Cartman

Is it written in his contract that he should get extensions no matter how regardless of how he performs? This is the same club that thought it would be a good idea to go into a premier league season with Kelvin and Gazzaniga as the only goalkeeping options. We have a massive blind spot when it comes to that position.

And we have kept him on the bench this entire time ffs. Gabbi, Boufal and one other, the one other hopefully being a new player in January.

Promes!

Says we are the same team we were at the end of last season, which is true. The problem was not Puel or Pellegrino, we are not hiring chancers here, but coaches with a solid track record at other clubs, and yet getting similar results. Our squad is flawed with a relegation standard goalkeeper who was inexplicably given a new contract, the low point of the summer for me, one single player who can both finish chances and resemble a footballer and a load of attackers that are a total missmatch for their teammates (Tadic can't play without a target man and judging by the number of crosses he makes, hasn't noticed we don't have one, Long can't play without Mané and Austin can't play football). It doesn't matter if we have very good players in defence and midfield when we have massive weak links in key places at both ends. Change the manager or don't, it won't make any difference until we change the players, we are still paying the price for the mess we made of the 2016 summer window where none of Hojbjerg, Boufal, Redmond or McCarthy have added anything to the team.

It's fairly obvious who 1st-6th are. Who's 7th?

Doping and match fixing are the only types of cheating in football. The laws of the game are there to be broken if the rewards for breaking them are greater than the potential punishment. The amateur corinthian attitude to football in this country gets on my nerves, the point of the game is to win by any means necessary.

Fraud.

No, you want him to play off a big forward because you like many others on here can't picture football being played without one. Much of the reason Gabbiadini didn't get much game time at Napoli was because he couldn't play together with Higuain, one of the best big forwards around, so why would he suddenly be able to play with an inferior one? The problem is neither Tadic or Redmond are willing to make runs in behind the defence beyond Gabbiadini/Long, they are the ones who want the focal point to play to, but frankly they are not good enough to justify building a squad to their strengths at the expense of better players like Gabbi. We need a pair of Manés either side of Gabbi, Watford are doing well because in Richarlison they found one.

So after 6 games, the big 6 have scored 71 goals, everyone else 70. Other than the big 6, only Watford and Leicester have scored at over a goal per game. They both have negative goal difference.

Where has this idea that Gabbi's best position is on the left come from? He has barely played there in his whole career, played quite a bit on the right at Sampdoria but not on the left. It wouldn't even make sense for him to play on the left, he is left footed and very far from being an orthodox winger.

On the right surely? He has hardly ever played on the left, but often played on the right at Sampdoria. Being a left footed forward it wouldn't make much sense for him to play on the left anyway, he wouldn't be able to cut in and shoot like he would on the right. Don't think the plan is to have him as an out and out striker anyway, but for him to sometimes drop deeper dragging the centre backs out of position and have the wide forwards make the diagonal run ahead of him into the open space, much like Bonatini and Diogo Jota are doing at Wolves: https://www.theguardian.com/football/who-scored-blog/2017/sep/20/wolves-favourites-championship-jota-nuno-neves But our wide forwards are crap so...

Koeman assembled fück all. Les and Mitchell assembled the best saints squad in years and Koeman benefited from it along with expectations being in the gutter, we were being tipped for relegation with a squad containing Fonte, Alderweireld, Clyne, Bertrand, Wanyama, Schneiderlin, Davis, Mané, Tadic and Pellè FFS. All that served to inflate Koeman's reputation way beyond his abilities as a coach, which were already inflated to begin with because of his playing career. Then he succeeds a crap manager at Everton having a superstar striker at his disposal and again he benefits from excessively low expectations. Only now is he getting exposed as the same guy that would have relegated a Valencia team that had Cañizares, Albiol, Marchena, Albelda, Villa, Baraja, Banega, Helguera, Mata, Joaquín and David Silva had he not been sacked before the end of the season.

Absofückinglutely not. Didn't rate him before he joined us, didn't rate when he was here and still don't rate him. It's clear that in his whole time in English football he has been lucky walking into clubs with underrated squads, especially by having superstar forwards Mané and Lukaku available to him. Now his luck has ran out, I'd sooner have Puel back. Poch>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Pellegrino>Puel>Koeman>Adkins.

Not sure many people believe we can compete financially with the top 6 (6, not 7). Our revenue is more than enough to compete with everyone else though.

What new money? They don't have a Lukaku to sell every year. As for the notion that they can poach players off us . Even their far wealthier neighbours are finding that difficult now. There is Martina I suppose.

What we really need was sold to Liverpool a year ago and a cheap imitation from Norwich doesn't cut it.

27 years old, so too old for us. I think Gabbi at 25 is the oldest we have paid any sort of big money for in the last 2 years. Austin was cheap, Pied, Cácares, Taylor freebies. Pellegrino said a few weeks ago that we missed out on a couple of players, I'm convinced Defrel was one we really were after, and that we want a forward who is left footed and plays on the right side. I suppose we will only sign someone if such a player is available, and will leave it until January if not. Mark Uth has just one year left on his contract, worth trying.

Not hard to guess, but the timing was very good, both times the day before it went public. So I'll give him the benefit of the doubt there. But that's the kind of thing he could have got from Van Dijk's barber (barbers seem to be very ITK these days). When it comes to inside knowledge on the clubs' plans, he has been shooting blanks despite trying to give the appearance that he knows things we don't. Even his latest post is just waffle based on the Kevin Palmer article.

No idea. He got two things right, the strike and the transfer request, all info that could, and probably did come from Van Dijk's side. He probably knows someone who knows Van Dijk or his agent but when he is asked to provide information that you could only get from the executive level in the club he gives a load of waffle and says whatever was recently in the media. Didn't see Lemina coming or the takeover or Hoedt, not even a "big news coming" type hint. He is fairly ITK when it comes to Van Dijk's intentions but until proven otherwise he is using his limited ITK credentials to pretend that he knows more than he really does, particularly when it comes to Les' plans.

What agreement? We don't have to offer him sh!t and we almost certainly haven't or he would have been back by now knowing that he would be off next year. And considering that we haven't sold a single player with more than 2 years left on their contract since 2014, we probably don't do these "off contract" agreements.

Why on earth would we do that? I am dead set against any gentlemen's agreements of any sort, send him a copy of his contract highlighting the expiration date. Telling him he can leave next year defeats the whole purpose of what we are doing, "throw a tantrum and you can leave in a year", it's still caving in. Van Dijk cannot be allowed to leave, neither now, nor next year.

I wouldn't hold my breath. Guess who Advocaat's agent is.

Chelsea won the league with just 2, one of them being Batshuayi who played just 702 minutes in all competitions. 3 is enough for just one spot, Redmond can play there if we have an injury crisis.

He will be third choice at best, so will he be a better player in a year's time by staying here and training with us but only getting the odd few minutes here and there, or by being first choice on loan? The goal should probably be to get him to point where he is good enough to oust Austin from the first choice backup role at quickly as possible, and if that will be best achieved by sending out on loan for the season then that is what should be done. Is Gallagher good enough to score 4 or 5 goals at this level right now? If he is not better than Long (and Long was used a lot more than Gallagher in preseason and has been in the matchday squad, so Pellegrino probably doesn't think so) then he will be well down in the pecking order. And why wouldn't Gabbiadini stay fit all season?

Why do people keep saying this? You realise that we can just leave Gardos or Gazza off the list right? Players are not listed in the order in which they arrived at the club.