Rusty Shackleford

Makes no sense for him to be here or to have signed him in the first place. We can’t even say we were looking at a cheap deal with the prospect of selling him on for decent profit. This is Italian clubs we are talking about who’ll likely want to loan him season after season. He’s basically been at a sw***y rehab centre where we’ve paid him £5m to be here.

You say that now. But kop205 had a poverty stricken childhood where his Dad spent the family income on clubcall.

DVD Monday

This squad is better for having Diaz in it. In a world where we could sell and bring in an absolutely amazing replacement. it’d be worth considering. But i reckon if he was sold our chances in the league and CL would dip considerably.

There you were, August 2017, enjoying a little sprinkle of Amadou Makadji. Naby Keita was on the way.

Confident leads to determined, determined leads to hopeful. Hopeful leads to suffering.

This was the issue with my last relationship. Whilst I could arguably give her the 8 inches she was looking for, I just had to give it in two instalments.

I think other than the top three clubs it’s Championship standard out there. The jump is like that Paul Mullin at Wrexham or Langstaff at Notts County, banging in a goal a game only to find a league or two up is a different ballgame. And big money at age 27. Yeah it isn’t us.

Gyokeres is a massive risk. The Portuguese league is crap. Look at a list of their top scorers over the last twenty years. Bas Dost smashed it to pieces. Taremi won it twice with different clubs and then got 1 goal in 24 at Inter. Everyone wanted Jackson Martinez after he won it three times on the bounce - flopped at Atletico and dipped to China. Darwin Nunez - need I say more. Even Lazar Markovic looked like Johan Cruyff out there.

I really don’t see a scenario in which he doesn’t end up here but which other club has had so many deals at the top end of the market collapse so publicly. Perhaps i just remember ours more. Fekir was huge at the time. And we were left in limbo without knowing the reasons it fell apart. What do we know now? Was it his brother? Was it his knees? Could it have been his brother’s knees? He didn’t turn out to be amazing so no harm done. The first time we went for Van Dijk it blew up in our face. We put it right. Credit to us for going for Caicedo but it ended up in a very public, rather embarrassing rejection. We then suffered the double indignity of them getting Lavia who we’d pissed around with all summer. We ended up with a full league winning midfield rebuild and Lavia’s legs fell off. Who knows how far we got with Bellingham but the six months of briefing journalists about him favouring us set us up for disappointment. I dislike the preening k****ead though. Could be much worse I guess. We could get our targets and just have them be s*** like Man Utd. This one really needs to get over the line and wash away the salty aftertaste of Simao Sabrosa, Konoplyanka, Willian, Frank Worthington and (sniff) Michael Laudrup.

There will be loads we don’t know but i’m not a huge fan of the shift in tone.

I’m not sure why people doubt it. He was bang at it. His story is about as believable as Pete Townsend using his credit card to access child abuse images as ‘research’.

I’m not particularly bothered but there’s a few with pre-transfer stress disorder. We were nowhere near this stage with any of the other disappointments but a quality player like him being available brings a rather unique peril.

Understandable that people are nervous. We’ve lost out a few times before. Given the lad loves Barcelona what would it take? A daft bid from Saudi for someone like Raphinha? I don’t think you could necessarily expect him to keep his word if something like that came up. I was hoping it would be as straightforward as Leverkusen fearing going to Bayern so much it’d be an absolute breeze. Not quite.

Urgh. Imagine doing that. He certainly talks as much s*** as Guardiola though.

I’ve got to be honest. Right from the off I don’t like how he’s spelling his Jeremie. He’s gone down the Aliadiere route when they should have been thinking along the lines of Beadle. You can’t play fast and loose with your first name when you have a last name this hilarious.

Frimplestiltskin.

Then i am asking, what are strengths in his game beyond what I have said? He is 99th percentile at several, very valuable areas of the game. What an outrageously good cog he was in a well oiled machine. Passing and vision are hardly niche skills but I am intrigued as to what you think about the rest of his game.

This isn’t being salty, but how good is he really? To my mind he has a few exceptional qualities. The ability to see and make a medium to long range pass or cross being the main one. He has outrageous control of a football. But there is a reason he’s not the midfielder he started out as. Plonk him in the middle of the park where players come at you from everywhere and he doesn’t look all too great. The safety blanket that is the touchline always served him well. He isn’t quick, nimble or crafty enough to play in central midfield. He’s a poor defender and that is equal parts just not being a natural defender and the switching off/lack of concentration and effort. He absolutely lucked out in coming into a team and system that maximised the use of his talents. Ten years earlier and he’s a right sided midfielder who can’t really dribble or go past anyone. Is Beckham the best comparison because he wouldn’t have been as good in that position as he was. He doesn’t have the work ethic of him either. I have never been so convinced on my life of a player being booed in Madrid.

The same story rehashed ten times a day. I suppose ‘confident’ hasn’t changed to ‘remain hopeful’ yet.

No chance of bail. He’ll be in for his own protection at the very least.

Ex Royal Marine eh. PTSD mitigation incoming i’d expect.

Because either he has been found to have no drugs in his system, or because the blood work takes so long to come back it’ll be laid as an additional charge later.

As i expected then. Attempted murder was never on the table.

I’d be surprised if it ended up as an attempted murder charge and even more surprised if it ends up as a conviction for it. I don’t think people appreciate how difficult that charge is to prove. Perhaps it’ll get by to appease the public at the point of charge but don’t think it sticks as a conviction at all. Fallback option is GBH with intent, which also has a maximum sentence of ‘life’. Don’t be unsurprised if even ends up as standard GBH when the prosecution struggles to shake off the argument that it was a man stricken by fear trying to get away. I can’t quite tell whether striking the pedestrians came before or after his car was damaged but Police will have a clear enough timeline and CCTV to say whether it weakens their case for the higher charge. There is unlikely to be any evidence of pre-meditation to nudge it over the line given it seems to have been spontaneous. There was a lad on one of those 24 hours in Police Custody shows a few years ago that ran someone over and reversed over them quite deliberately and CPS wouldn’t charge it.