repman

Obviously not Bethnal but Rudd would know Knapper from their time at Arsenal so I think there may be a bit of creative license there. No doubt though we will be looking to be similar to Brighton and Brentford as you mention. I'd say the MA connection is probably one of the key drivers, there's a lot of smart data people in every club in the country, the issue is that their work is often ignored. The hope with Knapper coming in is that all of this will be pulling in the same direction. Attanasio's Brewers team are one of the smartest in baseball so it stands to reason he will want the same here. A lot of that will also manifest in off field stuff, instead of buying new players. People often will talk about us spending 750k on the soccerbot, now the effectiveness that I'm not sure but it's worth pointing out the Brewers spent $60 million to build a pitching lab a few years ago (also built a whole new training facility in the Dominican Republic for their young players).

I'm guessing that they need to get his wages off the books so they can have the new players. Football clubs don't tend to be the smartest long term planners. Liverpool will have waited it out to get it as low as possible and Juve haven't got much option at this point. Similarly look at how Chelsea have had very few takers for some of the players they're trying to ship out.

It's also pretty common in player development for a striker to get a lot of their early game time out on the wing so they can get more touches of the ball. Certainly as they scale up through the levels they might not be as technically superior. Not sure this will end up being the case with Kamara, who tended to show some really impressive dribbling + passing skills last year which would keep him out wide. Though they could also be handy if he played up front.

I mean, the change we've seen this summer was pretty much a necessity. It certainly helps the club to draw comparisons to the early Webber/Farke days to get fans on board but it's not like they're simply retreading that path. We plugged financial holes last summer by selling young players and replacing them with veterans. We could have done the same this time but the club can't afford to keep going down that path unless promotion was a guarantee (which it never is). The short-termism that appeared first in our big spending spree in 21/22 has seen us dig ourselves a bigger and bigger hole without ever really looking like we were going to crawl out of it.

Weren't Palace something like the 4th best side from when Glasner took over until the end of the season? Not a good result but we've been alright and been undone by some real quality at points too.

Gibbs in Forson's role is such an unnatural fit. He keeps on finding himself needing to use his left foot and it doesn't end well.

Even when we signed Placheta it was pretty obvious that he was still very raw technically. The club was hoping that that side of his game would improve, we still had Onel/Cantwell/Buendia so it wasn't as if he needed to be a huge contributor immediately. The other wrinkle in the move was that it was the last window before the new brexit rules were being introduced. Placheta wouldn't have qualified had we waited, so we gambled early after he'd shown some signs of life. I think he could have turned out better than he did, but that's all a matter of circumstance really.

To be fair Brentford always were better defensively than we were, even when playing on the front foot. Pressing/defensive organisation is something that scales up quite well (look at Ipswich last season for another example). Possession play doesn't at quite the same rate, and that comes with caveats that pretty much every PL side is better coached defensively than any champ one as well as the fact any talent advantage you may have had in the champ is wiped out overnight.

To be fair the transfer market has changed rapidly the last 5 years or so. Clubs have a better handle on what players are worth, especially when it comes to potential. Buendia was signed for 1.5m initially, he'd probably be 10 times that nowadays, and that's only if Getafe were still foolish enough to not put him into their team.

I think this has always been a tricky one with Kamara's deal up next year. His stock his high after coming off a really impressive second half to last season with Portsmouth and then the England u20 call up. His agent probably thinks we would have to sell for a lower fee due to the contract situation, on the flip side even though the new regime has talked about bringing young players through they're not going to want to do that with a player who they will lose soon. The fact he hasn't signed a new contract this summer, when that felt like something that should be the first order of business, was probably the warning sign. Although he's handed in this request we don't know if he has completely checked out, or if this is just posturing from his agent.

Not sure how I feel about that possession lost stat. Similar to the big chances missed it tends to penalise players for doing things which generally are good. Per 90 minutes in the PL last year Trent Alexander-Arnold averaged 23.64, Kevin De Bruyne 21.57 and Bruno Fernandes 20.05. It's not necessarily a bad thing to be 'losing' possession if the reward is there. I can't really recall Nunez giving the ball away in any areas you'd deem calamitous, I might be wrong there though. From looking on sofascore it says Nunez completed 3 out of 12 crosses, so that's presumable where 9 of these possession losses are coming from. He was on corners and also was taking long throws too (sure we could discuss the efficacy of this too). If we don't win the first contact from these scenarios then Nunez is immediately dinged with a possession loss, which doesn't seem particularly helpful to me.

Doyle has to be in at CB on Saturday if Cordoba can't play, he's the only player who looks remotely comfortable playing out down the left side. Just look how Duffy turned back to Long 3 times in a row a minute ago vs how much better we were at getting it forward when Doyle was in that position.

Even the Stevenage players looked like they knew it was a foul

Definitely, it will hopefully improve once we get someone like Cordoba in at CB, who will carry the ball to bait the press as opposed to what we did there. Long's pass to Warner was behind him then he took an even worse touch. Did well to make that first pass up the pitch in the end.

That is, I think, the sort of thing Thorup wants. Draw the press and quickly get it up the pitch. Great work all round, Stacey is so well suited to that role of making the third man runs.