsters might have to be modified by bringing in one or two seasoned pros who are proven winners to act as dressing-room glue. “There are players who make teams better actively, through their performances, and those who do that but also improve the team passively, if you will, through the force of their personality and their character. Buying such a player wouldn’t fit into the RB concept 110 per cent but he could improve us as a group, with all these young guns. He wouldn’t be an investment in the classic sense, but would offset that with the positive effects he would have on the development of others.” Finding those old pros won’t be easy though. They will demand big pay packets, and Nagelsmann is loath to completely break the team’s wage structure. “Players talk with each other and find out (what others earn), unfortunately. In the interest of dressing-room harmony, everyone should be at similar levels.”

Just think about in whose most interest it was to suggest that this year's participants automatically go through to the CL, while the other clubs have to play qualifiers. Arguably it's Tottenham so I'd think this briefing has come from Levy or someone close to the club. We know Levy's reputation for ruthlessness and wanting to ensure the so-called Big Six get a higher share, as shown in this article: https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/champions-league-superclubs-liverpool-man-utd-barcelona-real-madrid-a9330431.html They're going to try to influence things/lobby via the media. The Premier League need to be consistent in whatever they do to minimise legal opposition so if they award Liverpool the title, they'll need to award the other positions as they are. What they may also do is try to find some way so every team has played the same number of games (perhaps a handful of closed door games) and expand the league to 22 as the article suggests.

Matt Elliott

I said in another thread that people should take transfer posts from LinekerApples with a pinch of salt (quite enjoy his non-transfer posts) but a few posters defended him.He also suggested the move for Praet was to encourage Milan to sell us Suso who also wanted Praet. It's a no lose situation for some of the so-called ITKs - they can claim moves are going to happen and then can hide behind it fell through or certain things didn't take place for the transfer to complete. The only posters I've seen announce things before they happen are Ashley (re. Perez), themightyfin (re. Maddison) and AbrasiveFox (re. issues in the dressing room when Puel was in charge). But acknowledge things they've said have not happened but at least they've got history of getting things right before others. As Geoff Peters said, the best ITKs are the likes of Percy. Looks like no storm is coming, but really pleased with our business so far.

LinekersApples doesn't have a clue, almost as bad as Sean from Enderby. Ashley, The MightyFin and AbrasiveFox are the only sources who have said something well in advance of a development/got the story ahead of a journalist. Hope Maguire stays - thought at the start of the Summer he'd definitely be going but looks like it's a lot more in the balance now.

LinekersApples doesn't have a clue, almost as bad as Sean from Enderby. Ashley, The MightyFin and AbrasiveFox are the only sources who have said something well in advance of a development/got the story ahead of a journalist. Hope Maguire stays - thought at the start of the Summer he'd definitely be going but looks like it's a lot more in the balance now.

Just looked at our stats from this season and it's amazing - our general play was top 6 standard. We had more shots on goal than any team except the top 4 and Man U (and there wasn't too much difference between ourselves Tottenham, Arsenal and Man U). You might then ask, well did we get them on target? Yep - our shots on target ratio was one of the highest too, 6th overall. Yet, our goals scored was only 11th. It's a similar story for goals against - we had the fifth least number of shots against us, and fifth least on target. Yet, we conceded the 7th least number of goals (http://www.footstats.co.uk/index.cfm?task=league_s) As the Guardian post suggests, luck (and confidence) play a big part. An issue under Puel was opposition teams didn't feel so much pressure or intimidation playing us, especially at home. Just think of the atmosphere when we won the title and how that feeds through to both the team and the opposition, especially poorer sides. When you think about what the club and players went through last season - off the field the tragedy with the Chairman and the other people on board the helicopter, and on the field transitioning to a much younger side, playing a different style of football, losing our best attacking player ahead of the start of the season (Mahrez) - it was a brilliant achievement to finish top 10 and could have been so much more with a bit more luck. We have a great foundation from which to build.

Just looked at our stats from this season and it's amazing - our general play was top 6 standard. We had more shots on goal than any team except the top 4 and Man U (and there wasn't too much difference between ourselves Tottenham, Arsenal and Man U). You might then ask, well did we get them on target? Yep - our shots on target ratio was one of the highest too, 6th overall. Yet, our goals scored was only 11th. It's a similar story for goals against - we had the fifth least number of shots against us, and fifth least on target. Yet, we conceded the 7th least number of goals (http://www.footstats.co.uk/index.cfm?task=league_s) As the Guardian post suggests, luck (and confidence) play a big part. An issue under Puel was opposition teams didn't feel so much pressure or intimidation playing us, especially at home. Just think of the atmosphere when we won the title and how that feeds through to both the team and the opposition, especially poorer sides. When you think about what the club and players went through last season - off the field the tragedy with the Chairman and the other people on board the helicopter, and on the field transitioning to a much younger side, playing a different style of football, losing our best attacking player ahead of the start of the season (Mahrez) - it was a brilliant achievement to finish top 10 and could have been so much more with a bit more luck. We have a great foundation from which to build.

This was exactly my line of thinking till yesterday. But if this was the strategy, he should have chosen Drago over Morgan, and put Barnes in the team. Mahrez will more than likely go in the Summer so why continue to start him, especially as he appears so disinterested? He's paying the price for picking underperforming senior players when this is the absolutely the right time to be giving the academy players a chance.

Puel's been the master of his own downfall. Was backing him before this game but when I saw Morgan back in for Dragovic, my patience ran out. He's been trying to keep certain underperforming senior players onside by continuing to pick them, when not giving younger, hungrier players starting places who may fit his style better. For example, as well as Dragovic, was hoping to see Barnes in the no.10 role today, especially after his performance earlier in the week for the U-23s. Even if we lose, at least it's supporting the development of the talent in the squad. Fans would have been more forgiving if he'd shown more bottle and the courage of his convictions, as we would have been building something, rather than taking the safer, more cautious route, irrespective of the result. His motivation skills are sorely lacking, the players just aren't going that extra mile for him. For example, in the quarter-final against Chelsea, we should have had the momentum going into extra-time but completely gave the initiative back to Chelsea. Ultimately, Rudkin is the the longer-term problem. As many have rightly said, there's no strategy or identity which is why we keep chop and changing managers. If Puel goes, surely he should go too. There's something to admire in loyalty but they need to be equally hard-nosed with the director of football who is clearly sub-standard for their and our ambitions.