TWar

Ajer is definitely good value for £6m but have heard him described as big, slow and clumsy. Have heard good things about him too in that he is apparently a good leader and plays the ball well but Celtic have not been good at all defensively this season so there has to be big question marks around him. I would love us to get him at £6m to compete with Bednarek but won't be devastated if he goes elsewhere.

Good player! Alongside Salisu and Diallo we have a great core of young players coming through.

48 goals in 151 prem games, not a bad return tbh. Long has 27 goals in 183 so King is over double Long per game. He racked up a 16 goal season and a 12 goal season in the prem too so he definitely does have goals in him. I don't want him though, wages will be high and he looks washed up.

This was basically my point, Wolves played with a 3 at the back 24 times this season and a 4 at the back 14 times, Semedo was benched twice when playing 4 atb so he only played 12 games in his preferred position and 24 games not. He might not be "very defensive" when to KWP but he is compared to Doherty who he was brought in to replace. The point I was making is that he is defensively fine, he puts in 3.49 defensive actions per 90 to Doherty's 2.75 and wins 2.5 tackles a game to Doherty's 1.7. He is well off the pace attacking-wise with an expected goal involvements per 90 of 0.12 to Doherty's 0.27. This should have been obvious to Wolves that they were signing someone who had never had over 7 goal involvements in their career in a season (in the league) to replace someone who had gotten over 7 every year for five years on the bounce. Also, for the record, Doherty was plenty good enough going forward to be a winger, he put up very respectable numbers for a winger. Also Wolves mostly played a 352 last season with Jota and Jimenez up top with Dendonker, Moutinho, and Neves in behind them. Spurs amusingly made the opposite mistake and tried to play Doherty as a traditional fullback to disastrous results.

In his last three seasons with Barca in the league Semedo got 2 goals and 2 assists total. 1 goal and 2 assists in 19/20, 1 goal and 0 assists in 18/19 and absolutely nothing in 17/18. Doherty got 8 goals and 8 assists in his two top flight seasons at Wolves, averaging 8 goal involvements a season to Semedo's 1.3. This for a wolves side which is significantly less attacking and scores significantly fewer goals than Barca in a harder league. Semedo might get forward a bit but for raw output he was never going to be an adequate replacement in the final third as Doherty had over double the league goal involvements in one season than Semedo managed in his entire Barca career.

Wolves took a very defensive fullback and tried to play him as a wingback replacing Doherty who was basically a forward. Tbh I think Semedo has looked fine defensively and has good ball winning numbers, he just isn't a wide forward like Wolves want him to be.

Because he is a box to box midfielder and with Henderson injured, Phillips maybe injured and worse than Prowsey anyway, and Bellingham being 17, JWP is probably our best choice there.

Zaha making his annual transfer request. Might actually happen this time too as he has 2 years left so probably their last chance to sell and make good money off it. Probably worth about £35m, but United have a 25% sell-on so will only make about ~£26m off him. Could be in a lot of trouble if they don't spend well this summer.

Doubt it, Benrahma cost £20m with similar stats so I'd say that will be an upper limit on his price. £18m would probably do it imo, especially since he already played in the prem as was only OK.

That'll buy a Danjuma.

And they are a much more talented and expensively assembled team. Plus Eze is out till Christmas. I think they may be a good outside bet for relegation.

Why? Nuno isn't that great and he has a hell of a job on his hands.

Dreadful buy that would be. Total system player, gets a tonne of goals because chucking the ball into the box over and over is the only way Burnley know how to play. Can't see Grealish and Traore hitting the byline and whipping it in on every attack so he will get very few goals. Honestly wouldn't have him over Adams.

Bleak.

Salisu is quality anyway, happy to move forward with Salisu and Bednerak if we get good money for him and reinvest it. Buy a 4th choice kid to take his place in the squad and sink the money into Firpo/Danjuma.

My monies on Arsenal. Horrible fans turn on their players instantly.

JWP is much better defensively and offensively than Phillips IMO. Slightly worse defensively than Rice but much much better at passing and linking play. I think some of our fanbase aggressively underrate what JWP does outside of setpieces.

I do agree with this general point, but this is an archetypal example of bad statistics. They have normalised by minutes on one single case, the case where JWP would win (goals per match). The rest of these its very obvious that if you normalised by minutes played JWP would be very much not top and that's why they have chosen not to do so. Basically every single one JWP won aside from "goals per match" could be replaced by "Minutes" as that is the full reason for the disparity. Shooting success holds up too, but most are a bit silly. Annoyingly if you did normalise them you'd see JWP is still top 2 or 3 in basically all categories and tops 1 or 2 which still makes the argument perfectly well but they didn't normalise by minutes to make the difference as stark as possible, thereby bypassing accuracy.

Firpo would be a fantastic signing. Bring in him, Danjuma and a keeper and that's our summer sorted. Couple of young depth options would be nice too obviously.

Going to be controversial potentially here but I wouldn't be adverse to bringing Taki on under £10m. He is crap at pressing, lightweight, lacks concentration, and makes dreadful decisions. He also sometimes struggles to make an impact. On the other hand his finishing and pace are both very impressive. I think Ralph could build something out of him, with time. He won't be a world beater but players very rarely are at that price and if we seal a deal for ~£7m for example I actually don't think it will be that much of a waste of money. Let the manager do magic with him like he has JWP and Armstrong before him and see how he does.

Rice and Phillips is probably too defensive, given neither can really offer much going forward. In a 433 the midfield will be Rice, Mount and one of JWP or Bellingham imo. This is why I think JWP has a pretty good chance, only he and Bellingham can play that role with Hendo very likely out

He's proper overrated imo. His best ever season he scored 6 in france. Since coming to newcastle he has scored 3 and assisted 4 both seasons. Armstrong has comfortably outperformed him two seasons in a row. Same number of goals +assists as Redmond over the last two years. Flashy dribbler so people love him but similar to Boufal for me.

There seem to be an awful lot of Celtic fans saying Christie isn't great here: https://tbrfootball.com/celtic-fans-react-as-southampton-eye-ryan-christie/. And that they'd take a straight swap with Moi in a heartbeat. Maybe the loan recall is the way to go.

Couldn't find many raw stats on there for goalkeeping, but this doesn't bode well:

Unfortunately so