Damian_de

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And then they won the league

Reckon you are right, Foxtrot. He knows there is nowhere 'up' to go. He is a very different manager to the one he was at Dortmund and probably unrecognisable compared to the one at Mainz. Just a question of whether his head is burned out or not.

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Yes.

I think it is remarkable what they have done on the data-side, and broadly what they wanted to do since the start. When they first took over they were quickly tagged with the moneyballer label, and in the media at least they were roundly told 'you can't do that here', 'stats don't work in a flowing game' blablabla. Meanwhile, out of the media glare they were consulting with a great number of respected figures in the game on all aspects of the sport. David Dein we know put them onto Jurgen Klopp as 'the coming force' in football management, and from elsewhere they were recommended Comolli as their stats guy. Despite the fact that he didn't work out as they intended (although, one of his main signings just captained us to the European Cup...) they didn't conclude that 'stats won't work' but kept trying to find the right model which eventually leads to Edwards, the data guys recruited from disparate backgrounds, and becoming one of, if not the world leader at the present time. You would find very few now that don't believe that data driven decisions is one of the most important emerging methods in football. Obviously the coaching environment matters here, too. You just have to look at Firmino - under Rodgers a generic attacker used out wide or not at all, under Klopp he almost immediately becomes centre forward and never moves.

The most recent edition of the Blizzard has an article on Keita which can be read for free here: https://www.theblizzard.co.uk/article/quiet-man-keita The article makes the point that each time he has moved there is a theme that he takes a while to adapt, both to the step up in football quality and expectation, and to the new culture and language. The good news is that in every previous move he has been able to reach and exceed the expected level, so there is reason to believe that he is going through his normal process with us and might be ready to explode this year.

You are right. I saw a list which had him as 8th highest paid player in the world but quite a few don't have him top 20. Was surprised to see Graziano Pelle is one of the world's highest paid players though!

Reckon Coutinho's wages are the biggest blocker to a transfer. He is on something like double anyone in our squad right now.

While you are all reminiscing about the KT days, maybe one of you would be kind enough to remind me of the user who has one of the great insider transfer runs. His pitch was that he was dating Rick Parry's daughter and each time they had dinner he would pump him for info. Turns out he was just doing his school project on gullible b*****ds on the internet.

The next Hagi incarnation scored in Romania's 4-1 win vs Croatia u21 earlier. What a player his dad was.

If PSG really have offered De Ligt £340k+ per week it does tend to suggest they don't think they can compete as an interesting project.

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All this Coutinho talk ignores the fact that he is currently the 8th highest paid player in the world (according to France Football at least)