Yellow and Green Man

Now that Tzolis and Sargent are in the building how about some new rumours? Can anyone pretend to be ITK about a defensive mid so I can start following dodgy twitter accounts and checking Transfermarkt obsessively

I think I'd prefer: Pukki Cantwell Rashica Dowell Gilmore Skipp Dimi Gibson Hanley Max Krul Any of Kenny / Sorenson / Ajer might be better options than the players I've put there. If we do want to go for a 4231 we look light at the front still. I can't see any of our current squad properly completing with any of that front 4

Now that we've got promoted I see it as win-win. We don't have to sell anyone and can offer premier league football, so players will only leave it strengthens the club overall. If we'd stayed down we'd probably need to sell one or two players to balance the books, but not now. We've just got to trust the club to make good choices from the position of strength that they find themselves in

If we do sell Emi for 40 odd million is that a good thing? If the club reinvests it in 3 or 4 players does that make the club stronger? Because I've heard that it's the weak links that cost you games rather than the strong ones that win them for you, but also we look so much better when Emi is playing (I cba to dig out the stats about points with / without him but they're pretty convincing)

To be fair to Emi, he looked pretty good when he smacked the crossbar last match

This is one of those cases where the stars make it seem worse than it is. My eyes were watering until I clicked that link

This bill is really terrible on so many different issues. The one that affects me the most personally is now if I park my campervan next to another one I'm part of an 'illegal encampment' and I can have my vehicle confiscated.

"Massive compliments to the lads on this topic"

Hahaha ok now I am coming across as a massive 538 fanboy! I just like statistics, I promise. I don't know if that's better or worse 😅

From memory: they predict an "attack score" and a "defence score" for every team. Which they base on last season's results too. And as we were in the PL last season they apply a conversation factor based on the strength of the league. But I don't think they take transfers into account. They update the attack and defence score after each match based on a few key stats. To predict the results of a single match they use both teams attack and defence scores and somehow get win/lose/draw probabilities. To predict the rest of the season they simulate a few thousand run ins by sampling the win/lose/draw probabilities for the remaining matches and take the average points totals.

Yeah I don't want to come across as some massive 538 fanboy but I don't think anyone's claiming that they have a crystal ball. They basically try and predict how good a team is based on their fixtures so far, and calculate the probabilities for win/draw/lose for the remaining fixtures from that. Around Christmas I don't think anyone would say there was one team that far ahead, it shows we've put in a good performance since then

Watford look the most streetwise and able to grind out results at the end of the season. However they play us, then Millwall, then Brentford, then Swansea in their last 4 games this season. I hope we'll be done and dusted by then but I can see second place being decided in those final two head to heads. I just nipped over to 538 to look at their predictions https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/soccer-predictions/championship/ . At the moment they have: Norwich 95 points Watford 84 points Brentford 83 points Swansea 83 points Which says what we already know. If we keep playing our game and avoid complacency we'll be fine. But it's going to be tight between the next three

I'd take that in a heartbeat but I doubt it's possible. Spurs won't want to sell Skipp and he's still got plenty of options to progress there. I don't think us offering Max first team football is going to be as tempting as one of the European giants,

I heard spurs were trying to sign Max? Maybe we can get another load of Skipp if we let them talk to Max ahead of Bayern, Barca etc

I expect the losses due to Covid will affect all teams. So there might be some players going cheap because some clubs need to sell them to cover their losses. At least we won't be in that situation. So overall I don't know whether it will be a help or a hinderance

Yep, I wonder if Sorenson could be Skipp's replacement though

Yeah but "we signed Buendia in football manager" really takes the biscuit. Or maybe I'm just particularly grumpy this morning!

https://www.football.london/arsenal-fc/transfer-news/arsenal-emi-buendia-transfer-prediction-19601597

I'm going for a 3-2 win. I predict a nervy last 10 minutes whatever happens

I think the team is roughly comparable, but if we go up we'll be in a better position, both because we've got some money in the bank to strengthen and because Farke and the players know what they're up against in the prem

McGovern must be in the top 5, despite not doing that much wrong

It feels like eternity since we've had such a good showing. Who's it going to be, Emi or Mario?

I'd like to see something like: Krul Sorensen, Hanley, Gibson Aarons, Skipp, Rupp, Platcheta Buendia, Vrancic Pukki I expect Farke will stick with a back 4 though, at least to begin with. Can Stiepermann still do a job at left back?

Here's where they're getting the numbers from: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/soccer-predictions/championship/

"But Tettey passed the test with good looks" The secret to Farke's selection criteria is out!