Mhsc

We're just not the club that is gonna sign a player on 300k a week now unless they're the second coming of Messi. It is what it is, this is mostly the impact of PSR, and City are known to be flat out cheating financially, what can you do.

£200k-£250k per week salary they'll pay a guy that will not start for them when everyone is fit. Would 100% make our XI and in fact would be nailed there for years and be our best CB without a doubt, such is the gap in quality we have there. City even with 115 charges simply do not fuck around in the slightest.

God I hope we've spread the virus to the whole Arsenal squad

Surely we go for Guehi, and maybe push Tosin out at the same time. One guy we can maybe sign reasonably cheap (or free on an agreement to start in summer), and another guy we got for free (I think) we can surely sell for a small bit of cash. That would be a proper and standard Clearlake manoeuvre. I really like Murillo if he was available at a sensible price but NFO are a bit of a nightmare so I wouldn't really expect much there. Music to my ears to hear talk of us actually looking at some of our fundamental problems for once.

He's not a total liability at either, although he doesn't excel at them for sure, he has a bunch of excellent characteristics that make up for it. He's a special player. He also can and has played alongside Palmer, who by comparison btw has massively regressed and seems to be getting worse over time, having been quite bad on average for a full calendar year at this point. In comparison, I see Caicedo and Enzo playing consistently at a high level and only improving as time goes on. Of course, it is all pointless if Enzo actually wanted to leave, and wants to go somewhere stable-ish that just churns out titles like PSG. If that's what he wants and the PL/Chelsea is not for him then I'd let him go over a player that wants to be here. But that's just paper talk at the moment.

Not sure I agree, he and Caicedo are the only players we have that are reliably playing at an elite level, they have high ceilings and high floors, they stay fit and they are getting visibly better in front of our eyes all the time. Our squad would be totally busted without either.

Certainly wont be a truly top side again until we replace Sanchez, been saying it for years, he genuinely has a high ceiling but the problem is his floor is so low and you can't win things consistently with a goalkeeper who on any given day will drop a series of huge howlers and no one is even surprised and no one would be surprised if it happened again the next game. Its just not a position you can get away with cutting corners or being creative.

Game would be tight and quite interesting if not for Sanchez two howlers to be fair to the manager, but IMO Sanchez always reverts to being a mess when you ask him to play under pressure lots of short passes at the back, gets to his confidence and then he makes other mistakes. Once Maresca figured that out he really got really good form out of Sanchez.

Hard to say who's worse between Fofana and Sanchez for passing the ball out from the back under pressure, Fofana consistently taking the easy option to tap it to Sanchez and leave him under pressure instead of taking on the pressure himself to play out. Neither has good press resistance but Sanchez at least has balls to try something and risk being embarrassed. And this game is a firm reminder that Kepa would still be our best goalkeeper.

Gallagher under Emery would be a menace. Don't want him back in the PL really, I just know he will punish us.

Bit of quality from Hato, a man who was basically dead to Maresca Hope he can come good. He had so much quality before he joined us.

This XI would potentially battle relegation

So basically the B team with Caicedo expected to hard carry. Should be interesting…

He’s flexible and adjusts to the squad it seems. I don’t think 3 at the back is his thing but rather it was a good way to play the style of football he wanted with Strasbourg’s squad, so he did it.

While it is quite uninspiring, I actually think he'll be fine. We know the head coach role is much more limited in scope than old style manager positions, so the damage he can do is already minimised, and it seems he is very strong tactically like Maresca was so I suspect it is at worst a sideways move there. His decisions will be micromanaged just like Maresca's were. They'll continue to get their way on player signings, and how many minutes which player can play. Then it is whether he can sort out culture and mentality, not sure he can do any better than Maresca did, but time will tell - maybe he has a bit more of a chance there tbh. And in game management, and talking to the press (and a closely related topic of building a relationship with the fans), which were the two obvious flaws in Maresca similarly its unlikely he's any worse. Imo it is pretty much a sideways move and not much will change. One great hope of all of this is that we have a huge problem IMO with Cole Palmer that is not being spoken about much (as he's English), he's been bang average for a long time now and if Rosenior can change the guys role or whatever is required to get him back to being the best player in the world then obviously that would be a huge positive for us, I do think Maresca is partly to blame for Cole's drop off. Maybe another man, even if tactically similar, will have a different perspective and find a way to get Cole back. p.s. Gary O'Neil will be our manager in 18 months I guess and on and on the cycle continues.

