Tomo

Farewell appearance and gives Willian a breather. Although I guess Pulisic hasn't played too much lately.

Caballero Lamptey Christensen Guedi Emerson Kovacic Gilmour Barkley Pedro Michy Hudson Odoi

A bit of Palace perspective on Zaha if anyone's interested. If we can somehow get the price to £60m I'd take him, especially if (as is likely) we'll have to wait till the summer to make a play for Sancho. Go into next season with both and we seriously improve our attack, I got high hopes to both CHO and Pulisic but neither are anywhere near ready to carry our attack for an extended period of time.

Can't make a judgement either way as not saw a game he's played ever but 17 goals in 37 games is a pretty sound return at 21, even in the Russian League.

Liverpool only spend what they sell, unless there's a big sale of one of the front three Liverpool are firmly out of the race.

Assists are subjective as a whole in my opinion. You can make the best through ball in football history yet you're still relying on the player on the receiving end to score,while whoever played the one yard backward pass to Charlie Adam at Stamford Bridge that day technically got an assist. You also don't technically get an assist if you dummy it into a strikers path. The assist stat (unless you do it at a stupid rate like Cesc or KDB) is something for fantasy football really, key passes is a better barometer of someone's creativity.

Kova's form last season has proven to be the definition of short term pain for long term gain. Had he still been a loanee in this season's form we wouldn't have had a snowball in hell's chance of keeping him.

If you asked that for this time last year then Soccer Aid. This time you'd probably get only tours.

Don't think they will this time, think running away with the league will work against them similar to how it does Bayern.

I don't think I'd class Giroud or Bats as decent to be honest. Oli was but his legs have gone and Michy is diabolical outside of finishing, as much as an alternative on Tammy's level will be a massive boost right now. Usually my stance is suffer and wait for the "right" option however in this case I don't think we can, a competent alternative to Tammy is minimum requirement in my opinion.

Not saying Dembele or any of our signings will nesseserily hit such heights but just because players aren't big names doesn't mean it's a sign on unambition or they will flop, the champions elect are demonstrating that spectacularly, they have built what is looking like becoming the greatest PL team of all time mainly through signings people regarded as second rate and unambitious. We don't have the funds or the sheer worldwide appeal to get marquee signings bar unique set of circumstances (like Sancho with his fandom of the club and friendship with our products putting us in a race we wouldn't usually be in) so that means more thinking outside the box more, there be top players in waiting hiding in places we least expect.

He'll go to Villa, score a decent number of goals and whenever Tammy hits a bit of a bad patch people will bang on about how we've made a mistake without looking at the higher picture of why he never got serious game time here in the first place.

So what's the half term opinions on Kurt being back in the fold? I was pretty annoyed that he was back at the start and he has had some shockers but I think overall he hasn't done too badly, been defensively sound (when not paired with AC) and has not been as bad on the ball as I feared, although he'd never be great at that. I still think we need better going forward but given his skillset I think he's done close to the best he can do and that's all we can ask really.

He's an exciting talent but not sure it would be good business. I'd prefer us to go after attackers that are a bit more seasoned than those currently at our disposal. While I'd agree we do need some experience somewhere this is as good a time as any to take gambles with talent, especially if he's as promising as being reported. We won't be winning the league for the next 2 season's minimum even if we sign ready made players.

We don't have to buy ready made world class players or big names to improve, United fell into that trap and look what's happened to them. We need to find players relitevely young, hungry and on the up, find the current day version of Hoffenheims Firmino and pre Spurs Modric and watch them and us grow and evolve.

Lasted about half a season longer than he would have done at any other big club.

United most certainly have done, the fact Ole doesn't appear to even be in danger of the sack is absolute madness. No other big club would have let him get past caretaker.

Reality is he's an inconsistent 21 year old right now, on form he's a real asset but he still has a bit to learn. We have to be careful with how we manage/rotate these guys, remember what happened when Conte kept playing Christensen when he had that rut? Something he still hasn't recovered from.

He started every game for nearly two months.

I have come to the conclusion in the last few weeks out of our CM three the combination of Kova/Kante and Kova/Jorgi work well but Jorgi/Kante doesn't, like atall. I'd go as far as saying Barkley/Jorgi is a better combination.

Wan Bissaka makes Azpi look like Trent in the attacking phase.

Although this will probably class as an unpopular opinion these days I don't think we are as far away as people think, I strongly fancy us to be the next team not named City or Liverpool to win the league. A good thing about having a number of young players is they naturally progress that at times it can feel all off a sudden you have an upgrade signing out of nowhere, for example Reece James soon as he gets more upto speed with a bit more consistency all of a sudden that alone makes us stronger and if that comes at a similar time we get in a dynamic left back in then even better.

Ill be very surprised if we don't, even if we don't recover form properly no one below is good/consistent enough to take advantage. The only one who potential could is Wolves.

Yeah I'd be more worried if he wasn't getting into the areas, it's a lot easier to fix poor finishing than it is poor tactical brain and movement. People compared him to Hazard at youth level but I get more Alexis vibes.