Zoob

This is nuts. I don't know whether it's just the market, but given it's Chelsea, it feels more likely there's something dodgy going on there. A player who scored 1 goal all season, and they make a twenty million quid profit? hmmmmm.

"Establish a direction of travel" Are they talking about where they want to meet in order to chat? Or are we at such an early stage, that we first need to establish that if we buy a player from them, they have to come over in our direction so they can play for us?

I hope we sign him, but ooft, we desperately and more urgently need reinforcements in midfield, right back and right wing. Would love to be proven wrong, but I can't see us getting all of that plus (110m pound) Barcola.

Did he actually call him a winger? Cos everyone knows he is not a winger, even if he sometimes plays off the left. It would be like calling Coutinho a winger cos he sometimes played in that similar position in the front 3. Still have high hopes for Wirtz, because he's clearly got enough talent to make it and it's still hard to judge when the players up front are so limited. But he needs to do so much more, and not just have flashes every few games.

Chelsea bought Delap for 30m last year, he had an absolutely shocking season, and now they want 50m for him? I know that was related to his clause or whatever, and the market has gone stupid, but anything over 40m is stupid enough.

Exactly. I feel even in pre season, we've already seen signs of a different way of playing, but just as I think we can attribute much of our first 6 months under Slot to the tactics muscle memory that Klopp put in place, our players have spent 18 months standing still and passing the ball pointlessly. It absolutely will take time not only to unlearn this, but for our new manager to get his tactics and way of playing across.

Think it's just going to take time to unlearn the pointless slotball we saw for the last 18 months. And for al the TAA talk - not that I think he's coming back - we've gone from a rightback who was fantastic attacking and poor defending to one that is dreadful at both attacking and defending. Kerkez isn't fantastic, but he's still several levels above Frimpong.

Yeah, that's a decent point from a poor performance against a Newcastle team that will struggle this season. Gonna take time but their goals were exactly like the ones we conceded time and time again, where teams could just cut through us from one end to the other and score with ease. Munoz looks decently quick and direct, and far more comfy playing on the right than Rio. No idea how good he is but Araújo looks as big as VVD.

We have - but for first game of the season where we've know we need reinforcements for a long time, this is pretty sad.

Such a sense of deja vu here. All that time between the WC ending and start of the season, and here we are, days away, and we still have such glaring holes in the squad. So frustrating and yet depressingly unsurprising too.

Are you sure you weren't on a boat?

Some really cracking goals in that game, but was a bit like one of those pointless All-Star games they have in the US, where nobody is taking it too seriously. At least none of the denders seemed to be.

That HT tactical switch looking really good too.

4-0 at HT is a really dangerous score to try to protect. Do away goals count?

Saka, 100% Rashford is crap (even though he obviously would have run more than Kane in that last 30 mins).