OhForAGreavsie

Not watching but he's on for Watford against Liverpool. This lad looked interesting in his YouTube videos so looking forward to seeing how he does.

Is he as good as Ash?

Liverpool are probably in the market for a left back. They were touted to be interested in Goulham at the start of the window. Don't follow their gossip so don't know if that is still brewing, but I could see them taking an interest in Rose.

There was a conversation about this on radio the other day with the usual crew of overpaid (if they are paid at all that is overpaying them.) studio 'guests'. They all tried to pretend they knew something about this but they clearly had no clue. It's not reasonable to expect contributors to a radio show to know everything about everything (something about something every once in while, would be nice) but they have resources. There are people who will find out for them if they only had the honesty to admit that they didn't know. It P's me off when people who are paid to talk about football put absolutely no effort into it, and instead just turn up, repeat the same nonsense they said last time and collect their cash. In fact Spurs announced a few weeks ago the sections of Wembley they will allocate to away sides. Those sections contain just over 3,000 seats, and, sure enough, when our tickets went on sale yesterday we had been allocated 3,106. Tottenham claim that, in order to try to create a 'home' atmosphere in the stadium, they will not increase that figure regardless of ticket availability. To be fair though, the club says that the 3,106 tickets are an 'initial' allocation, so perhaps Spurs are reconsidering that policy and will provide extra seats if their own demand won't fill the venue.

I don't agree with that but I do believe that some of his worst performances for Chelsea came in midfield. DL is no midfielder so I agree with the post to which you replied. I don't want to sEe David in midfield again either.

Antonio has demonstrated his potential to help this team. Andreas has not yet done that in my opinion. This leads me to conclude that it would be plain wrong to sacrifice the former for the latter. Your concern about the captaincy only makes sense if you believe that Gary's status will influence Antonio's selection decisions. I don't. If Gaz is starting it'll be because Antonio thinks he's the best option, not because he's the club captain. Now, if Antonio making Gary skipper is evidence that the boss expects him to be a regular, then the captaincy itself makes no difference. If the manager thinks he's the best then Gaz will play, armband or no armband. Although I don't share the widespread belief in the badness of Gary Cahill, I'm not one who accepts that football professionals automatically have a better understanding of the game than we fans do. In the end though someone has to decide who plays and that someone has to be the manager. We would all be outraged if the board was telling Antonio who to select but it would be no less outrageous if the head coach was taking his instructions from you or me. He's got to choose, and he's going to choose. I'm more comfortable with that than you seem you be.

I didn't see the game - big family day - was there a great stand up if you hate Tottenham? I'd have enjoyed that.

That's not quite what Steve Atkins meant. He reconfirmed that Diego and his representatives were informed in January that our Brazilian Spaniard would not be a part of the manager's plans after the end of the 2016/17 season. He did not specifically deny that Antonio had sent the infamous text message, indeed the message must be real, or no lawyer would be making so much of it. Atkins just made it clear that Diego already knew in January that the club did not want him to continue beyond the end of last season and pointed out that the claim that Diego had heard it for the first time in a text message is just nonsense. The lawyer's description of the text message is a pretty obvious and shallow attempt to manufacture some extra leverage for his client. His strange, and all too transparent, claim that Antonio had 'released' Diego in that text is silly and will fool no one. Antonio did answer, and did so in the same way he has done several times previously. Steve Atkins just added a specific response, on behalf of the club, to comments made by Diego's lawyer earlier this week. (Because the question asked of Antonio was about those comments.)

What will it take for people to stop swallowing the hype and actually watch the player play? Bayern fans are not telling him to leave because they think he's a brilliant prospect; German media did not describe one of his performances as scarily bad, because he demonstrated his much talked about, but little seen, world class quality. I have only watched him play in the Euros, the baby Euros and the Singapore friendly. If Sanches has demonstrated world class potential in those games, then it has gone right over my head because I didn't notice it.

