Hutcho

Bit of an exaggeration there writing of the whole rest of the team. But I'm very excited about seeing both of them in action together with mount and Co

It's a big day for reece and alonso. Formation will be fine if they are overlapping creating width then mount/RLC and havertz can get in central. If they can create that width then that formation could work quite well with havertz coming central on his left and mount onto his right

Happy with that. Let's get it

Yeah let's get 3 points and go from there. If we can have a big win and nice performance that'll be great. But I'll take a scrappy win now especially without any preseason and missing players etc.

Kova is suspended. If kante is fully fit he plays because he creates a base which is what we need even against the Brightons of this world. Our back 4 and keeper aren't good enough vs any team in the prem not to have any protection. Then it allows our attacking guys to do their thing more freely.

Great use of VAR. Jon Moss had a look realised he made a mistake and corrected it

If he had chose Ireland he would be 40 mil cheaper

I hope we don't spend 80 mil on rice. He hasn't impressed in what I've seen of him. I don't normally care too much about what the club want to pay for a player but finances are something we need to consider if coronavirus rumbles on another few years and that's another large chunk. That being said I can't see us paying that anyway

I highly doubt we go into a season with 2 strikers especially when our main striker can and potentially will play some time on the left meaning we'd have both strikers on the pitch at the same time.

Nothing wrong with loans. Most of these guys are on long contracts. Get some loan fee income, gives them a chance to do well and improve to either make a team or raise their value. Plus the market is shit (hence we have been able to do a lot of the business we have). It's a buyers market. Next year may not be the case and we get more for some of these assets.

We can't all be saying we needed more preseason minutes then say that 55 minutes is too long for a player to play when most were coming off after 60. Hindsight is wonderful but it's just a very unfortunate thing that could have happenned to anyone.

Well we have one of last seasons most clinical strikers and havertz on top of the squad last season. Plus it appears pulisic is fit. I highly doubt even if they were all fit Frank was gonna start all 5 new players in game week 1. Put it this way. The squad available should be enough for Brighton.

Pully seems to be fit so I imagine he will play. Kante Mount/Jorgi Havertz CHO Pully Werner Would be my guess. I imagine if he plays jorginho alongside kante in midfield then we'll see mount wide

Anyone just coming back from fitness or is touch and go then don't play them. The seasons way to long for pulisic to reinjure it and be out longer same with ziyech. Play some sort of last years team but with havertz and Werner and hopefully that'll be more than good enough and then give everyone an extra week before Liverpool

Big season for callum. Its a tough injury he's coming back from which may explain why he looked poor a lot of the season. He should get plenty of minutes so hopefully he can be some more of what he was pre injury

What happens if Werner chillwell ziyech havertz suck? You could say that about anyone. He's a much lower fee. Much less risk. And statistically can't be worse than kepa last season. What's the alternative you're proposing?

A year less on the contract could mean a lower fee and the way transfers work mean that any fees are spread over the contract length so its more money pushed into later seasons which is ideal. So the year could make some difference. We need some more confirmed outgoings I think before we start to pursue others, but I think we will get them soon ish. Personally I think rice will be way too high of an asking price and I don't rate him anywhere near what most people do but I'm happy to be proven wrong.

I wouldn't agree with that. I believe his attributes make him very valuable wherever he plays although he doesn't benefit the system it appears we want to play as much as some other players (potentially) could. However, we don't have those players barring Kova so right now I'd much rather have kante all day long. Plus even those players who appear would fit in well I wouldn't bank on. Like everyone seems to think that declan rice would be the second coming of makelele. Personally I think he's extremely overhyped and a comparison with kante (at this stage) is laughable despite the system being advantageous to that the sort of player rice is. I don't hate rice at all and if we were to get him, he's still young and can become something special but I'd much rather play kante every day of the week (if he can stay fit). Bit like billy gilmour. Absolute tremendous talent and could be super special but can't replace kante right now. The only logical reason for selling kante is if we can get a massive fee because of his age and then replace him with a youngster who's value will rise. But from a pure fan point of view I'd rather have the better player for 2 years and worry about that then, especially as the figures talked about is only like 40mil

Mount is the clear extra man in what would be our expected first team. But there's loads of games, injuries which will undoubtedly happen and general rotation so he'll get lots of opportunities. It's not like he's not out the team. I wouldn't be surprised if he has similar minutes to any of the front 4 barring Werner. Lamps loves him as do most of us and he was really good for his debut season last year so if anything this will make him better

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Jorginho is actually a very good player he just doesn't fit the system we want to play. A fully fit kante is world class and gets in every team in the prem and if we can have him back for the season it's definitely not close to a disaster to still have him.

It's better. He can be the 29. He's not a generic no whatever. Barkley wears no 8 and it doesn't look right because he's not lampard and it just doesn't look right.

Why would arsenal sell him to us though when it's our biggest need. It'd be like 30/35 million if we wanted him. Aston villa are non threatening so we can't just say well they accept one bid of 20 so they'd accept all bids of 20. If all things were equal though then I'd agree he was decent when played last season I just don't think they ever sell him without a massive premium (to us)

He's a 20 mil stop gap. He's not brought in to be amazing he's brought in to not be the reason we lose games and be an average level goalkeeper of which will be more than worth it. Put it this way. We've spent 200 mil on attackers spending 20 mil on a keeper to concede 10 less than kepa will probably be like 10 points difference. He's not gonna be amazing but he doesn't need to be

Also... Watching all or nothing with spurs we are so lucky we don't have a Daniel levy type or any of them people in high up positions in our club.

Like mendy is an average keeper. But kepa was expected to concede like 35 goals last year based on xg and conceded like 46 so an average keeper is a massive upgrade. Then what you've gotta add into that is that from open play we allowed the 3rd fewest shots with our biggest weakness being set pieces. A big keeper to claim those would help to address a big issue of ours. Our defence was bad last year for sure but no where near as bad as our goals conceded would make it seem.