HarvSFC

The Kane drama was happening last summer too when JWP signed his new contract, so his agent would have been stupid not to negotiate a release clause were certain clubs to come in for him. Kane will be 29 at the start of the new season, City have turned their attention to Haaland and it now looks like Kane could potentially see multiple seasons without Champions League football, let alone the 0 team trophies won for his career.

Had Newcastle, Everton, West Ham, Aston Villa, Leeds and the big six had the lack of investment that we've had since 2016 when Koeman left, you wouldn't hear the end of it. I think if the plan for the club and the new ownership is to keep breaking even in the transfer market then we as fans need to start making our voices heard again, as selling Ings for £30m and replacing him with Armstrong for £15m and selling Vestergaard for £15m and replacing him with Lyanco for £7m (plus some other cheap squad fillers) isn't too far from the Lowe Premier League days, only prices have increased. As you say, we, a Premier League club with good facilities thanks to Markus Liebherr and little direct competition geographically were bought for £100m, while Sheffield United in the Championship are currently reportedly being taken over for £115m. So, you'd imagine the new ownership have saved some cash and would be able to put it into the necessary changes that are needed. But, then again, we are probably the only Premier League club who had to take a loan out in recent years and need to pay that back, so... Now, I don't know how much it costs to buy Goztepe, and I've tried Googling to no success, but I'd imagine it's the price of a good standard of player. As a fan, I'd obviously prefer that money be put into our budgets, rather than focussing on buying another club. The City group model works because Manchester City's owners have infinite funds, but Watford under the Pozzos have not been aided by their ownership of Udinese and formerly Granada, so I'm unsure of its benefits for us. The new ownership do of course have this summer to show us what their intentions are, but reports of a new deal for Long, as much as I appreciate him as a player aren't what I want to hear. Palace let a number of their long-term servants go last summer and they're now at the beginning stages of a new journey/era. While new contracts for Walcott and McCarthy last year do also show that Semmens/Crocker aren't always as ruthless as they need to be and sometimes sentimentality kicks in. One thing that I have noticed is that the club do not arrange any fan forums when we're going through this current spell of form.

I still wonder why Everton signed Patterson, Alli, Van De Beek and El Ghazi in January. Can see there being a red in this match.

We were still a stepping stone club when we were in the Championship, but we were losing players to mid-tier clubs. I remember Kenywne Jones going on strike so that he could go to Sunderland, Surman going to Wolves, Baird going to Fulham, Davies to Stoke, Dyer to Swansea, Puncheon had loans to Millwall, Blackpool and QPR, who were all the league above us at the time of him joining them. At least now, we're in a place in the hierarchy where we generally lose our top players to the top six clubs in the country and generally get good money for them. We go down, we lose players like JWP and KWP far easier to the likes of West Ham, Palace, Brighton, Leicester, Wolves, Newcastle and for a lot less and then we also have no chance of potentially signing an upcoming star like Mane, Van Dijk, Wanyama and Lovren as they don't join Championship clubs.

The difference between a good squad and a bad one. Long, Redmond and Tella were performing the press well in the first half, causing the Palace defence to make loads of errors. They just don’t have the quality to extend the lead beyond the 1-0 that it was, but they did run themselves into the ground. Broja comes on, his off the ball play is shocking. On the ball, he’s obviously of a very good quality, but for his physique he never wins a header, so doesn’t give us a focus point or a target up top like Long does and he’s too slow to move on the press, allowing Palace to stroll it out of defence. Armstrong has declined massively this season. He used to be in our top three players, now he just looks well off the pace and Elyounoussi is and always will be Elyounoussi. They bring on their best player of the last how many years, who scores the winner, last years Championship young player of the year and Hughes, who is a tidy player. And we voted for 5 subs when we aim to make a profit every summer. Palace will fill up those places with some more £15m players.

Norwich fans are delighted at winning the league every other season.

League One is looking exciting before its final day tomorrow. Title still up for grabs between Wigan, Rotherham and MK Dons. Sheffield Wednesday, Sunderland, Plymouth and Wycombe all separated by two points from 4th to 7th. Then at the other end, only Crewe have been confirmed as relegated with Doncaster, Wimbledon, Gillingham, Fleetwood and Morecambe all fighting to stay up. And Portsmouth competing for 8th.

On the topic of Baird, he's a scout at the club now, if you didn't know. As for POTS. A toss up between the WPs. JWP being the top scorer from a deep central midfield position is obviously impressive and his world class free-kicks saving us on occasion. Only criticism would be that our midfield has been overrun at times, but I think that's sometimes down to the tactics, leaving the central midfield vulnerable and outnumbered. Whereas, I can't remember KWP having a bad game this season. His form has remained at a good level throughout the good run and our current bad run. Either one are deserved and clear winners for this season.

I don’t think Bertrand or Vestergaard will be too positive about their moves to Leicester, either. Earning more money, but they’ve both had nightmares. Probably more down to their now in Bertrand’s case limited skill set, but they won’t see it that way.

