Tommok

Yeah no real chat about him leaving is there? Has he been playing much in preseason?

Yeah I agree on the face of it, it would've been quite odd. But another forward, who could be a better option than Gakpo up front (and wide left for that matter), would've made a big difference last season and alleviated the issue we have now with one fit striker and no wide right forward. Signing Barcola will help a bit obviously but not completely.

Salah certainly should've played more regularly in a more central position last season but Slot clearly didn't fancy that. There's then the issue of who plays wide right of course. If we're really looking to win the league and CL, we can't be relying on Gakpo as a back up striker for any length of time.

Who was the back up if Ekitike or Isak got injured? We didn't even have a kid we could use there regularly.

Ekitike is not an option for much of this season and who knows what he's going to be like when he returns - so we've effectively got Isak and that's it for the starting line-up. He's injury prone. I don't think having 3 decent strikers in the squad is asking too much anyway is it? We've currently got one and a kid (Koumas) who is massively unproven. For at least half a season.

Yeah I've been banging this drum for ages. Even when Ekitike was available, we were still short of centre forwards. Isak is brilliant but can't be expected to play 3 times (or even twice) a week regularly. Danns isn't an option at the moment and might not be, we've not seen enough of him to tell. No idea if Koumas is going to be good enough. It's still not guaranteed what sort of player Ekitike will be when he returns either - we can't bank on him coming back as he was. Can't imagine any other team, with ambitions of winning the league and CL, having such a thin and unbalanced squad.

I'd wager (just for Swipe there) that Arsenal/Arteta would still see us as a bigger rival than Utd.

Well yeah quite. That was in reply to Benzo-13's comment that Zubimendi didn't fit our style of play and was a bit crab like.

Yeah it's highly unlikely they'd sell to us. Same with Lewis Skelly. Decent replacement for Jones

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Yep. Or buy the player that Brighton are going to buy to replace him. He was, after all, a decent, cheaper replacement for Caicedo - Brighton are good at this.

Well yeah there is that

As has been mentioned previously - given we really wanted Zubimendi - to the point where we didn't really pursue anyone else (Caicedo and Leiva are slightly different), it would be odd if we didn't try to buy him now if he's really available?

Pinched from a short article on the BBC Sport site, some stats on Araujo. Apologies if already posted on here somewhere. "According to Opta, since his debut season in 2019-20 at Barcelona, Araujo has the highest duel success rate of any defender to make at least 100 appearances in La Liga at 65.6%. In the same period, the top ranked defender in the Premier League is Virgil van Dijk (72.6 per cent)." " And since his debut, the two defenders with the lowest dribbled past average (per 90) in Europe's big five leagues are Araujo (0.13 - 14 times in 143 appearances) and Van Dijk (0.16 - 34 times in 212 appearances). "

All perfectly valid reasons for him to want to go back to the San Sebastián region - I'd like to live there for a while. He's been linked to a move to Chelsea (as well as Real) so...

Baleba linked with a move to Newcastle - he's looked quite decent for Brighton at times hasn't he? Can't believe we're not in the mix for Lewis Skelly. Zubimendi? Mind you would Arsenal sell to us?

Zion Suzuki is an absolutely tremendous name

Yeah I like Wharton. Going to need to pay a load more on top of whatever we get for Jones tho

Why do you think that is done?

I suppose on the plus side - Bezos being involved makes it less likely that Elon Musk will be. Altho of course all billionaires are just varying degrees of despicable. Musk edges it tho.

From that it looks like he primarily plays on the left where presumably Barcola is going to be the main player with Rio and maybe Gakpo (unless we get rid). *Insert pic of Jorg Schmadtke looking perplexed*

From BBC Gossip page.. Atletico Madrid have launched a bid of 35m euro (£30m) for Lille's 21-year-old Belgium forward Matias Fernandez-Pardo, who is also attracting interest from Arsenal and Liverpool. (L'Equipe - in French, external) Not heard of Matias Fernandez-Pardo before

He's joining the circus?

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I'm certainly not going to deny he made a big contribution to the modernist literary movement and I thought Ulysses was an interesting work but I'm not a huge fan of his other stuff.