Mhsc

First game where he's looked fit to me. Interesting to see if he can crack on from here with consistency - the thing our team lacks badly.

Agreed, but wondering why the game yesterday suited him so well. Does he turn up for big games? Was it playing on the left? Was it just the way City played? Curious. If there is a way to get some useful value out of this guy it would be a nice turnaround story...

Thought he was good last night? Wonder what it was about the game or the players that let him operate at a more respectable level?

Tbh inevitable result, as I said before the game I don't think we score against City with this team, if we play 10 games maybe we score 1-2 goals and they score 15+ surely. Just a completely different level of attacking skill to us.

How do we return Cucu?

Cucu is definitely not worth 60m eh. Looks like a 15m player on average for us, not above 6/10 at anything really.

Hoping for a Ziyech master class.

Agreed, I think it is 100% time for the younger generation to get their go. Players <25 only, plus any player older who has been hitting 7/10 performances over the season on average.

Dreading this, mostly because of Haaland. Feel like we could do a job to stop them otherwise, parking the bus etc, but Haaland just feels like a cheat code that we can't realistically stop and I don't think we can expect to score against City on average, so if we do it will just be luck probably.

Feels like an important signing. Suspect he displaces KK permanently?

Everyone losing their mind because of some rumours spread by a bunch of people that don't know fucking anything about what is actually being discussed. Probably half of the senior leadership of the clubs don't even know what is actually being discussed, never mind the fucking random cunts from Twitter. We might find out when it is all over what the real version of events was but for now it is all speculation. The guy that leaked that there is a "written document" is also a total nobody that is trying to create a name for himself and plug his youtube channel ffs.

I would expect negotiations will go on until the end of Jan if needed, patience is a key part of negotiating...

My feeling is we are offering something vaguely interesting to them but currently too much of money is in add-ons and Benfica want more of it guaranteed in the main figure. That would explain everything that's happened, including them willingly negotiating with us and not just telling us to fuck off and pay the release clause from the beginning if we want him.

85m offer perfectly fair to my mind. They’ve come to meet us seriously to discuss and the player is pushing for it. They’re obviously negotiating to push it up. If it doesn’t happen fair enough. Not the clubs fault if some fucking “ITKs” published some bullshit that we were meeting the release clause

A few days ago loads of people around the internet calling us mugs because we were going to overpay for this guy Today loads of people around the internet calling us mugs for refusing to pay lots of money for this guy after only a couple of day's of negotiation, it is the 4th of January and discussions just started

I think in football, history shows that money matters more than anything else on average.

I'm not sure how to feel on this. I guess Boehly and co don't contain when stuff leaks, so maybe what looks scatter gun is actually strategic but the timing that things hit the press make things simply look like chaos. Who can say. I do think that we are enquiring about most players who might be available, probably to collect data as much as anything (understand if they really are available, expected asking price). All of it helps us to understand the market I guess.

Extremely strange. I guess the type of fullback we want is generally overpriced, like Cucu, but still - surely there is someone we can get as backup for Reece, or someone in the loan army we can recall. We don't need to find the next best RB in the world, as we already have him, but I'm sure we can find players who have stats that improve us on aggregate. I don't buy that players wont want to come either because of Reece - they can see his injury record and also, Reece is so good he could potentially play multiple positions. People like Dumfries or Frimpong are surely both being looked at behind the scenes.

100%. People have totally forgotten that people thought Arteta was a joke for ages, now looks like one of the most promising manager's in the league again. People even turned on Pep and Klopp in their early days in the PL. Football fans and media are very short sighted, as football is a lot about instant gratification of the current or next game. However, we see time and again that the best long term successful manager's have difficult starts and eventually come good. A lot of instantly good managers are good for 1-2 years before losing their job, not just at our club but at many others.

Probably not making a lot at Benfica and he will get a big contract with us, and we're the ones with the money to buy him right now. Plus, while this forum is very short sighted, he is joining a big and ambitious project in its infancy. Maybe at his age that feels like something he's got plenty of time for.

Rudiger was inconsistent and made some bad decisions before he hit his good form, but never looked literally incapable of coping with the league. He had pace, power, athleticism and intelligence. KK has looked off the pace and looks like a liability in every game. He made some sense as a signing in a defensively focused 3 ATB system, but if we are playing 4 ATB again (which imo we should) then honestly there is no space for him here. I think it would be better for him and us if we just kill it off now and send him out this transfer window, let him go back to Italy or another slow paced league where he can play at a high level for a few more years.

Personally think he deserves until January in a year's time, getting this transfer window + summer + a full preseason under his belt with the club signing excellent players not specifically for him but because they are excellent players any manager will be happy with. If he can't get us firing by then it will be time to move on, imo. Personally I don't see that another coach could have got much out of this squad different to what we are seeing, Tuchel also struggled in the end after all. I do think you have to be patient and give manager's a chance because otherwise we'd also have fired people like Klopp and Pep and never got to see them deliver us to a high level.

Thought this was an interesting video on Enzo.

Wonder if Ivan Toney is being considered. Would be a big upgrade on Havertz as a 9, and Auba is just finished. Not sure who else exists that might be buyable tbh?

He’s just a bad version of Harry Maguire. My only hope is this was a Tuchel signing that Boehly agreed to despite the data saying it would be a bad signing and it is something he’s learned from. Honestly think we should sell him this window to any buyer that will pay 10m+