TWar

Good news regarding the release clause if Crook can be trusted.

Wahey! All done! What an insane signing...

I think it's been confirmed as over £25m by some pretty reliable sources. Would hope its quite a way north of that though.

Where did I say moaning about the signing?

Not so much moaning about the signing, more moaning about others being positive about the signing. As if apathetic neutrality is the correct default position.

Seems likely he will be signing though, from what I've seen in the media, not too worried about him walking through the door now. Regarding the nature of the deal, a buyback is a pain but I'll reserve judgement until I see it, if it's like £35m I won't be too bothered. No hyperbole here, I think its an incredible signing for the role we are trying to fill. I know people want to moan and the same people will come here to moan 10 mins into his debut when he misplaces his first pass but you are allowed to be excited!

Oooo exciting! Wonder who else it could be. Off the top of my head Tuanzebe, Yangel Herrera, Skipp (spurs are big-6 if not top 6), Willock maybe?

Some people come to a forum to be negative, get out their pent up frustrations, and do the happy bit in their own space. That's fine. For me signing the youth player of the season from the best academy in the country is worthy of some celebration and positivity. For others, we can crack a smile when Harry Kane wanders through the door and not a minute sooner. Different folks, different strokes!

Perfect! Let's get it done and with Livramento plus Perraud this is a good summer. Will need to replace anyone who leaves though.

Yeah I agree. I think with one year left about £17m would do it, but to be honest if we did spend over £20m I wouldn't be upset as I think that is probably good value for a 29 goal championship striker.

A lot of the top championship players go for over £30m nowadays, like Watkins, Benrahma, Buendia. Given he is in the last year of his contract I very much doubt he goes for over £20m but a top championship striker for £25m is pretty standard nowadays. Cheaper than Watkins, as I said, who went for £33m after addons with three fewer goals

People were panicking because we hadn't done much but tbf no one had done much. All of a sudden everything is go! Probably waiting on the last players to return from euros

Just bought it! Should be a good read for my next long train journey. Thanks very much for the tip 🙂

Absolutely. I think there is a reason a lot of clubs have in house sports psychologists. I actually read something interesting about Lautaro Martinez in that he is having a psychologist train him to be less aggressive as he gets too many cards. I'm not familiar with the book but it does sound interesting. Brentford are excellent at that kind of thing, absolutely smashing it. Another side good at using stats to move forward are Leicester. We were a little acclaimed for it because of our "black box" but I'm always unsure how much of that was just hiring two elite managers back to back. If you are interested in further listening to me ramble about stats I did a full statistical analysis of our season a couple of weeks ago and posted it here. The bold bits are the important bits if you don't fancy a long, potentially boring, read -

And RB Leipzig, Man City, Arsenal, AC Milan and others I'd imagine. I stick by it, for what it is it's an insane deal. If we were signing him to be our starter it wouldn't be, but we aren't so it is. I am a big proponent of having youth as back up who can eventually take the role, there is no better youth player in the country in his position most likely, given he was player of the year at the top academy. It is an insane deal, everything is relative. This is someone you and others don't seem to realise with talk of Haaland and Cafu.

The idea is two "seperate" deals and both are well below the value. Sell Obafemi for £500k and buy Armstrong for £10m then they only pay 40% of £10m, whereas I think I heard somewhere in a trade deal they still have to pay 40% of the estimated value of the traded player, can't confirm though.

Sorry you are so keen to be negative. I'm sure you can go back to crying about the club soon. We aren't signing Carlos of Cafu to be our back up fullback... Moderate your expectations. For what he is he's a great signing and I'm not going to apologise for taking the word of the entire Chelsea training staff who say he is brilliant over some whiney prick on the internet who does nothing but complain.

Now we actually have a good source I'm even more excited! We struggled to bring through fullback cover from our own academy? No matter, lets just sign the best player from the best academy in the country. He was Chelseas top scholar playing with the under 23's and he's just 18, that's mad! You only have to look at the list of Chelsea's previous top scholars to realise how exciting this is: 2015: Solanke 2016: Tomori 2017: Mount 2018: James 2019: Gallagher 2020: Gilmour 2021: Livramento That is some prestigious company. I genuinely think for a club of our size and for the position we are trying to fill (back up fullback) he is the best signing we could have made. Much better than an expensive loan for Brandon Williams or a bid for Neco Williams. Probably better than even Doig. For those saying "it's not that great" or "we're not signing Haaland". We will never sign Haaland or a player of his size, make your peace with that. When it comes to signing a back up fullback this player is a masterstroke in my opinion.

