TeemuVanBasten

More people from Liverpool at Goodison Park than at Anfield on a Saturday I should imagine, the latter being full of Asian tourists and people on ticket and hotel trips from Dublin.

Well Spurs signed nobody last summer. Looks like Burnley have only started one summer signing this season, and Liverpool have only started Adrian due to an injury. In addition Chelsea only signed one player, although they have started him. It's probably very uncommon but I don't think it's unheard of or super crazy. Liverpool basically stuck with the same group like us.

Vardy is still doing the business at 32 so I'd like to think we could potentially have another 3 or 4 years of Pukki after this season. He's our Jamie Vardy, although I believe Leicester had to give Vardy a huge salary to keep hold of him and we are going to need to do the same with Pukki. And we will do because he's our Talisman and irreplaceable.

Well the deadline used to close 2nd/3rd September until recently so that has probably happened quite often.

If he can stay fit I think Max has real competition.

Buendia man of the match for me, he was here there and every f'in where.

Deserves a thread of his own after that performance. What a defender he is. Remains to be seen what he's like getting forward, but can't remember when we've had a right back who can defend like that. He played like the right sided Adam Drury. I perceived him as a backup player who was going to sit around waiting for Aarons to get injured or suspended, and was a little afraid that after his injury problems we'd just signed another James Husband, but there looks to be merit in actually selecting him for certain types of games. On that showing he looked very much good enough for this level. Really hope his injury problems are behind him, what a superb option he is!

We've got one of those very special managers, of which they are only half a dozen per generation, who can consistently get talented players reaching their full potential. The only thing is that the player themselves have to do is want it enough and to believe in Farke. Those who choose not to will go one way in football... down, those who accept the challenge will become great. Perhaps the greatest of this type is Sir Alex Ferguson. Often players made the wrong choice, one of those is Ravel Morrison. At Norwich one of the players to make the wrong decision was Jacob Murphy who didn't commit fully to Farke's techniques, was called out publicly for it and then sold. Now he's back in the Championship. Todd Cantwell to Norwich is becoming a special player to us, like Fernando Torres is to Athletico Madrid.

This is definitely up there! Not the same level but one I really liked was stuffing Wolves 3-1 in the Play off semi final in 2002. We finished 6th with 75 points, they finished 3rd with 86 points and were unlucky to miss out on automatic promotion. We had our hatred of Wolves at the time as this was post-Bellamy. From what I remember we were a bit leaky at the back and our team was built with peanuts, and they had serious firepower and a lot more money to spend so we were the underdogs. Thrashed them.

I'll let him have it for one week, but he's doing to be dining out on this in 2023.

Arise Sir Amadou! On the strength of that performance we should just hand over our £9m now! And what were Wet Spam thinking giving us Byram for a few quid, justice for the time they mugged us for Jarvis!

I'm pretty sure all of us who pointed out that we wouldn't be able to dominate possession against Man City were fully vindicated. You even clarified that your plan didn't involve trying to grab goals on the counter. So what exactly are you claiming to be right about?

Blackburn but he rejected new deal, linked with Olympiacos and Torino since then. It's the best I can come up with, and trust me I've tried.

Actually sees his own future in that position.

Converted into a ball playing centre back last season, available on a free. If any man can save his career it is Farke. Trybull and Leitner came here with a bad rep. As long as it was only a deal until the end of the season with the option to extend I'd say it was a gamble worth taking.

Which foreign player would we gave ditched from the 25 to accommodate him? That's probably the problem, we needed a homegrown centre back and they were going for silly money. Ajayi the exception and the one we should perhaps be kicking ourselves about.

The idea is not to sign a 5th choice centre back but to sign one with the potential to break into the side. Obviously you would expect the incoming player to be an improvement on Hanley, and with Zimmermann injured at the start of the season then they'd have started as 3rd choice and told to win their place? We didn't tell Ralf that he would be 1st or 2nd choice keeper.