Absolutely, not even hiding that they're just a puppet feeder club. Doesn't really make sense to be a fan of such a thing does it? No independence and no ambition outside of supporting some foreign club you've no prior link to. And you just know the French are not the type of people to take that with a smile

There's a vague chance that as long as he keeps it simple and continues mostly with what Maresca was doing and just slowly tweaks things that he'll be able to do well, at least initially. Surely any big overhaul in approach will have to wait til summer with a scheduled so packed that you can barely get training sessions in. We have a good fixture run coming up which is perfect starting point for a new manager. From my PoV: Benefits to Liam's appointment - He will instantly lift the way the media talk about us, and will de facto be given more time and more respect than he deserves (not to say he doesn't deserve some, but English managers get a ridiculous amount of leeway by the English press). Perhaps even referees will start to treat us with less open bias. Downsides - Everything else - respectfully, of course. Not a job he is likely ready for in the slightest. The only reason he has a slight chance is that our situation is way more normalised than what Potter or Lampard were given (squads that needed multiple changing rooms filled to the brim with frauds).

That's the thing though, walking away from a nice compensation package does not make sense unless this is a preplanned move for him to walk into a cushty well paid job with a nice sign on bonus. I assume the compensation is as part of a mutual contract where he's locked in to not take another job without that team negotiation a fee with us. The fact he refused to do the deal suggests that he is either super angry and a moron financially, OR more likely imo based on what we've seen (appointing Mendes as his agent, negotiating with every club he can while employed with us, trying to use it as leverage for a pay rise etc) he is actually very savvy and very calculated (important traits in a manager surely). Guess we'll find out soon enough.

Amorim sacked. Would not surprise me if they appoint Maresca and it turns out he engineered this 'sacking' to be able to join without any negotiation or fee club to club.

Wonder if an announcement follows the match today?

Whatever happens, I can’t cope with another manager spending their first 6 months asking Robert Sanchez to pass it short. We became a serious side only when Maresca finally asked him to regularly launch it long and adapted the system to have the long ball over the top as a threat and not a weakness. He’s gotten pretty good at it too. We just need someone that will play to our strengths and not try to force some shit on that the guys can’t do.

This game should definitely be boycotted.

I suspect he could stay at Strasbourg depending on what reasons he gave. They probably wont mind him as a long term set and forget coach there if he really has that little ambition. But I doubt Rosenior is thinking anything negative, as surprising as that might sound in some ways - this really is an unbelievable opp for him if it is real, even if he only lasted a month it would be a huge career highlight for him - which says a lot of course. This is also an amazing time to join as we soon have one hell of a nice fixture run in PL and if you time it right you can get in, string a run of Ws together and suddenly you're winning Premier League manager of the month awards and being 'responsible' for us cementing a place in top 4 and people will start to say/think "Oh, if he had been here all season running them in this form they could have been competing for the title". Of course, some chance to win a cup as well - the squad has plenty of quality in it after all and on their day it is a cup winning squad for sure. Imo it is all timed very deliberately including having some nobody fall guy take the City game, and this was probably decided as soon as he spoke out after the Everton game at the latest (probably Maresca sussed it out and that is why he started talking out, so it was probably even earlier). Sick of these owners and this business approach which clearly is not about serial winning but about being a player factory, a pit stop for up and coming managers and players... its literally just a bigger budget Brighton with the same ambitions (i.e. non-sporting ones). Even the crash out of Eghbali vs Maresca feels very Bloom vs De Zerbi.

Personally I'd want Emery (serious PL experience, manages well with flawed squads) but would settle for an ex-CFC vibe pick like Fabregas.

Caicedo showed just how cut throat he can be in the way he left Brighton and fucked over Liverpool. He is 100% off within a season or two. He will end up in one of the best teams in the world and we'll be like Spurs with Modric and Gareth Bale - a team that had elite talents but didn't put together a project to keep them because of the owner.