tajjuk

Brazillian/Serbian is an odd combination of nationalities. Let's hope Vidic is his idol not David Luiz!

Maybe but Liverpool were desperate for centre-backs in Jan and now have 4 very good ones. If he wants to join the PL well most of the big clubs have signed new centre backs. Utd - Varane, Liverpool -Konate, Arsenal -Wright, Spurs - Romero. Man City have 3 world class ones plus Ake as 4th choice, and Chelsea have Silva, Rudiger, Christensen, Zouma and Azpilicueta. Even Leicester have 3 very good ones in Soyuncu, Fofana and Evans, even though they have injuries so only signed Vestergaard as a squad player. So if he wants to join the PL and actually play to prove himself, then there are not that many options. You are talking like us, Burnley and West Ham looking for centre-backs I think, maybe Palace. Everton seem to have ideas above their station and are looking at Koulibaly apparently. We'd basically be selling him a stepping stone, join at 24, move in 3 years at 27 to one of the big boys, Liverpool will probably be looking at Van Dijk replacements by then.....

I read he didn't turn down Liverpool, Marseille cancelled the deal because they couldn't get a replacement. I think I read he had a private plane booked for the medical.

Probably where Danny Ings wages have gone then! Going to put it out there, outlandish suggestion I know, but maybe, just maybe he wants to actually stay cos loves the club and is settled in the area.

I play footie like 2-3 times a week and often the kids are training before us, and you see most of them in Utd, Liverpool and Chelsea shirts.

He's got a point though, look at Everton, Moshiri has spent millions to get them to where exactly? Slightly upper mid table. They have done no better with all that investment than we did with just good scouting a few years ago. Even if we got a billionaire owner who invested in the club I seriously doubt we could match the Man Citys, Chelseas, PSGs, Man Utds, the money is just off the scale. These clubs can spend £250 million a window. Realistically the best we can hope for is a Leicester like owner to come in, who doesn't throw money at the club but invests for the long term and wants to be here for the long term, builds the club off the pitch and we make good signings on it that put us in a position to take advantages of when the big boys have bad seasons and maybe win a domestic cup here and there. Then even longer term than that set us up as the go to place for developing young talent like say Dortmund. But I just can't see us ever going anywhere near the top ever unless there is dramatic shift in how football is run and it not all being about money. I mean sadly we had that owner and I think had Marcus still been alive we would probably be a similar position to Leicester right now.

The guy currently playing in the MLS and has been there two years and hes only 30. Twice the size maybe, twice the ability? not even close. He was a good DM for us but not anything special and his career has fallen apart.

Not sure he's much of centre-back, though I will say that Scotland had some good success with Robertson at left wing back and Tierney as LCB in a 3, which gave them an interesting attacking threat down the left.

Vestergaard for someone his size was not very good in the air, he lost aerial battles to people shorter than him more often than he should have, imo he was never really that aggressive probably because his height sort of allowed him to win a lot of headers by default and he just relied on that.

The GKs don't help, a good confident Keeper would have stopped the first goal on Sunday by coming out and clearing that IMO, but defensive switching off seems to be an issue, Stephens just seemed to give up marking Calvert-Lewin for the third goal, the second I don't think a huge amount can be done about that one. I also think JWP not being fully fit caused problems as well, he is important to the closing down and intercepting before attacks get near our defence and I think him being not 100% we lost some of that. Again having a keeper that actually communicates well and saves some shots would help, I mean the first 9-0 as an example the XG for that game was like 3-4 IIRC, which means on average Leicester didn't have anywhere near the chances to score 9 goals but Gunn basically didn't save a thing, which seems to be a repeating issue with McCarthy and Forster as well. I mean Everton had 6 shots on target and scored 3 goals, conceding 50% of the shots on target is pretty poor, so the defence must think every time the opposition gets a chance they are probably going to score. It's why I would give Forster the nod over McCarthy though, both are bad for PL keepers but at least Forster seems to talk to his defence and organises a bit, plus he seems less prone to faffing around with it with his feet and making f ups, he seems to just either find an easy pass or if there is some risk he smashes it into the channels.

I think he (and probably Perraud as well)gives us the option to go to wingbacks, they are both the sort of players who look physical (speed/strengths/work rate) (KWP as well) to get up and down the flank on their own and still create enough going forward. That would give us the option to basically ditch the inconsistent wide players, play two up front and have S.Armstrong as driving force from midfield and probably allow JWP to get further forward, whilst the 3 centre-backs should give is a bit more defensively stability. Plus the pace of the wingbacks and A.Armstrong up front should give us plenty of pace on the counter, with Tella another option to add to that.

Not completely against Cahill but not as the main option, someone experienced to have about the squad, show a good example, play the odd game, maybe play in a back 3 if we needed to switch to that etc. but I think really we'd want a clear starting centre-back as well. Dujleta-Carr would be my first choice I think, Tosin Adarabioyo and the Forest guy also seem decent.

Isn't this basically re-iterating what most have said on here, that Vestergaard is not that good and therefore is really not that hard to replace or in fact improve on. I get the impression that the club didn't exactly move heaven and earth to get him to sign a contract. He had one good 6 month period and was generally below par the rest of the time, was horribly slow and his passing ability often IMO meant people less noticed his poor defensive ability. We also then got £15 million for him, so only about £3 million less than we paid for him, when he was 3 years older and only had a year left on his contract. I've seen a lot of comments on the outside looking in that we have 'sold our best players' this summer, now that is a definite with Ings I don't think anyone can argue with that. But with with Vestergaard and Bertrand I don't think that is true at all and I suspect the club were probably happy to get their wages (and a fee for Vestergaard) off the books so we could sign younger players better suited for our game.