Only has two more England caps and Johnstone isn't a regular on the West Brom bench at the moment at 13th in the Championship West Brom. McCarthy also has 102 more Premier League appearances in his career, despite only being separated by three years. McCarthy has also never been relegated from the Premier League and was named our player of the season when we almost went down, so he's topped Johnstone in that regard also. The debates we have about McCarthy and Forster are the same debates West Brom fans are having about Johnstone, only, again they're playing at a level below us. http://westbrom.com/forum/index.php?topic=21946.4175 Aston Villa fans were the same when they re-signed him too: https://www.villatalk.com/topic/15997-sam-johnstone/page/71/ We need a new goalkeeper, all is agreed. But, I and many others can see that Johnstone is not the answer. He might save us some points, like Forster did against Arsenal, but he'll cost us a shit load too, like McCarthy and Forster do. It would be very lazy from the recruitment team if they picked up Johnstone. We don't need to keep going down the English route, our best goalkeepers of recent years have been foreign and so are the best goalkeepers in the Premier League.

I think Nat Phillips’ name has come up on here over the last year, Bournemouth fans really don’t like him.

City go from comfortable to on the edge and bringing Fernandinho on before half time. Good old football.

There have been 12 bookings for simulation in total in the Premier League this season. Everton are responsible for six of those bookings...

Johnson's contract runs out next summer, it was one of the decisions Forest were reportedly making in January in that whether to sell him and get a good price, but risk their play-off push, or keep him for the play-off push, but lose him for a smaller fee in the future.

Everton’s January transfer business… Mykolenko for £17m. He starts, that’s about as positive as it gets for Everton based on the names coming up, but Digne he is not. Patterson £12m, signed for the future, but they need the now, made one appearance. El-Ghazi, not good enough for Villa, not good enough for Everton, lucky to make the bench, made two appearances. Dele Alli, a shadow of the player he once was and we dodged a bullet if we were truly in for him. Sometimes form isn’t always temporary and he’s become a bench player for a relegation battling side. Van De Beek, hasn’t done anything since the move other than pick up an injury, another who possibly isn’t suited to this league. They sure are poor at transfer windows.

I was beginning to think we’d never see Sarmiento.

Essentially, we need a summer of 2014-15, which saw us bring in Tadic, Pelle, Forster, Long, Gardos, Mane, Bertrand, Alderweireld and...Taider. Only thing is, is that we brought in approximately £100m from player outgoings. Can't see the same happening this summer.

Noticed his name in an article regarding a coaching qualification: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/61162356 Can only be a positive.

We were. Whenever I've seen Arsenal he's been the weak link. I remember him getting subbed off tactically after 35 minutes against Nottingham Forest in the cup because he wasn't up to it against a Championship side. Same as Firpo at Leeds, Perraud was the best of the bunch that we were linked with last summer.

I don't care who we sell in the summer, this team's too inconsistent and more consistently crap, than good. Even favourites like Stuart Armstrong and Romeu, who've had good moments and good seasons are showing now that they can't consistently perform in the Premier League anymore and have been poor for well over a month and have been crap for near seven consecutive matches now. We need the Palace reboot under the new owners and hopefully they've got the financial flexibility to give us that, so that it's not a sell one and replace with three from the bargain basement such as last summer was. Only players who haven't dropped off over this period are KWP and Forster. Onto Brighton, yay.

Going to be a painful evening for Ollie Lancashire going by the club's line-up Tweet.

To be fair, Howe took charge of Newcastle on November 8th. He got one win in his first nine matches in charge with his second and third wins coming on 22nd January and 8th February. Their signings obviously did make an impact and to be fair they did sign well in hindsight, as I doubted a few of them at the time in my want for Newcastle to fail. Even Targett's playing well there, although, again like when he had Grealish in front of him, he now has Saint-Maximin, so his job is slightly simpler in that he doesn't need to get up and down the pitch. They're deploying the "dark arts" well now and to be fair they now have a "never say die" attitude, which showed in their match against Leicester at the weekend. I didn't see last night's. We were in a very similar position when Hasenhuttl first joined. One win in 16 league games, in 19th place, a very unfit squad with Hughes' poor training regime. We beat Arsenal in Hasenhuttl's second game, which is becoming a bit of a habit and Huddersfield in his third. No January signings and we finished 16th. Yet, some won't credit that, as they do other sides... 🤷‍♂️

How did Bielsa and Rangnick get their mythical reputations?

Like ours against Chelsea, the Manchester United players are just walking around when not in possession, while Liverpool pass it around them at ease. Always find it bizarre as at their simplest they are still professional athletes, so you'd expect them to be able to break into a jog at the very least. And this is supposed to be a major rivalry.

Happy Portsmouth will have to spend another season in League One day everybody. A 93rd minute Morecambe equaliser to confirm their status.