Tomo

Maybe I'm missing something but wouldn't Ake give a clearer path to the next one in line? (Colwill). Sign Gvardiol for that left hand side and that's the spot blocked for years, especially if/when we revert to back 4.

We've already got a top class centre back coming through next season (for now, hopefully he doesn't get sold).

United do it which for me is the one thing I would praise them for. It would have been extremely handy in the Rudiger/Christensen situation likewise with the upcoming Jorgi/Kante one (not sure we should give them mega new contracts but would have been good to extend a year and access next year with things more stable).

Give him 17 and he can take the 7 if/when Kante leaves.

I don't recall any serious links to Sane but I'm happy to be proved wrong. AWB isn't a big name under any metric. The Sancho links never really had any substance, it was mainly people putting 2 (his childhood support of the club) and 2 (his friendship with Callum) together and coming up with 15. SMS fair enough.

Really? IIRC main names that we were being linked with the most before the ban was announced were Ndombele, Pepe and Jovic. Not only non big names but 2 of them would have been an absolute disaster (Pepe I think is better than Arteta is making him look).

I think the time I started to worry was as early as the second half at Anfield. The first half was an uncharacteristically decent display in a big game for him but the second half worried me because a) he was kept on when he should have been the first off with a backs to the wall performance required which hinted that he'd be playing 90 minutes unconditionally and b) he jogged around while the rest of the team were working their bollax off to maintain a draw with ten men. The City and Juve games were when reality truly hit me. Well I say all that above i always knew but once his return was at the point of quite clearly going to happen I tried to convince myself he did improve under Conte (tactically that is, I didn't have any illusions that he'd come back technically decent but I held some delusional hope he had learned to work around his lack of technique ala Diego Costa).

I'd add Burnley at home (despite the result) and Leicester away in that too. Although (you would think) they wont flop like Lukaku i'm delighted Liverpool and City have forked out hugely on out and out 9's.

I'm not worried about top 4 in the slightest. Tuchel is too good a coach to fail at that.

In hindsight maybe but many (including me) were totally against signing him and thought it was a Maguire esque mugoff.

Is Kimpembe actually that much better or this another "Reguillon is better than Chilwell" moment. I'll be disappointed if he's over 35m and/or our big defensive signing but he's certainly not as bad as being made out.

Why such linear thinking? City and Liverpool both brought a player we deemed not good enough at a point we were better and that (unfortunately) didn't go too badly did it?

Unless Todd is demanding the title at all costs next season I'll rather not panic because it will benefit us in the long run (Tuchel is too good a coach to have us failing with top four).

He played there 21 times combined in Barca and Ajax. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/football/2022/jun/30/how-frenkie-de-jong-could-fit-in-at-manchester-united-erik-ten-hag It wouldn't be an every week thing (in the case of us missing out totally on preferred CBs I'll go back 4 with Silva partnering Trevoh or Colwill) just more the option there type of thing to get us by until we can find our long term answer.

Also FDJ can play CB. Ofcourse in the long run it would be a waste of his talents but it could (in the event of us missing on MDL) buy us time to get a proper structure in and identify the perfect fit in that position and from next year onwards he truly succeeds Jorgi as our long term DLP.

It's really odd his attacking decline because at youth level he was a converted winger who was that good going forward James went into the back 3.

I'm usually quite lenient with decisions the club makes but if Callum goes especially before Pulisic and Werner this season can do one.

Apart from Bissouma and maybe Perisic us getting any of Spurs' signings would have caused absolute outrage. Imagine if we sold or even loaned out Colwill and Broja to accommodate Lenglet and Richarlison....

I was making a general observation with that sorry if you felt otherwise. I've never been sold on Jesus, yes he's relatively proven at this level but so was Lukaku and we all near enough unanimously agreed him out Broja in. There's a reason he never truly broke into that City side and if him and Nketiah are their pairing going forward i won't be losing any sleep, Auba and Lacazette circa 18-20 were miles better and they never troubled inferior Chelsea teams with inferior managers to Tuchel incharge (not to mention Emery and even latter years Wenger trump Arteta any day of the week).

For all the gushing over Arsenal's business, are Vieira and Jesus really that much better than who we have returning from loan in those positions let alone who we may or may not sign? Funnily enough i feel Arsenal's best signing so far is also a returning loanee (Saliba) providing Arteta doesn't piss him off like he has many others.

If you want us to go after the top talent instead of the Lenglet's, Ake's, Lukaku's and Richarlison's of this world then unfortunently you need to prepare yourself for this happening more often than not. The cold heart reality is we're not as attractive as Barca, Real, Bayern etc to play for for anyone outside of Cobham, and even then we're still vulnerable as we found out with Musiala and the Hudson Odoi saga. There's many things we can be criticised for in recent years but things like a Brazillian player preferring Barca or a Dutch player preferring Bayern will happen even if we had the best board and set of negotiators on the planet.

Werner's useful in some circumstances (ala vs high line teams) while Ziyech I don't think is as bad as people think. That said I wouldn't lose sleep if either leave but still. Pulisic has 2/3 random good games a season then spends the rest of it running into defenders and failing to see anything beyond a 20 yard radius of him and even that's only if he's involved atall (lost count of the amount of times I've forgot he was even on the pitch). All through 20/21 i tried to convince myself it was because he couldn't get any rhythm due to his injury problems but he was fully fit from November onwards last season and if anything got even worse. @Clockworkyou replied too late for me to quote you but this covers your reply to me too.

He's been anonymous for two years and living of a purple patch in what was the most strangest period in football history.

The most annoying thing is apparently Juve want Pulisic and we've said no. Depressing if true, he should be the first attacker out of the door.

Reminds me of when Bergwijn, Cedric and Ighalo were going to put their clubs over the hill and far away (from us). 2 of those 3 clubs in question haven't finished above us since.