Tomo

A large chunk of Arsenal's current squad arrived at the club as project players or players that would have caused a meltdown here had we got them (same with many Liverpool players that formed their eventual title winning side). City are City, they're playing in a totally different market to any of us so unfair to compare but even they had the likes of Fabian Delph forming their centurions. As for listing the players. Palmer, Jackson, Paez, Andre Santos, Gusto and Carney are all likely snapped up by the Benficas/Brightons off this world (then sold for a insane cash) had they not been signed by us. Being proactive and getting Enzo and Caicedo out of South America would have saved us the best part of £200m.

And if we signed Calafiori a couple of years ago or even last year that would have been an "issue" too. Maybe we're just trying to get ahead of the game this time?

It's ironic because for years there was moaning we were waiting until Brighton, Benfica etc al were charging premiums for players until we tried to get them but now we're trying to get ahead of the game ourselves that's now a bad thing.

Good excuse to show this. Arsenal of that era summed up in seconds.

I disagree, even if the top line of results improved we'd still have the same structural flaws and him wasting a lot of our players. I've been a big advocate of us twisting for a while now when it comes to coaches even if it meant not getting a supposed big name. You can argue it's wrong/boring whatever but there's a reason many clubs are doing the same because rightly or wrongly it's where the game is heading.

Manager continuity only works if it's the right guy. While you could argue he was an okay ish stop gap appointment to bring a decent culture back after 22/23 from a tactical point of view the game has past Poch by every bit as much as it has Mourinho and did Wenger, it just doesn't get the same attention because he wasn't THAT good in the first place.

Rumour has it we have an absolutely obscene sell on clause so not to surprising.

Him and Cucu will have more than enough games between them, we're looking at close to 80 if things go to plan in the cups. Chilwell I don't know because he can't play the LCB role and I don't think he'll be able to invert into midfield well either (I know he played inverted under TT but that was more underlapping runs as opposed to going into midfield).

LB, which in the system (we think) Maresca will play is effectively LCB in a back three.

I'm not using it as an argument because it was a) a completely different era and b) a freak set of footballers but I'm pretty sure the Busby Babes were almost exclusively teens/early 20s.

I would even dispute that in recent years, Pep has won 6 titles in 7 years, the French league has even had one other winner in the same period. Also all 3 promoted teams have got relegated last season. Even if you point to Villa making the UCL other leagues can one up that with the likes of Bologna and Union Berlin.

Some fans when we appointed Maresca "fuck sake yes he won the Championship but he did it with a PL team in waiting hardly an achievement". Same fans when we sign best player in the same team "fuck sake why we signing Championship players?"

How many more times does PL teams have to get embarrassed by teams in so called lesser leagues in Europe before the league stops getting put on such a ludicrous pedestal? A PL team hasn't beaten a La Liga team in a major European final since 2001, and even then it was Liverpool in extra time against Alavez.

The initial fee is £29m and (as we've found out in two consecutive CWC finals) the Brazillian league is a lot better than people think. If any of the add ons are triggered then it will likely mean he's a major success so, meh.

There's not a snowball in hells chance we'd drop £50m on a player who's not yet played (bar one cameo) outside of the Championship.

Anyone who's paid the slightest bit of attention to how Clearlake have handled Colwill since they've got here will know he's going absolutely nowhere short of him doing a Courtois.

Thing is if we give Poch control I'd worry he'd get experience for the sake of it. As we're seeing with United, experience is only valuable if they're performing at the level required.

Petrovic's underlying metrics have been one of the worst in the major leagues if not outright worst.

They sacked Potter just as he was starting to show a glimmer of his system starting to work so I'm not confident they'll come to the right decision either way tbh. Their decisions with managers (in regards to timing) has been spectacularly bad, contrary to popular belief I do think the recruitment has been largely excellent since 2023 however only big criticism would be the goallie choices but they keep ruining it with the manager choices.

For me I'm more encouraged by the fact there finally seems to be some tactical structure to performances and a willingness (with Cucu inverting) to adapt with the times. If this carries on in the last three games then that will be 8 of the last 9 games that would have been tactically strong performances (admittedly the exception was a horror show) and with that in mind I'd probably be inclined to hold fire on wanting him out (short of Alonso or Pep declaring interest).

And Petrovic has been showing us most weeks why "nothing happened".

For me it comes down to one question. Is the coach setting up the team to give it the best chance of results? An example of a manager doing just that would be Conceicao against Arsenal, for me he set up Porto up phenomenally and held no blame for their elimination. Poch however is literally playing to half this squads weaknesses, and ironically the few times he has set up correctly (Villa in the cup, Arsenal and Liverpool at home) just shines the light on it even more.

In matches where Colwill played 45 mins or more we've conceded 1.22 goals, in matches he hasn't we've averaged 3.18.

He's never been that good. Classic case of what people did with Emerson and Baba Rahman where the desperation for his competition to be dropped has led people to see things that aren't even there. You can bang on about Sanchez's bozo moments until the cows come home but Petro going too far the other way and booting it upfield even when simple passes are on (which in turn means the pressure is coming back at us) is everybit as destructive, if not more so.

The one thing I will credit Poch for is he hasn't lost the dressing room (although it could be argued that makes the results even worse), he has the players battling for him. However tactically my word this is worse than Lampard, guess we've now got the chaos ball many were moaning at Sarri and Tuchel for not playing.