Upo

Teemu was #4 scorer in Euro qualifiers for arguably the weakest side who made it. Scored against Italy. Lost to CR7 by 1 and Kane by 2 goals. 19/20 was all about Norwich's crippled defence undermining offense, and running our only PL quality striker to the ground. Also, Emi didn't play well a lot of the time. Don't sugar coat his uneven - if promising - performance. He wasted more chances than anyone, lost the ball in bad places and sat on grass like a 6 year old. 20/21 is the season he grew up and became the best. And yes, we'll have hell of a time replacing him.

Think we spent like £350k for 19/20 which was a "miraculously timed" judgment error IMO. it worked out for us because of covid, and because we had long term agreements with Emi, Todd and Max which convinced them to play in Champs. And also because Teemu was on board 100%. Webber is more than eager to not repeat the error hoping for divine intervention and instead is going to get us a solid squad and chance to stay up. We just needed the £35M.

I am. Think Spurs will pick up the phone and listen to an offer for an injured player who has been on loan in lower tier for a year?

#1 Accepting £35M from Villa at this point gives us certainty. Now. #2 Webber has a list of phone numbers and a list of prices Norwich is willing to pay. Probability of these numbers matching is higher now than later: We can offer certainty. Now. #3 Higher probability of keeping both Max and Todd. If one of them goes, you bet the price will beat Godfrey's.

Everything Gunn said. There is a growth path available for "permanent" PL status, but it takes investment. And investment takes time to bear fruit.

Amen. Suppress and while suppressed, vaccinate. See above. Increased transmissibility means vaccine coverage has to be higher. At this rate may end up needing 95-99% coverage the way we're going, which means police chasing down crazy people and shooting them with vaccine dart guns.

From 3 June 2021 Variants of concern technical briefing update. Starting from p. 46: (Alpha = B117 "Kent" Delta = B1617.2 "Indian") England: "Based on a record linkage of sequence-confirmed Delta and Alpha cases in England tested between 29 March 2021 and 20 May 2021, an analysis of 38,805 sequenced cases was performed to assess the risk of hospitalisation and emergency care attendance. Using stratified Cox proportional hazard regression, there was a significantly increased risk of hospitalisation within 14 days of specimen date (HR 2.61, 95% CI 1.56-4.36, p<0.001), and emergency care attendance or hospitalisation within 14 days (HR 1.67, 1.25-2.23, p<0.001), for Delta cases compared to Alpha cases after adjustment for confounders (age, sex, ethnicity, area of residence, index of multiple deprivation, week of diagnosis and vaccination status)." Scotland: "... There was an increased hazard ratio of hospitalisation for those who were S-gene positive compared with those with S gene target failure (2.39, 95% 1.72 to 3.31)" Here's the ugly reality: We now need to protect the vaccines from infections and not the other way around. The virus is simply becoming worse. More infectious. More immunity resistant. More deadly. We are training it. That even mRNA vaccine like Pfizer struggles to help our immune system beat the infection with 1 shot is alarming. If that goes, it's only a matter of time the 2nd shot loses efficacy. Some of the Chinese vaccines are looking really, really weak already.

It is likely as bad as "Beta" (b1351/South African) variant in ability to escape immunity and by far the worst in its transmissibility. How deadly is it? In Finland in a transmission chain in a hospital, 57 patients and 42 staff was infected by Delta. 17 patients died. Out of those 17, 11 were vaccinated once, 1 twice and 5 dead weren't vaccinated at all. Average age of deceased was 80, but ages ranged from 60 to 100. 75% were killed by the virus directly while 25% had some other serious illness - which is why they weren't registered as covid deaths. Of course, that doesn't mean they weren't killed by the virus too. Out of infected 42 staff members, 17 were vacciniated twice, 2 were vaccinate once of whom 1 had had covid before. 23 were unvacinated, but didn't work directly with patients. The symptoms were mild flu like symptoms; cough, fever, tiredness. The transmission chain started when a patient had a contact with someone who had visited outside Europe. Source: https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11963971 -> It is obvious that the hospital f***** up majorly and haven't used FFP2 masks. That's the only reason I can think of that would explain massive spread beyond Delta transmissibility being astronomical. My guess is that they've used regular surgical masks, but maybe not outside direct patient contacts (staff has probably had maskless interaction with eachother).

I presume Emi is out, which would give us money for Armstrong and position on field to fill. Buendia out means Farke will adjust his plans no matter what. I think we probably need to find more creativity from multiple positions, because Buendia 2.0 won't happen. That is reality. Having two strikers would mean having options in/near the box. Teemu can play almost like a defensive forward. He's known to drop low and perform tackles: He even took 3 cynical yellows in 19/20 season and generally is very disciplined. Armstrong has fired more often from worse spots than Teemu, but that might be due to lack of options and not worse discipline: Those xGs may change into xAs if Teemu is available. And vice versa.

Chances are we won't be making as many defence splitting passes without Emi anyway and need to adapt.

Why not play with both? One of them a little lower and/or wider than the other. They could switch positions during the game and be flexible.

Armstrong is excellent. Could be long term successor to Pukki. Only 24, improving every season. Going to be PL quality if not already. We've got a window here and I think we should try to seize it. I see the two strikers fielded in 4-2-2-2, or 4-2-3-1 formations with Teemu being somewhat higher and Armstrong lower, perhaps in a winger or even false 9 role. If we got Skipp...4-1-3-2...might be ulcer inducing for opposition without risking defence. Pukki and Armstrong are somewhat similar - which allows them to switch positions. Teemu's playmaking skills are underappreciated and I have a feeling the same is true for Adam. The opposition would face two extremely lethal strikers, which would require atleast 3 defenders to mind them I think. What a nice deterrent!

