tajjuk

This seems to have gone very quiet, only new stories on him in recent days are basically saying Leeds aren't going for him or have moved onto other targets.

Not sure why Maddison would make that move, Arsenal are a long way from being competitive, they have holes to fill all over their team. I also doubt Arsenal would pay him much more than Leicester do. Whereas he's currently part of Leicester team now regularly challenging for Europe if he keeps improving with them he'll either get champions league football with them or impress enough to earn a move to someone that is regularly challenging for titles, which is not Arsenal any time soon IMO.

If £40 million doesn't get Ben White then why in hell would it ever get JWP? Also since when do Villa offer much more wages than us? Aside Grealish I doubt any of their other players earn much more than our highest earners who are all likely to be in the £70-80k a week, with supposedly Ings being offered more than that. Also they can probably only do that because a lot of their players will still be on championship contracts, the more new contracts and players they sign, the less room they have in the wage budget as FFP won't allow clubs to just throw money at their wage budgets endlessly. You are talking maybe Villa offer him £20-30k a weekmore, to move sideways, lock him into a new long term contract and prevent him from moving to an actual bigger club, moving his family, leaving the club he's been at since he was 10, I am not seeing it. Nor am I seeing Villa suddenly deciding to pay him like £150k a week. We don't want to sell, we'd find it very hard to replace him, he's got 4 years left on his contract, and I can't see him agitating to move to Villa. So there is no logic we would accept £40 million IMO, it would have to be way above value to even get the club considering which is £60 million plus IMO. Even then I have my doubts he'd actually go.

Exactly Gao didn't buy Carillo for a manager we should have sacked, he didn't buy Hoedt or Lemina who were are still struggling to shift and are weighing down the wage bill, it seems his biggest crime is not throwing money at the previous hierarchy's mistakes.

Still don't get how it's terrible. He's taken no money out. He's let football people run the club and as far as we know not interfered in anything. If that is rated as terrible, then what are like the Glazers? He's got to be one of the most neutral owners out there, puts no money in, takes none out, doesn't interfere, hasn't tried to change the stadium name or the kit or something and we barely see him (which also means he's not embarrassing the club on twitter or something)

23, ball playing centre-back, English, International, with a season of good performances in the PL under his belt and probably under a long contract. Kind of player that screams £50 million plus to me.

£25 million for a player who has a career goal scoring record of 34 in 126 games, with 14 of those goals coming in the German 2nd division (which is less competitive than the Championship). He has 8 goals in 45 games in the Bundesliga, I know he's only 23 and is an Argentinian international, but that somewhat looks like a gamble to me. He wasn't even first choice for a mid table Stuttgart team last year, he only started 10 games. I mean there are players like Kramaric, Kalajdzic, Weghorst, even maybe Andre Silva from the Bundesliga, who are all probably gettable by PL clubs, who scored way more than this guy. It seems an odd one for a team crying out for a clinical finisher to spend probably a record fee on somewhat who has hardly been prolific in his career.

Villa won't pay the £60 million that would tempt us to sell and I doubt he would be that interested anyway, certainly not enough to make a move. As others have said he strikes me as someone very professional, grounded and settled with the club/area. I think any move for him would have to be perfect, so we are talking a big 6 club to be hones and probably one of the ones with their shit together, so not currently Arsenal or Spurs. I also think personally many of our fans under rate him, I noticed a comment on the BBC article about White being the replacement and it said something along the lines of JWP should have been the replacement and Southgate missed a trick and it had something like 1k likes with virtually no dislikes. Pretty much every pundit seems to rate him, seen multiple say he was unlucky to miss out on the squad and most neutral fans I speak to seem to rate him highly as well. But even in the club, not only is he our captain, he is the poster boy for the academy, is obviously massively professional (which has a big influence on those around him off the pitch) shows huge work rate on the pitch (which is again influential), has exemplarily levels of fitness and consistency, is then obviously world class at set pieces, is very important to how we play, he is intelligent and versatile enough to play other positions ably (like keeping Zaha in his pocket whilst playing right back), and is clearly the one the manager trusts the most and often is the one passing on his instructions on the pitch. IMO he is basically irreplaceable, is he the best player in pure ability terms? No, but pure ability is not solely what makes a very good footballer or a very important part of a team.

He signed a 5 year contract last summer and I doubt he would even want to move to Villa, it's a sideways move at best a minor move up just because they are spending a bit more than us, but likely Villa are going to lose their best player anyway and without him they were about as bad as we were in the second half of the season. So very unlikely he would agitate for that move and we have no reason to sell, so they would have to throw silly money at us I reckon, £60 million plus and even then I doubt whether he'd even go, why potentially tie yourself down to Villa for the next 2-3 years with mid table football and potentially miss out on a move to a bigger club?

Just to caveat that a little, IIRC Armstrong takes pens for Blackburn and I don't think Che did for Brum. I'd also say they are different sorts of players, certainly Che seems to have had to evolve into a different sort of striker than the one he was at Brum, whereas Adams has a lot of pace and runs in behind probably more. They'd probably be a decent combo. Can't see us spending near £25 million on him unless Ings goes so if he's an additional striking option we'd have to get that price down.

Historically its difference IMO with keepers, football managers consistently play ones forever that are out of form, look how long it took De Gea to be dropped. Or how Southgate stuck with Pickford.

