Strike

Palace is a good team. And we haven't had a pre-season.

Gittens looks out of his depth.

Was not called foul but Guehi is close to the wall or something

Never seen anything like it but what a wake up call

Deepest squad in the league. Look at the bench without Colwill Badiashile Tosin Lavia Nico

Acheampong is ahead of Hato and will likely start tomorrow

think he now stays due to Colwill injury

Not confident about a title challenge this season. We are more of a player trading vehicle than a serious coaching/tactical project. Too many raw players in the first team - Gittens, CBs We will be thereabouts because we've upgraded in attack but fear Arsenal/Liverpool are gonna be tough to catch

Lazy dismissal of Noni's time here. It is not a surprise a team that finished above us spent 50m on him. He was second only to Doku in progressive ball carries last season and is a useful weapon vs low blocks even if his finishing was iffy. Also, the point is trading Madueke out and bringing Gittens in makes the squad weaker. Madueke is far ahead in his development. It made more sense to sign an elite winger and have Madueke as competition than what we have now - Gittens in a starting role

Doubt we get a good bid for him this late in the summer. Maresca has been asking for a CB - the board can do a lot worse than call up Veiga

Should consider keeping Veiga and loaning out Anselmino I'd be much happier if we can avoid extended gametime for Tosin/Chalobah

Long-term, Liverpool makes more sense. They have just VVD and Konate as senior CB options after selling Quansah. Konate is running down his contract too. He'll get plenty of mins even if he's rotated. At Chelsea, he competes with so many CBs and has Fofana and Colwill coming back into the squad at some point too.

Wonder why they took the effort to sign Trafford

Doubt it. Konate plays as a right sided CB. We'll certainly be looking at CBs who play on the left side

We did explore a cheap deal for Maignan so we are not totally against the idea of a keeper joining. But I can see Donnarumma throwing up red flags for our data-heavy directors. He does have weaknesses playing out and collecting crosses into the box. Not to mention the wages.

It is insane how things have fallen for Man United this summer. Sesko was left without a top club and now Donnarumma is being pushed out and has limited options All the elite clubs have top GKs - Barca, Man City and Liverpool have 2 frontline GKs at that. It is a year too early for a GK change at Bayern and Real where Neuer and Courtois are getting old

If Premier League is the likely destination for Donnarumma, I think he's ending up at United. Can't see Chelsea disrupting the wage structure and can't see Donnarumma agreeing an 8 year £120k contract

Seems like Rodrygo is the one they were making space for I wouldn't mind that honestly

Because they were traded in the summer. And because Neto plays on both wings - we could have kept Noni and Estevao on the right and signed a left winger to rotate with Neto We can’t fill the squad with teenagers. Noni would be a super useful player this season if we kept him around.

Not saying he’s crap but Noni is better than Gittens now. It’s not even close.

Absolute wank attracting a 50m bid from a team that finished above us? He was super useful vs low blocks and always took on his fullback and constantly beat them. He's further along in his progression than Gittens too

Yes, we worked on Noni and saw him improve every year. I'd continue with him - He is far better than Gittens is currently and had a good understanding with Palmer. Owners saw an opportunity to make a healthy profit on him

Always takes till deadline day because teams wait for a better deal for the dead wood - Loan with part-wages covered. See no other deals for Chilwell and Sterling. We've moved a lot of deadwood already - Most surprising was good money deals for Felix, KDH, Broja and Ugo.

The response to this is not to drop back imo but to perfect playing with players up. We can't start the season thinking of ways we cover the defense. If we are putting the opposition on the backfoot with an attacking gameplan early on, then that will only help us. We could get caught out by the odd counter attack but I'd still persist with committing everyone except Caicedo and the CBs forward