Useful Idiot

While the other players generally took one or two touches to move the ball on (even if it was a backwards or sideways pass) Barkley almost always took three or four, then played a simple pass he could have played earlier. I don't know if he was trying to attract players to him and win fouls, but he generally just succeeded in slowing play down. His longer passing seems pretty suspect, too. Henderson is just a poor player. Good energy levels but limited ability with the ball and dodgy positional sense without it. Alexander Armstrong should go back to presenting Pointless as he can't defend and his allegedly great crosses seem to be overhit more often than not. I think Gomez looks like a better right back than him. Keane looked good when playing in an ultra-defensive Burnley team but really poor the rest of the time. Seems to push out of defence to try to win the ball in midfield too often and get caught out of position. I think Chilwell can be pretty effective, but he didn't have a good game. When Shaw is fit he should be England's first choice as he's a much better defender.

If we have him, Keane, and Henderson in the team we'll be really up against it if we play one of the better international sides. They are the weak links in the current England XI and need to be replaced as soon as possible.

What about 1980-81? Convincing Keegan to sign was probably the most impressive transfer feat in our history.

Davide Astori, I think... EDIT: wasn't at Juventus, but was co-owned and we were linked.

His head stamping record is first class

Exactly this.

Total presenter wages are pretty small compared to the total amount spent, about £200m out of £3.1 billion total spent on program making (out of 3.7 billion total income). You can find out more about that here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/entries/cddab372-eb3a-4666-a625-38e648892e3a If Linekar's wages were reduced he'd go and work for Sky/BT full time instead. As it stands, if he did he'd probably earn more in total than he currently does. Even Adrian Chiles was on £1.5m/year when he worked for ITV, and back in 2013 he made £4.6m total. Gary Neville gets around £1.5m/year for doing analysis on Sky. If the license fee was scrapped then we'd probably have no MOTD and the BBC would have the program quality of ITV/Dave. If it was reduced, we'd get lower quality service from the BBC and probably even more repeats and old shows.

I knew it before he was born. It was obvious from the angle his mother's hips made when she was gestating him that he would never make it here.

If only 25% of the audience chose to pay, it would cost each of them less than £2 a year to include Linekar over nobody. I'm pretty sure that he'd get at least that many watchers.

I think you slipped while typing and added a couple of zeros onto his value.

It currently costs far less than £2-£5 per watcher to pay his wages. If he cost that much he'd currently be earning between £8m and £20m per month. (Given that MOTD currently averages 4m viewers per week).

I bet that if Linekar was replaced by Claire Balding, Batman would have a seizure.

I'm glad that you're enjoying your team's win and that you're still happy with your manager!

Exactly this. Blaming Cedric for his team mates' positional errors is really quite short sighted.

Very happy with a point there. Was a bit unsure that we could afford to play 4-2-2-2, but we might be able to get away with it if Vestergaard can keep up this form!

I'm pretty confident he'll do decently well once we get a few home games against teams that aren't likely to finish in the top 8 or so. He has enough about him, but it its a big step up when you're up against Van Dijk, Maguire, De Gea and the like instead of Championship defenders/keepers.

This.

Double whoosh mate. I got that, but I wanted to join in on the joke and poke a bit of fun at Cabbage Face. Sometimes hard to convey that on a message board, though.

I'm guessing 4-2-2-2 with JWP and Boufal behind Ing's and Adamz.

Are you Cabbage Face in disguise?

Elyounoussi scored 2 goals in 8 CL games in 2018 including the winner in the away leg against Man City at their ground. He was instrumental in having Basel get through to the knock out stages that year (ie he performed well in the Champions' League, as I said). At the time he we signed him he was 23 and there was a chance he could have improved. If you call Carrillo's 6 goals in 32 games coping with the league? If he scored that for us I'd hardly say he was coping. He was also in his alleged prime when we bought him and had less chance of developing. He was also renowned among the Monaco fans for having absolutely no ability with his feet and no pace. And he cost more than Elyounoussi did, too. Overall, a worse signing (though neither of them were much good).

Carrillo was the worse signing by miles. Moi had a good season where he played regularly and scored regularly for a relatively weak team. He performed well at Champs League level and did particularly well against Man City. The signing didn't work out because he is physically unsuited to Premier League football, but I can understand why we went for him. Carrillo was a bit part player for a big side in a relatively average league. He only really played as a sub and was generally used to bully weak defenders in teams worse than the one he played for. Apart from MoPe's connection to him, I have no idea why we signed him, he was always going to be terrible.

Exactly this. We effectively have Redmond out of our normal XI and either Armstrong or Boufal to replace him. Djenepo and Obafemi are usually bench options anyway. It might mean we actually have the chance to put an u23 on the bench for once alongside Long and either Boufal or Armstrong, whichever of the two misses out on starting.

To me it looked like he slipped and then over-stretched the ligaments on the inside of his ankle. Here's the position his standing foot ended up in.

Shouldn't that be Ing's and Vokin's?