TWar

Absolutely, happy to help. We have lost this summer: Lemina - Nice - ~£4m Gunn - Norwich - ~£5.5m Bertrand - Leicester - Free Hoedt - Anderlecht - Unknown (rumoured about £2m) Jankewitz - BSC Young Boys - Unknown (Rumoured £1.5m rising to £4m with some unlikely bonuses) Sims - No club yet, on trial at pompey - Free Hesketh - No club yet, failed a trial at pompey - Free Incomings: Perraud - Stade Brest - £11m Walcott - Everton - Free Simeu (on the verge of signing) - Chelsea - ~£500k

Three explanations: 1) You know more vaccinated people than unvaccinated by a significant margin as you don't hang out with many teenagers/anti-vaxx nutjobs. Even if you are 10 times more likely to get it (as the science suggests) without the vaccine, you know more than ten times as many people who have had one jab. Therefore the numbers work out. (this is definitely the case for me) 2) The people who are antivaxx nutters either A) won't be tested when sick or B) wouldn't disclose being sick to others as it is kind of a direct consequence of their stupid life choices therefore there could be people you know who did get it having been antivaxx and just didn't tell you 3) Confirmation bias. You don't take a formal tally when you meet people with COVID so it is all from memory and you are more likely to remember someone getting sick with the vaccine than without as it is more noteworthy. I'd wager one of those. Could also be just luck owing to your tiny sample size. Either way, this is why we have actual science which categorically proves that the vaccine lowers your risk catching COVID.

Oh for sure. Don't misinterpret this as me saying we shouldn't try to get rid and upgrade. For the record my stance is our keepers are not prem quality although I do think we have bigger issues at the moment like attacking mid, replacing Ings/Vest when/if they go, and fullback depth. If we sort those though then I'm all for binning off whoever we can get a fee for and buying someone actually competent. My only point is that Forster has, as a person, not done anything wrong. He's signed a deal as any one of us would in his situation and is fulfilling his end of it. He doesn't deserve to be bullied or have his life "made a living hell".

The virus only lasts inside of people. If you make the chances of the virus spreading low enough then it cannot survive as it won't be able to hop between carriers. We will reach that point on our current trajectory but we aren't there yet and the more people take the vaccine the faster we get there. Therefore football clubs accelerating us to that point has a bonus value. This is why the UK hasn't had a case of polio since the mid-80s despite it's vaccine not being 100% effective, it was effective enough to slow the spread to the point where the virus can't sustain and there weren't any nutters not trusting the scientists to slow the vaccine rollout.

Wages are a big deal I think and Lemina was on a fair chunk. We have shifted 7 players now I think including big earners in Lemina, Gunn, Hoedt, and Bertrand. That should clear some money on the wagebill. Plus I think we've made about £12-15m so far, so that should help a bit.

Since then the only people linking have been the scottish mail and the scottish sun. Maybe they are more reliable than their english counterparts but I'm taking brightons interest with a pinch of salt for now.

Alright now that's done time to reinvest. If we know Ings is off we need to beat one of Watford or Brighton to Armstrong or Edouard.

I think Edouard will be about £25m. Armstrong hopefully we can get for around £20m. If Ings goes I'd rather one or the other and then spend the saved £20m on a better attacking mid/10. Che is a good starter, we don't need to sign £20m+ in his position when we are set to start Walcott, McCarthy, Bednarek who are much worse for me.

I think the main issue all the teams linked (us, Watford, Norwich) have very poor squad depth. This means out players we'd put up for exchange are probably a bit lacklustre. Oba seemed ok but he has a dreadful injury record for a young lad, and Gray is just very poor.

I think they just want cash by the looks of things. But Oba +£15m would be a decent deal for all concerned imo.

Dunno if you have been following the news but COVID kills people... Our excess death in this country passed 100,000 people in February, now it's up to about 110,000. It definitely does kill people. And as @waylander excellently put, there are still countless people who can't take the virus or will not be able to. I have a close family friend with lupus and another on chemo. I don't want either of them dying because some prick with a "freedom" complex decided they didn't want a vaccine but still wanted to roam around potentially infecting others. Freedom is all well and good when it doesn't endanger others, in the same way you don't have the freedom to buy and redistribute heroin or to drive when off your face.

