ClaphamFox

It's remarkable how little understood this basic point is.

We're not appealing anything.

I assume the plan is to sell before 30 June to comply with PSR for this year, then invest in the squad from 1 July for the Championship season. How much money there is to invest remains to be seen, but you'd imagine the club is hoping that some of the development squad players step up because we won't be able to buy an entire new squad.

And given that those accounts don’t need to be submitted in the autumn, there is no basis on which the EFL can impose a transfer embargo this summer anyway. I wish people would stop with the transfer embargo stuff - it’s not going to happen.

We have four centre-halves, none of which are good enough for the PL. If you have a gaping hole in the middle of your back four, you're going to get relegated. It doesn't matter what combination we play there, the result will be the same.

A CB partnership of Wout Faes and Jannik Vestergaard means guaranteed relegation. The fact that the club has not signed a new CB this window is a tacit admission that the owners have no interest in trying to stay up. I just wish they’d be honest about it and admit this and save us all a lot of bother.

The only way we could give ourselves even a slim chance of survival would be to sign a high quality centre-half, most likely on loan. If we were going to make such a signing, it would have happened by now. As such, we’re going to face the rest of the season with Faes and Vestergaard at the back - and a CB partnership of that quality gets you relegated. It’s as depressingly simple as that.

If (and I realise it’s a big ‘if’) we’re close to finalising any transfers before the deadline tomorrow night, it might make things a bit trickier if we sack the manager during the last stages of negotiations…

It was obvious when we got promoted that our defence would immediately relegate us without major surgery and it’s proving to be the case. It’s a shame that Okoli has tured out to be a complete waste of money - that was our one effort to improve the back four and it failed. What an absolute shambles of a season.

If you’re picking the team you’d like rather than the one you think RvN will pick, why don’t you just put Okoli in? It‘s your team 😉

Why?

Do they have a mill in Worksop? I see little point in this if not....

Not now

Does that actually work?! If so: 2-0 Everton 2-1 Everton 3-0 Everton 3-1 Everton 3-2 Everton 4-0 Everton 4-1 Everton 4-2 Everton 4-3 Everton Should I carry on....?

Moyes has just admitted in his press conference that Everton are really struggling to sign anybody decent because they're still hamstrung by PSR despite not being charged this season. If we beat them tomorrow they'll be right back in the relegation mix given their injury issues...

Mitoma doesn't want the move.

He won't drop Ayew, especially given that (as Jazzy_Jeff has pointed out above) Everton's biggest attacking threat will come down our right flank. Plus, Ayew's ability to take the pressure off by acting as an outlet and winning free-kicks will come in handy. I believe he has a very good record against Everton, too. It will be a very different kind of game to last Sunday. Everton don't have as much attacking talent as Spurs, but they're better defensively and won't give us anything like the kind of space to attack that Ange kindly did. Last week they defended in packs and won ugly at Brighton in much the same way that we defended our lead at Spurs. It will be interesting to see whether Moyes will try to dominate possession more against us given that they're at home and this is a game they really should be aiming to win. Midfield will be key - massive game for Soumare and Winks. Mangala's absence is definitely a blow for them. They'll likely try to bombard us early on like they did against Spurs the other week (when they were 3-0 up by half-time) in the hope of killing the game off early. Hopefully we don't concede first because they'll be much better a defending a lead than Spurs were against us last week. If we score first and force them to open up more, the opportunities will come. Their lack of squad depth should give us the edge in the latter stages as I think we'll have a stronger bench. Tight game, probably decided by a single goal. No better time to get our first clean sheet in four months...

Ooh Barry you are awful

Their fans are raging about it. They reckon they're the worst club in the PL at getting deals over the line and are convinced they're in deep trouble unless they somehow manage to do some amazing business over the next few days (sound familiar?). It also seems like Cunha is sulking because he wants to leave but doesn't have any takers....

You think we’re trying to mess with their heads? I suppose it’s possible but we’ve never been great at that kind of thing…

Daka to Everton. Tenuous, but the iPaper reckons we might sell him: https://inews.co.uk/sport/football/everton-target-late-deal-striker-moyes-key-changes-3509941

Can't afford to buy him and probably wouldn't want to anyway given his injury record. Can't get him on loan as we already have Buonanotte on loan from Brighton.

Indeed. **** it - let's just loan in seven players and get Nick De Marco to iron out the details with the PL...

The point being that we can 'make space' in the 25 by simply leaving another player out of it. We don't necessarily have to sell or loan them to anybody.