He's basically saying they are both pretty crap and the only way we'll have a half decent keeper is one of them being in form so he'll play whichever one is in better form and they have to battle it out to earn the spot, not that he'll just willy nilly rotate them. Basically just competition for places and I am willing to be if we do manage to pick a clear better Keeper they will play every game.

True, though if we lose Ings we might be lacking some clinical finishers as well. As a loan to buy maybe, maybe if we also shipped out one of Redmond or Djenepo I think there is a chance he might offer more than either of those two, but I do think with the possible loss of Ings we might need more goals from those areas, plus I still feel we need a clever playmaker type as we have lots of the sort of run at people players for those positions and Lookman would be similar.

The RB clubs have an excellent model, they do excellent scouting, develop young players AND coaches, play an attacking pressing style across most of their teams and Leipzig in particular have punched well above their weight. I am not sure why appreciating a well run football club that is succesfful without needing to splash millions on wages and transfer fees is 'hipster'.

He tore Liverpool to pieces in the 1-1 they had, was the best player on the pitch but 4 goals and 4 assists in 31 starts, albeit for a bad team, shows he's not very consistent. Certainly plenty of talent and pace, an exciting player to watch but saw him in some other games and he went completely missing. Probably worth a gamble depending on fee but not the most clearest upgrade on the already inconsistent set of wingers we have.

The ones on that list that I'd like to sign permanently I doubt many of those clubs would let them leave or the fees would be high and would want to go to bigger clubs, like Abraham, Gilmour, Hudson-Odoi, Williams, Curtis Jones, Van De Beek. The others we could likely sign I wouldn't want like Jones, Dier, Winks, Batshuiyi, Loftus-Cheek, Barkely, Shaqiri etc. A lot of those players there have either not really got into teams hardly better than us (like Winks struggling to get into a meh Spurs team carried by Kane) or have not done much on loan (Batshuiyi or Loftus Cheek).

What a load of tosh. The players are literally telling you on a daily basis why they are doing it and what it means to them. You now have the absolute farcical arrogance to tell them they are doing it for something else and even say with ZERO evidence that they are being forced to do it. The ignorance clearly sits with you.

Because there is no legitimacy for booing players taking a knee because they want to continue highlighting a racism problem that is clearly still there in football and society at large and literally impacting their colleagues daily. Literally none. It's like booing someone who says the Nazis were bad. There is no good or legitimate reason to do that and there is no good or legitimate reason to boo the players taking a knee, so yes they will fit into those three categories.

Yes broadly. I presume you are suggesting there are actually legitimate reasons for booing player's taking the knee, but there are not.

Take your pick from ignorant, racist, stupid.

This. The mental gymnastics people are going through to excuse their pathetic behaviour would be funny if it wasn't so sad. Anyway people should cheer or applaud, just drown out the idiots, they are entitled to their sad opinions but they are in the minority, its what happened on Sunday anyway the idiots booing got drowned out.

There is nothing particularly ground breaking there, it's not in any way suggesting we are going to appoint him anytime soon, it basically saying he doesn't want to move and wants to stay on the south coast so we are logically the next closest PL club to Bournemouth.

Possibly, I don't tend to analyse everyone's posts or really who said what, just what they say and treat it on merit, but certainly in this instance he asked IMO a very straightforward and sensible question. I mean someone literally said 'The fact he hasn't got any money...' and was asked 'How do you know that to be a fact?' Certainly doesn't to me seem to aggressive or unreasonable that he deserved to be called a 'bellend', and then said person who called him that, being triumphant about it just because a load of other bellends supported the comment. I mean if people don't want their opinions challenged then I'd firstly wonder why the fuck they are posting on a discussion forum, but at the very least probably don't start a sentence with the words 'the fact...' if they can't actually back that up in any way. The whole Gao thing on this forum creates a lot of over the top opinions IMO, I mean the guy seems to be the devil incarnate just because he hasn't splurged money at the club and we are being run sustainably, us and 100s of other clubs across the world. I mean what exactly aside that apparent giant crime has he actually done wrong? He's put decent people in charge of running the club and is letting them get on with it and he wants to sell and understandably wants his money back. Are there better owners? Of course, but I'd argue just as many who are far worse, I by the looks of things one of them could of been the guy potentially taking over, so I never get the reactions, I am pretty much neutral to him as an owner. We are a PL football club that is run sustainably, hardly the end of world.

Judging by the reactions neither is his. People go off at MLG because he challenges their brain fart opinions that they pass off as reality and they are too dumb to actually back up, so yeah that brain trust bundling onto support your comment is nothing really to proud off, it would be like getting applause from a load of monkeys. Nothing unreasonable IMO, when someone declares something is a fact, asking for something to back that supposed fact up, I think the current climate that is more important than ever.

I'm pretty sure Josh King hasn't scored in the league for like well over a year, he didn't score in the first half of the championship for Bournemouth so it was baffling he got a move to Everton, where he also didn't score (though barely played), plus he's 29. Adams is 5 years younger and just had a season with 9 goals and 5 assists in the PL, not sure how that is even a competition. Plus I think there is more to come from Adams next year I reckon, could see him getting 12 or so with again 5 or 6 assists.