Would be an insane bit of business! Come on!! Not sure on this source though...

Progressive passes must be atleast 10yrds in length in the opponents half or 30yrds in length in your half, so no it can't be a 5 yard forward pass. I feel a lot of mistrust of stats are born out of this exact type of misunderstanding. A 5 yard sidewards pass in the final third is often very valuable too, to make space for a cross ect. Set piece goals are worth exactly the same as non set piece goals so it really isn't a valuable distinction at all. As the old saying goes "they all count". It's not purely on him to prevent embarrassing scorelines, as I point out in the above comment, mostly that falls on others. I think he's superb, that's my response to the last point, its just my opinion though.

It's fine, I genuinely love discussing football from a stats based perspective. And despite what it sounds like, I don't have an issue with those who don't like it, I just get annoyed at Duckhunter as they tend to be quite snide about it, saying things like it is akin to playing on playstation/excel spread sheet ect. To answer your question I don't think there is one answer as to why we have embarrassing scorelines. If you take the two 9-0s for example, they are very different in cause. The first one was Angus Gunn. Our expected goals for that game was 4.4 vs 0.6. This mean, statistically, the score should have been 4-1. This is obviously not a good score but is not dreadful against a team of Leicester's quality when down to 10 men. Angus Gunn, however, had the biggest underperformance of xG in a single game I've ever seen. I believe when we beat Sunderland 8-0 it was very poor too, but that was more because own goals count as 0 on xG and they scored three. The second 9-0 was mainly due to very poor squad depth. The vast majority of their goals came down our right where our 7th choice rb, Kayne Ramsey, was stationed. He was not able to stop united at all, which effectively ment we were basically playing with 9 players most of the game with a big gap. We, in essence, ended the game with 8 players. This is suicide against one of the best attacks in the league. McCarthy, again, didn't cover himself in glory. By xG it should have been 5.0-0.5 so should really have finished 5-0 or 5-1 but our keeper was dreadful again. There are other individual poor results, a lot of them are just everything goes in, a good example of another team having this is Villa Liverpool where they lost 7-2. Statistically that should have ended 3-2 but their keeper had a poor game and everything villa hit went in. Statistically speaking, over a long enough time frame, a lot of spankings will happen just from very fortunate finishing. This is definitely sped along by having dreadful goalkeepers. There is a reason why Gunn was dropped straight after that game. To answer the "why do we throw things away" question. Two factors for me: First we play a mad high tempo style which wears us out nearing the end of the game, and second we have crap depth so we can't make good meaningful depth. Finally what to do about it. The answer is very unsatisfying but is basically spankings don't matter. They are very embarrassing but they are not really worth much more than a standard loss, bit of a tricky goal diff and a blow to confidence. If we wanted to avoid spankings we could buy a top keeper and play more defensively, play a low block, and do our best Burnley/Newcastle impression. The thing is, investing our money in attacking talent and playing expansive football is not only more fun to watch but also will likely do us better in the long run, even with the occasional embarrassment. Therefore, while spending big on defence and GK would reduce our 9-0 risk considerably my advice would be to ignore the occasional spanking and instead focus on all the games we draw 0-0 or can't break down a team, and buy to attack. It is much more efficient. Also depth, we looked worse in all areas after injury so a couple of back up fullbacks and a good 4th CB if Vest goes is essential. People could say our def needs a boost, but tbh I think our first choice def was fine last season, we just didn't get to see it almost at all in the second half of the season. Unfortunately, Stephens is a dreadful CB and our back up fullbacks were all woefully sub par.

If only there was a "progressive pass completion" stat, or a "passes in final third" or "chances created through passes". Oh wait, there is, I guess you just have no idea what you are on about. Maybe just be quiet when people who do are discussing things, and stick to your basic analysis of "oh I guess we weren't bloke enough to win". It's more your level.

If we wanted to be relegated I guess.

I'd take him. Nothing special but as a 4th CM could do a job and we can focus on different areas of the pitch

Amazing how many people on football forums know what they are on about nowadays. Don't worry mate, there will always been room for someone to go "well I don't care about all these facts, I reckon he's soft".