That is clearly not true because loads of players successfully make the step up. Even more so in recent years. Like I said before the Championship IMO is a lot stronger and of higher quality these days than many 'top' European leagues, who we frequently buy from like the SPL, Swiss league, Eredivisie etc. As with everything in football these days its about the money, the Championship is well watched, well supported and full of ex-PL clubs who are earning parachute payments which means the wages on off in the league from a lot of clubs is going to be higher than many places in Europe, even in some of Europe's top 5 leagues, especially as many of those leagues don't distribute money anywhere near as evenly as the PL does. The yearly wage bills for the bottom 12 clubs in La Liga ranges from about £11 million to about £38 million a year, in 18/19 the average Championship wage bill was £34 million. The Championship can offer wages that no other second league in Europe can match and many top leagues can match, which of course attracts and retains better players and increases the quality of the league.

Yeh looked like a GK error to me, Salisu could have done more maybe to get in but we also don't know what calls were made. 2nd is a great hit, can't fault him there. 3rd is straight at him, and he probably should have done better. Only thing I will say is, is Forster coming to claim that first one? Not sure, I feel they are both bad at this, but maybe the communication would have been better as this seems to be something he is stronger at. And for me, he is more likely to save the 3rd, those are the sort of saves he makes regularly due to his bulk. McCarthy has not looked anywhere near his best (which is hardly amazing) for a long while, consistently his main strength is shot stopping, most of the rest of his GK game, so kicking, positioning, communication, coming for crosses etc. has never been very good, but when he is on form he can pull of some excellent stops. But he hasn't done that for a while. If McCarthy isn't making saves then he is close to useless because he is a poor communicator, his distribution sucks and he is not great at commanding the area.

1.1 billion in debt and their academy has stopped churning out so many players, read some reports a while back that there are conflicts in the academy about players being prioritised for physicality now rather than ability, which goes against their previous successes. Also they are so screwed they are likely to lose one of their best young talents in Ilaix Moriba, who only has a year left on his deal and hasn't accepted a new one. But yeh won a Champions league squad with like 8 academy graduates in the team iirc, very sad all round imo, personally feels rather soulless to see Messi not finish his career there and got to moneybags PSG.

I suppose because they are people as well, I less think it's about adapting to the league (though of course the Championship is closer in style to PL than probably France, Italy and Spain. Bundesliga is though be reports similar to PL) and more about adapting new culture, weather, new language and just the people. Moving to a new country is a much bigger deal than moving to a different city within the same country IMO. Plus we have quite a British dressing room unusually for a PL team. Adams, Armstrong, JWP, Redmond, both keepers, other Armstrong, Stephens, KWP, Tino, Long, Obafemi, Tella, Smallbone, all British or Irish. We only have 7 non UK and Ireland players, and Romeu is one of those and he's been here like 10 years.

As the poster above said I've been wanting us to go for the better young championship players for a while, there is good quality to be had there. I mean Robinson, Maguire (I think), Maddison, Clyne, Jay Rod, Eze etc. plus half our team that got promoted did all right stepping up from the Championship. I think the Championship is better quality than many top leagues in Europe, I'd say getting one of the better players in the Championship is probably less risky than getting the better players in Scotland, Holland, Belguim, Switzerland, Portugal etc. and there is less worry about them acclimatising if they are British. Also Villa and Leeds, most of their team are mainstays from the Championship and they have done ok. Not sure there is a huge difference between bottom PL and the Championship.

I thought Nuno tended to play wingbacks a lot though and don't they also still Aurier and Doherty? But yeh he was very solid yesterday but not sure how much he offers going forward as a full back if they were playing lesser teams, he seemed to be in the team to do a very specific defensive job yesterday which he did well. Agree on Romero but we just seem to be ignoring the goalkeeper situation. I'd presume maybe not enough room in the wage budget? Such a funny situation that, a panic buy that they somehow bought outside a transfer window and now because they have massively screwed up he's pretty much their only available striker. The guy must be living the dream though, he's never scored more than 14 in a season, barely has a 1 in 4 record in his career and he's somehow ended up playing for Barcelona.

Which makes it even more odd they pushed through the Grealish signing.

Spurs are linked with more centre-backs after the one they signed so Tanganga might slip down the pecking order.

Some actual sense. Also find hilarious he is getting criticise for the keeper issue, both of them are awful, both of them are on far too high wages, none of which has anything to do with him. I am not sure exactly what he is supposed to do.

Literally you are commenting in a thread that says 'Ralph OUT' that has appeared straight after we lost the first game of the new season, with new players and we haven't finished the transfer window, I hardly think commenting that people are being reactionary is 'making things up' now is it.

Yes they are quite obviously. We lost and all these idiotic threads pop up, where where they last week? Or all summer? If we are sacking him after one game before the transfer window hasn't even ended then why even bother to give him pre-season? People not got enough conviction in their opinions, I mean if he's a right off and a useless manager then stick with it. But surprise surprise whilst we are wining and doing well at half time it's all fine. They weren't there were they, because all the fickle negative ones come rushing out of the woodwork as soon as things go wrong to expel their 'wisdom'.

I didn't say anything of the sort, but reacting like this after one game is completely retarded, but also expected from this forum.