Chilling....plausible? My skin crawls. It would go some ways to explaining why the central government of China reacted so strongly once the news reached Beijing. How would the government of a society with history of sacrificing tens of millions of its citizens, react if there was a "mere" 0.5-1% IFR (10-20x flu) virus that spread? Would it turn the whole damn state apparatus into a viral containment operation? I doubt it. But the fact is that they absolutely freaked out and short of nuking Wuhan did all they could. We know SARS1 had IFR 10%. That would convince anyone. A recombinant SARS1*2 with long duration symptomless transmission properties of SARS2, and fatality rate of SARS1 would make even the most cynical and callous regimes in the world to shut down the entire society no matter the cost to their political power base. Currently we have many strains and variants popping up with differing properties, leaning strongly towards higher viral "fitness". If the lab theory is correct - and it may not be... What if originally there were multiple strains that escaped - or more likely were feared to have escaped? But only one which had the properties to spread into population; asymptomatic transmission and delayed onset of symptoms? A strain like SARS1 kills so fast and symptoms are so severe it can be contained. Kind of like with Ebola. One reason why I'm optimistic that there never was, or atleast they didn't find evidence of, a SARS1*2 recombinant (or equivalent), is because China didn't exactly hurry vaccinating its population until B117, B1351, B1617.2...etc. Since then they've have taken to vaccinating at astonishing rate. The problem is that *if* they even suspected such an event, it is plausible it could still happen perhaps with some other older strain that does the rounds in nature - bats for example. Now think B1617.2 with IFR of 5% or 10% without vaccination. Imagine *that* recombined with B1351. Imagine this strain faces enormous selection pressure vs Pfizer and AZ? Does anyone recall movie 12 Monkeys? In the worst case scenario that may end up being a prophetic approximation of our lives under such viral threat. But without time machine to stop it. Let's hope whatever monster they feared will never recombine into reality.

Norwich City 20/21:

Thanks, but my post just got upended by a damn tweet. Also you are probably right.

Who knows what is going on other than Emi Buendia almost certainly does not play for Norwich next season. Let us hold hands and cry into our expected pile of money. 😭

£65-70M in these transfer markets... As much as I like Emi and Max, they'd be gone this year or next year anyway. The opportunity to get more bang for your £ is exceptional right at this moment. We are at our most attractive and our competitors at their weakest. Our timing couldn't be better.

It's not what Messi said and when. It's in what context Emi chose to speak out. Barca's problems are mainly its short term debts and bloated wages. They're in process of cutting them with an axe and that means getting rid of certain players and renegotiating wages. Coutinho is expensive. If they sell him, they get £35-40M plus his bloated wages. That's what they'd pay for Emi. Rolling over debt or refinancing into long term debt is not going to be a huge problem if they balance their budget.

Highly recommend it. Fun and safe activity, and requires high game IQ because you can't outrun anyone.

Barca. "According to a report, interest in the City ace extends beyond the Premier League with a 'major continental outfit' making an enquiry for his services last week after his first international call-up was confirmed." https://www.pinkun.com/sport/norwich-city/emi-buendia-transfer-latest-arsenal-aston-villa-7995270 Huge continental outfit who need a creative attacking midfielder/winger to replace Coutinho. Earlier in The Mirror intiterview, Emi specifically mentioned that Messi recruited him to Argentina national team. He also said that he told Messi that his dream was to play with him in the same team. This was from an article a month ago. It could be a message from Emi that he wants to go. "Recalling a secret chat" with Messi...could refer to national team, but may as well refer to Barca. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/emi-buendia-recalls-secret-chat-24012958.amp Add Atletico to the mix and with Arsenal, we might have a bidding war on our hands. I don't know if a club from Italy is in the mix too. I'd say given an option, Emi Buendia would most likely choose Barca. edit: We can probably forget about Arsenal. Considering Coutinho situation I think Barca is the most likely possibility. There's enough circumstancial evidence.

B117 bad but atleast AZ worked. B1617.2 much worse and either AZ doesn't work properly or even a small non-immunized population is enough to fuel it which means it is *extremely* effective in infecting people. Probably bit of both. We'll see in a few weeks. I expect full scale lockdowns - perhaps toughest so far - and revaccination campaign if they don't get this under control very soon. There is possibility there are lots of Indians in England who have lots of kids and have contracted b1617.2 and now it's in schools where there are no masks and makes it appear to spread faster thsn it actually does. Of course, that doesn't explain why b117 is disappearing at the same time.

Looking terrible. non-mRNA vaccines may offer completely insufficient protection. Everyone with AZ has to be vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine. B1617.2 has overtaken B117 extremely fast. It is now dominant. possible reasons: 1 sky high transmissibility 2 worse than reported vaccine efficacy and increased reinfection risk Either way, probability of extreme containment measures increases by the day.

Probabilities vs cost. Of course we stand a better chance with two top tier strikers, but it's not a guarantee. An established club in PL can shrug off a few £20-30M misses. Realistically at the moment we can miss once. I'd rather spread the risk over a number of positions. To your previous post: There are bargains for sure elsewhere, but we aren't the only ones looking for value. They aren't going to be free.

The problem is that if we buy a striker with the intention to truly compete against our #1, the price tag won't reflect Pukki the Prospect but Pukki the PL striker. And if we're not looking at someone as good as him, then why not settle with Hugill and Idah and spend the money elsewhere? I think we need to accept that Teemu is going to be our first option, hope he has a healthy season and try to rest him as much as possible with Hugill and Idah.

If Hector Bellerin leaves Arsenal, they're looking for a young right fullback. They can't easily afford both Aarons and Buendia. That would be £70M... Just saying.