Yeah we’ll see with Rice. Think me and you both see eye to eye on him at the moment and think there’s question marks about him. Obviously Moyes and Southgate are not managers you want to develop under so actually excited to see Rice at Arsenal.
Tbf it’s actually awful where Moyes is playing him right now in front of the back four.
I didn’t buy the performance against France in the WC though, but then the England performance in that game got overhyped anyway.
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Victor Osimhen isn’t going nowhere, as you can see for yourself.
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I still think the absolute corruption of his transfer might come back to bite them on the arse though people were saying the same thing about our Pepe one. I remember a point where the solution was to just player swap lmao, what a coup that would have been for us.
How would you feel if he came here? Jesus is pretty resourceful on the wing
Well if he does leave I hope he comes here, so would still be a win situation and only if he leaves Napoli with the Scudetto and the champions league. But yeah as is the case with footballers money talks and there are bigger clubs with bigger pockets.
With 100m in our kitty, I am not impressed with what we brought in.
Despite liking the Kiwior transfer, I do believe we could have much better than Trossard & Jorginho.
I can only try to speculate & justify the priority around the midfield signing.
We didn’t pursue any midfielder for the whole of the summer and the winter window, and suddenly we panic around to replace Elneny in both.
- If Jorginho is meant to add another body in the midfield, then why have we let Sambi go on loan?
- If it had nothing to do with Elneny & Sambi, why did we keep it so late?
- If we wanted a Partey backup & not an Elneny replacement, why did we go for Caicedo so desperately - a player who is not exactly a Partey-like player?
- If we were okay with not having a Partey-like player, then why was there no backup option for Caicedo?
All of it only makes sense if Mudryk & Jorginho were our primary targets. Once Mudryk didn’t happen, funds opened up for a midfield signing & we tried our luck with Caicedo.
Our pursuit of Trossard perhaps delayed & put a dent in our Caicedo approach.
I have some sympathy if that’s how it panned out but it could have been handled much better. I fear we ended up with lesser-quality players(from a long-term perspective) because of poor planning.
Lets hope they step up in short term.
B+ to Edu.
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Apparently Napoli are keeping tabs on the striker from Atalanta
Fairly happy with what we’ve brought in. January is always a tough one and you always end up paying that premium because enobody wants to lose good players halfway through the season.
I would like to see us drag our heels less with things and not get involved in transfer saga’s like Mudrhk. Also we only really seemed to get our ass in gear from mid January. Just get it done next time.
And European Super League contenders
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And then soccerbowl.
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Spent;
£21m on Trossard
£20m on Kiwior
£10m on Jorginho
So £51m spent to reinforce our bench and provide us with some quality depth. I have absolutely no issues with that at all. I think that’s a really good quality January window. Our first team is clearly not the issue otherwise we wouldn’t be sitting pretty with 50 points.
It’s our second team that poses the problems and we’ve added a new left footed CB who can also allegedly play DM, a good quality wide man and a midfielder who can seamlessly slot into the base of our midfield.
I know the temptation is there to say we should have done a lot more but I’m confident we’ll do good business in the summer. Right now our main issue was getting to January without major injuries and aside from Jesus we got there. Now we’re well equipped to deal with whatever comes our way. I can’t complain about that.
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You are right in saying we didn’t need any first-team player so 50m for 3 players sounds about right. I find it satisfactory for the purpose of this season.
My apprehension is about Edu not identifying more targets despite our midfield concerns since last year. That definitely bears criticism. If Edu did his homework, we would have had a better midfielder instead of Jorginho.
If Jorginho was the perfect option, we would have given him a contract longer than just 1.5 years.
That’s 10m + wages, that could have been invested elsewhere.
We were very lucky with injuries. Non-movement in the midfield & winger department in the summer window could have cost us points. Thankfully it didn’t.
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Bottom line on this is whether our title challenge has improved.
I think you would have to say it has. 3 players in that flush the squad size.
Two good enough for starts on merit at times and not on injury replacement.
City lost one player and a good one at that. You have to feel confident between now and the end of the season.
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I’d also argue that Silva wants out and Foden is out of favour too. Something not right going on at City
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This guy will still have so much to do in the summer, especially when it comes to outgoings.
About 10 first team players to move on. Just hope our good standing in football now makes it a bit easier.
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Fun times indeed 
Hadn’t read this thread since August. Nearly 400 posts. A lot of the posts around deadline day are a good read. Not many positive people over that period.
10? Who?
Lokonga, Tierney, Holding, Soares. Who else?
Tavares, Pepe, Trusty and Runarsson are others.
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Unless he is on another loan, I reckon Balogun might go. I just don’t see how we hold onto Nketiah, Jesus and Balogun.
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We are going to play UCL, so depth is needed.