We don't know whether the club just had difficulty landing targets though. We already know we were priced out of the likes of Mings and Webster. It does look like a failure, but if they tried hard to land one then so be it. If they concluded they didn't need one then that's a different story.

Not worried about Byram, be good for him to get 90 minutes under his belt.

I suggested him. Problem is he has been without a club since January. He's only 32 and got Switzerland caps in 2018, but a bit weird that he hasnt been picked up this summer, may not have kept himself in shape or could have decided he's done enough in football? I don't even know if he's an option, can't sign a player who needs to be put through a full pre season to get fit. If he's been training with a former club or something to stay fit then yes.

Don't forget that on top of the £1m we paid for Husband we've got to pay him a salary for 3 years, I'm guessing Blackpool will only be covering a fraction of his wages. I think £1m for a player who is clearly League One standard does have to go down as a bad bit of business. He came in for one game at the start of last season to deputise for Jamal Lewis and was so bad that he lost his place in the next game to right footed Ivo Pinto. Sounds like chump change now but if we'd failed to go up last season it would have a black mark.

Hanley may not be fit for Man City though. But assuming Godfrey and Hanley fit then I agree with that.

I think I'm right in saying that because of his age we wouldn't be able to add him to our 25 man squad until 1st January even if we recalled him tomorrow.

Webber and Farke having done a superb job to get us in this league in the first place and turn around our finances is worth all the praise in the world, but that doesn't mean they are flawless and people can point out any errors of judgement as and when they make them. At the moment I adore Webber and Farke, but giving Russell Martin a contract extension was a bad decision, giving Russell Martin half of Wes Hoolahan's testimonial was a bad decision, and not every signing they've made has been a success. Husband and Franke go down as a disaster (but to be expected when you are trying to find diamonds amongst the rough). Yes if Amadou is a success at centre back I'll happily praise the signing, as you say. Likewise though if it transpires that Sean Raggett would probably have done a better job I'd probably end up criticising the failure to strengthen that area of the pitch. I like to think I'm a pragmatist.

Think the penny has just dropped for me, our chances of surviving this season are going to hinge largely on Amadou being a competent centre back and Godfrey + Hanley staying fit until January? We can buy a centre back in January. I'm still trying to get my head around this, is this entirely bad luck or has the club made some mistakes here? You can say that 4 centre backs is enough but one was injured all pre-season, and it looks like most clubs in this division actually run with 5. We can't say that Amadou was brought in for that position because in a 2 for every position squad that would make Tettey an important player, and I think it was pretty much conclusive that we only wanted to give him 1 year and he's far too brittle to be relied on (although possibly capable of one last run of decent form for us until his next injury?). I just can't help but feel like our season has been wrecked here, brain still trying to compute whether there is some blame to be apportioned, a la not signing a striker at the start of the season under Neil Doncaster. We've come into this season with loads of depth in centre midfield, is two backup full backs and a midfielder who can do a job at centre back sufficient investment in an area of the pitch which struggled at times last season? I accept the severe financial constraints we are under and the huge cost of domestic players, but we did only use 1 of our 2 domestic loan spots, and had 2 spaces in the 25. Fee for Semi Ajayi only believed to be £1.5m, even if he never kicked a ball and was sold on for £750k he'd have been a good insurance policy for relegation as he's shown his class in the league below. On one hand I accept that I'm saying this with the benefit of hindsight, on the other hand you didn't need hindsight to know that Klose missed a lot of last season with a serious injury and we knew in early July that Zimmermann had a serious injury. We knew Hanley wasn't Premier League because we almost let him go to a Championship side. Have the club had targets in this position but just not been able to get something across the line? Does this have to go down as a big error of judgement? The way I hope this all ends is Amadou excelling at centre back, showing he's easily worth £9m and offering some real competition to Zimmermann and Godfrey. Anything other than that and we're in serious trouble here?