My feeling, based on what Antonio has had to say, is that the coach did want Nate to stay, but it's unlikely he felt he could keep such a promise. If Antonio did not intend to give Nate a bigger role then, never mind simple honesty, it would just be storing up trouble to lie to a member of your squad. Talking about the greater number of games, and Nate's share of appearances therefore being greater, is about as far as the boss could have gone I think. In their conversations Antonio would certainly have made that point, indeed Nate would have worked it out for himself anyway, but seemingly that was not enough for the young man. Looks like Antonio was simply unable to sell the idea of staying to the player. Nate wasn't being unreasonable, but he wanted more than Antonio could offer so a parting of the ways was inevitable. It certainly could not be true to think that Antonio would be capable of persuading Nate to stay by mere argument, or force of character. Antonio could have encouraged him to stay only by promising Nate enough starts to keep him happy. That was not a promise Antonio was willing to make, so Nate decided to go. Once again, good luck to him at Watford.

Clearly Antonio either did not want to persuade him to stay, or was not able to. Almost certainly the latter. Either way, given Nate had just a year remaining on his deal, the matter was out of the hands of coach and club. Good luck to him at Watford.

Would Bertie have accepted that role though?

That poster believes the real star of their team is Wendel. I agree with you though, Richarlison's skill set does look good in his YouTube vids. I look forward to seeing more from him. If it transpires that work permit issues mean he needs to go to a European club on loan then I'd ask why let Watford do it when we have so much expertise in this area? In that circumstance, we should try to hijack The Hornets' deal. There's always room for one more in the loan army, and this one could be a good one.

I knew, and still know, nothing about Nathan, I did not watch Piazon before he was signed but I did see videos of Wallace & Kennedy before they arrived. In both cases I posted to say neither was good enough and should not be signed. My point? Brazilian players might at least have a chance to be successful if we avoid buying bad ones. As for Richarlison, I like what I've seen although I take seriously the note of caution from a Brazilian football watcher who says Richarlison is not that good really. If he lands at Watford it might be a sort of confirmation of that but at least we'll get to see him and make a proper judgment of our own.

I never said we could sign anyone we wanted in the past, but we could get deals over the line for targets. There just seems to be a lot of deals slipping through our hands for multiple reasons as of that late. All comes down to the people doing the negotiations really. Understood. My point is that there were always deals which slipped through our fingers, and others which we completed. We don't know how many deals have fallen through this summer, but a number have been confirmed for sure. Meanwhile, we have still managed to sign four senior players. Right at the beginning of the Roman era we bought Crespo for what was then a heavily inflated fee but Inter would not budge on Vieri, even though we bid more than twice as much for him. We also missed out on Ronaldinho despite offering a higher transfer fee and bigger wages than Barcelona. There are other similar examples down the years, including this year In short, the negotiators may have changed, but the situation has not. We can still get some deals over the line, but not some others. Business as usual over the last 15 summers.

It's a myth that we could ever sign whichever players we wanted. We were always able to pay inflated fees for players other clubs didn't value particularly highly, but there Have always been targets we missed out on. Many, many of them.

Sadly, but plainly, this is the case.

A popular way to snipe at the club but I don't buy into the idea behind it. We can both name a lot of players who were signed but not loaned, but neither of us can name even one who was signed, sent on loan to Arnhem, and subsequently proved good enough to have stayed at Chelsea. The buy to loan policy is necessarily speculative.

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Or, better yet, if we had bought him direct from Zagreb.

I Think he looks better than Charly. It's often said that anyone can look good on YouTube. I don't really buy that, but this kid absolutely does look a first class prospect. He has genuinely top level ball control and great instinct for the timing of his passes. That is quality and it can't be coached. All the big clubs will want this lad.

If we loose Nemanja, we probably loose TheWiz too. That's a blow.

Speaking of Delph. I like him. If he'd be willing to play a squad roll, I'd love to have him here. Assuming his wages could be afforded of course. City pay well.

Duplicate.

No, in the way he expresses himself in that quote, Antonio is not correct. All too often in the past we've done just that, bought expensive players, when excellent players are what we need. The two things are not the same. Excellent players are not always expensive, and expensive ones are most certainly not always excellent. We know what Antonio meant, and what he meant is right, but what he said isn't.