I dare say that's it for us. Hope not obviously but I imagine we were hoping they would get more desperate and we could pick him up for closer to £10m. Now we know they have another option they will probably take it.

Yeah I hate it, but what can you do. I guess he hasn't played as a pure LB before and has just been a wingback and testing things like this is what friendlies are for, but it's tested now so we need to stop.

I mean, not really, that's why one of them is in the championship. Don't know who there team was in both halves but us playing two entirely different teams in both halfs probably didn't help, if we played our first 11 all the way through we'd mash them, but thats not really the goal of a friendly. Sounds like we were trying out new things like Djenepo at LB and it didn't really work.

Will just be for preseason I imagine to see who is our best option. Aside from that some interesting points. Djenepo being tried out at LB, not even left wingback is interesting, although him giving away the pen is pretty unimpressive. Ings playing means he probably isn't close to the door. Obafemi as a 10 could be interesting too.

Reed developed into a lower Premier league/higher championship talent. Didn't get dumped either, we made an offer but he turned it down to start in the prem and we make £8m off him iirc

That would be an amazing move. He looked elite last season. For me, would be the best short term move they can make. Would love to see us sell Vestergaard and go for Anderson but would probably cost a fortune

Gotta admit, I'm a bit of a Pepe truther. I think there is a quality player in there, he came into arsenal when they were a state and was very young so struggled a lot because of that. Since they have looked more settled on the latter half of this season he's looked quality. I tip him to be worth the money and more going forward.

I disagree, I think Stephens and Bednarek were both better at rb than Valery, as was JWP with Romeu and Diallo in the middle. We didn't get to see the latter due to more unforseen injuries. Also bertrand is horrible as a wingback as he can't attack anymore. Furthermore, if we play 3atb Stephens has to start anyway and he's dreadful at cb too so I think 3atb would be a disaster. We would be losing an attacker, playing Bertrand where he does not excel, completely change our shape and how we play, and starting Stephens at cb, just to facilitate Valery. I'd rather we just put Stephens or Bednarek at RB tbh. Also when Valery left Ralph was pretty sure he'd be replaced, he said as much in the press, the club let him down by failing to do so. Unless you are a fool like Duckhunter and think it was his job to scout and buy another fullback.

Our back up RB was dreadful. I don't see how you can complain about losing a player who couldn't even get into an average Birmingham side. To say it bit us on the arse you'd need to say he would have been better than what we had and I don't think thats a fair assumption.

Buy low, sell high. Vest ain't getting higher than this (the low part is debateable though)

Walcott was free... He has wages, but so would a keeper, and a keeper good enough to displace our two probably comes with an associated transfer fee. Gunn just went for £5m for example and he was 3rd choice behind them.

He signed a contract to play football and he is, his contract didn't stipulate quality therefore he is performing up to the standard agreed. You don't get sacked in any job if you are fulfilling your contractual obligations. Also, people also shouldn't bully Redmond and Stephens, for the record, it doesn't help. He's not taking the piss, he is doing what he is contracted to do. It's not his fault we gave him too big a contract. He doesn't deserve to have us make his life a living hell. The boy scouts isn't the only place where bullying is unacceptable... Also I'm not "sticking up for him" for performing badly. I've been the first to say our goalkeepers are both atrocious and both are well below prem level. I just am an adult and understand they are human beings so them being bad at football doesn't mean they should be treated like shit.

Football is like the real world and football players are human beings. It is insane to me that you can't see that.

Yeah Jankewitz wasn't "frozen out", he was never in. He was a young lad in a competitive position, got a chance and blew it and didn't impress enough in training to get another. No freezing out, he just didn't make the grade and had to downgrade to the swiss league. Same as Hesketh and Sims, they weren't frozen out, they just weren't good enough to start.