Rimbeux

Overall some silly goals and inability to breach good defences, at least half a dozen games where we really should have had all the points has held us up. Even with that it’s what 3 losses all comps? But then you look at how many last minute or injury time winners City have got, which isn’t accidental, but shows the fine margins of not coughing up late goals and instead forcing them. I don’t think we’re miles off them, they’re a more consistent threat game to game and minute to minute and lots of teams are s*** scared of them, but a year ago mostly the same players combined to have the same issues we often do

Arsenal must be something like it, rest of the time maybe building towards the switch?

Most weeks the opposite is true, but we have more ability to hurt them than most do against us

A win

It’s the reactive approach that’s most annoying. There’s an impulsiveness that can be applied as much to throwing our hands up regards Coutinho as to the idea of lashing out too much to cover his loss. Ending up on the worst end of ins and outs isn’t an acceptable outcome, it would be a clear failure of strategy & planning if that’s the end point. Either we should have had enough money from Barca to make fees we needed to pay irrelevant or we should have taken our chances on retaining the player

It’s a revealing stand off. Arsenal have no ambition to catch MU this season & believe the extra £10m-£15m is of more benefit MC have thus far decided not to get into it regards matching or outbidding fees and wages to knock others out of the running for Sanchez, but also VVD to a degree. Maybe they’re trying to lean on playing for Pep being their main attraction now? MU are really in a tizz at being this far off MC and not looking to have much potential to be better. Looks like they’re going to make wages the defining factor in signing for them, not the club and not Mourinho Sanchez doesn’t appear bound by much more than the biggest financial package, which is fair enough when any club who could hope to match his demands would be challenging for trophies anyway.

Toure, Morata, Bravo, Di Maria come to mind. Point wasn't about regulars, just on how players are just as likely to go the other way at those three clubs and fewer go to Real and Barca from them. That's not just luck or coincidence

True There’s a clear pattern of Real & Barca taking more players from Liverpool, Spurs & Arsenal than Chelsea, Man City and Man Utd over the past decade or so, with the latter seemingly just as likely to take players from Real & Barca

They’re still in the CL, topped their group ahead of RM. Spurs have a huge issue in paying far less than other PL clubs challenging for the league/CL, and Levy has been known to offload star players. However, the move is supposed to be the beginning of the end of both, so we’ll see what goes on.

No you’re not, you’re just leaning toward if Holgate heard something it was likely to have been said, & there must be something there to find. Plenty of others have contemplated the possibility Firmino has said something, the difference is you’re going where the evidence doesn’t (yet) & speculating on missing frames & other players present including Firmino backing up what Holgate believes he’s heard. You might turn out to be right, but on the available evidence we have nothing on video and a referee who was stood in between saying he heard no such thing.

That would mess with the timeline of Liverpool apology to Soton before Neymar to PSG starts, and Keïta bids also being rejected before this and Coutinho asking to leave in Hong Kong. Likely there’s a link in throwing more money at both, but it doesn’t hang together as an overall plan to move one for the other two, even now

A lot being read into what he reacted to and when. It’s entirely possible & normal for someone to take a second to process what they think they’ve heard & react, just as likely if not more so than a missing Zapruder frame showing what the ref says he didn’t hear

Your worry is based on a presumption Firmino said the alleged word. If he has, then he’s in trouble rightly, but still likely hinging on an admission, if not then there’s no evidence here to convict him. Plenty of players who play a lot of games get time off from managers.

Indeed, accepting a 140m offer should be about being able to do both

As he played a fair chunk of time in midfield, we’re short a midfielder, and one who can score 1 in 4 from there.

Maybe. But given the way these things are poured over as something to do in the football media, I’d be shocked if someone hadn’t splashed with ‘New angle proves racism claim’. It’s not as if it’s contempt of court or anything like, the FA often follow where TV inquisitions lead

Yeh, the idea being we get a player in our shirt as soon as possible, doing what it takes. Even on a hard nosed commercial basis, the £ for a top 4 at a minimum makes the premium more than worth it, especially as the windfall we’ve got needs to be put back on the pitch

And the papers also reported that the referee who was standing between them heard no such word. Given there is no video evidence that’s come to light to corroborate the allegation, then it comes down to whether Firmino volunteers that he said the word alleged, even on the balance of probabilities.

Or he had connection issues in Cyprus..

It's in the training though, thinking time, replaying the incident in their head etc and taking a breath before a final decision. But plausible also he might be looking for lifelines

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Timescale seems to be FA got report yesterday, they will then potentially speak to both players to get their statements on what happened to go with the refs report and go from there. Hopefully it doesn’t drag on into next week and there’s nothing to see here, but it’s got to be done properly

Here and there, nothing major, just not spending as much time in front of a computer, farting about on a phone instead, so more Twitter

Very true, but quite a few have had the bum bitten doing it as tax authorities have been calling bs on inflated image rights, soft loan schemes and the like