SpartyBlue

He’s had a very good career as a heat seeking missile. If we play 5 at the back I’d be happy to let someone fly around making tackles. I just think it unlikely he’s gonna be able to do that over a long season at his age. Though now that I think of it the prospect of him and Allan switching off and getting to rest a good bit has some appeal. As always, would depend on price

Yeah good player but his legs are gonna start to go at a position where you need tons of energy. We already have one of those.

The optimism inspires me.

Haha. They’ve actually been decent lately. Myko, Gray, Townsend was fine. Tark looks good. Perhaps having no money has forced them to really buckle down

One thing has nothing to do with another. It’s not as if the entirety of our scouting department and management is focused on this one signing and we can’t do anything else until it’s done. The priorities don’t come in sequentially from most vital to least.

Patterson has very little game experience at the higher levels. Always likely to be worked in slowly. I expect this will be the year we transition from Coleman and hopefully next year he will hit the ground as our established first choice RB like Myko has done on the other side.

We will probably never really know if the injury is what made his form dip. Good player when he had time and space. Perhaps the injury slowed him down enough that he wasn’t able to deal with the reality of the English game over the longterm.

He was quite young then. Experience in the league and in Europe at a position we need cover for at a very low price seems like good business to me. He just needs to be decent when called upon.

Surely you’re not factoring in Pickford’s Gordon Gecko look.

Signing a backup left back has little bearing on our other deals. It’s not like other negotiations stop until this is done. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.

You’re basing your opinion here on what you admit is a complete lack of evidence. You seem to be projecting how you might feel if you were him on to the situation. Absent any suggestion he could look to leave from anyone connected to the club, this doesn’t seem worth talking about.

It wouldn’t be possible in English football alone. Players would just go to Spain, Italy, France, wherever were they could be paid more. Hell, they might eventually go to the MLS. The cap works in American sports because it’s effectively the only game in town. Even with certain restrictions they are still paid far more than they would be elsewhere. It’s a tough one. I get that the rules in England and elsewhere make it a longer road for team to rise up the ranks but I don’t believe most want to see a billionaire buy a random side and make it Man City in a couple years either.

It is effectively a cap on spending. Not the same, I’ll grant you, but the intention is similar. I take your point. It makes it harder for, say, a Newcastle to just become Man City overnight which I suppose helps those at the top but it also makes it harder for those at the type to widen the financial gap. i doubt a true salary cap will happen in football. You’d need all the major leagues to agree and that seems very unlikely.

We belong to a league. Our business is overseen by that league and they are perfectly able to introduce and enforce regulations to that end. Most sports leagues have salary caps. It keeps the competitive balance to some degree and in the end is better for all the members. Not having any restrictions on spending is damaging in sport and in some cases would ruin the competition entirely. Football is already at the extreme end when it comes to the top and the bottom. Widening that gap further is going to effect interest in the game for those who aren’t diehard supporters of a team. I don’t particularly want to see Man City beating up on someone 8-0 every couple weeks.

You never mentioned adding players but this team can’t improve without adding players? Of course it can. Players can improve. Fitness can improve. We can have better luck with injuries. Frank can better implement his style with a full summer and full season. It’s nice to add new pieces but it’s not the only way a team improves. These players just being around each other and gaining that experience with each other can improve performances. It’s a fallacy that you have to constantly bring in players in order to get better. If that were true the level of football would increase for all clubs every year as they constantly bring in transfers. Sometimes it does make you better. Sometimes it makes you worse. We’ve spent more in recent years than a club like Liverpool. They found the right players and those have grown together. They don’t need to bring in much at this point. In contrast we’ve brought in a ton of pretty expensive signings, many of which made our club worse and contributed to our current financial situation. We have plenty of room for improvement but a transfer for the sake of a transfer does nothing for us.

Keane would have buried that. Nose for goal, that one

You make an assumption here that the only way to improve is by adding players. Is it not possible a healthy DCL improves us? A full season of a better Iwobi? A more experienced Gordon and Gray? Patterson? A settled Mykolenko? Dele getting a real opportunity? How about Frank getting time to evaluate his squad and play in a way more suited to his style? Lots of ways to improve and even transfers don’t guarantee your squad will be better as we’ve often seen.

This is a much larger discussion but if you allowed clubs to spend whatever they wanted you’d get an even wider gap between the top clubs and those at the bottom. Teams that are at the top would simply buy titles even more than is the case now. Do you really want a club to get bought and then the next year they are Man City due to the wealth of their owner?

We are allegedly interested in like 100 players every window. It is possible, just possible, that some of these rumors are just paper talk and not based on anything tangible.

I don’t think Keane or Davies are in our best team. Also we are going to bring in at least 1 or 2 first team players. In any event The main thing is fitness and for Frank to evaluate. You’d always love to see us win but in the end the result matters little.

It’s the preseason. It doesn’t matter. It’s practice. Players aren’t going to be put off by preseason results since, again, they don’t matter. Imagine thinking that we just finished 16th but what really will put a potential loan signing off is an exhibition result. We’ve had good seasons with bad preseason results and bad seasons with good preseason results. It’s just about fitness and giving Frank a look at some of these guys. We lost to an Arsenal team that is much better and deeper and a good MLS team at their place that has played a couple dozen more games than us. We have had our best starting 11 in there for 0 minutes. Take a breath.

Worth mentioning that’s he’s just turned 21 so his statistical return isn’t as vital as it would be for an older player. You’d expect him to improve

Gana couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. Allan is no threat to score. That really isn’t their job there so I don’t think it’s a particularly relevant stat.

There is a sweet spot there. If a player is too big, especially in the midfield, they tend not to be as quick or have the same energy as a smaller player.

I like it personally. I’m curious if you’d feel the same if it was white or yellow.