joe_fishfish

Always had a soft spot for Rui Vitoria. Great lad.

Rice is a lifelong Chelsea fan and will go there on a free. I think he'd be good for us, but it's never happening.

Yeah I don't really get the idea behind "protecting his value". Let's say he gets a new deal on 50k a week, that's an amortisation cost of £2.6m a year in the balance sheet. A lot less than he's currently costing, but not nothing. Instead of doing that we could go sign Hugo Guillamon on a free from Valencia. Or Douglas Luiz from Villa, or Alexis Mac Allister from Brighton. Likely similar wages to Keita, no transfer fee to amortise. Same £2.6m a year on the balance sheet and a lot more output on the pitch. Btw If you're thinking I've just gone on transfermarkt and randomly selected midfielders available on free transfers, you'd be absolutely correct. That's the point, almost any other top level midfielder in Europe would offer more than Keita these days. Giving him a new contract doesn't protect his value if there is nothing to protect.

What does he think he's getting elsewhere if we don't offer him a new deal? A return to RBL on heavily reduced wages at best, surely? If we offer him like £10k a week with a hefty appearance fee I'd be on board with that. I'd also be on board with just letting him go on a free as well like.

Pennant played pretty well in the final in 07. The real WTF was not using Bellamy off the left at all that season, leaving us with Zenden and a one-legged Harry Kewell as the only options for the left hand side.

They already are.

Laimer deciding on Bayern and Bayern only would be a blow. I like him. Worrying if Caicedo has decided on Chelsea though. I guess they will have offered him more than we reckon he's worth. People will probably play up the Potter factor, but if we were offering more money than them, I don't think it would make a difference.

We could probably bring in two or three CL quality midfielders for the £/year we'd spend on Bellingham. Mind you if those alternatives play in the Portuguese league, Ward will probably offer 2x their value anyway.

After seeing that article I've never been more convinced that Bellingham will never play for us.

He's no Jay Spearing, that's for sure.

Henderson needs to take a leaf out of Milner's book and fuck this England shite right off.

Oh it's not entirely a rational hatred, I'll freely admit that. It's more to do with his constant interviews about how amazing he was, and then giving away a goal or three in the next game he played. I mean he wasn't very good but if he'd just been less of a gobshite I wouldn't have hated him so much.

Kolo did have a few good games for us, he mainly had good moments in poor overall performances though. Was a really good defender for a lot of his career, but was clearly past his best when he signed for us. He was still better than Skrtel or Lovren though. Skrtel was a disaster when he no longer had Rafa's well drilled defence and two holding midfielders around him. And the less said about Lovren the better I reckon. Haven't hated many Liverpool players more than him, not since the 90s anyway.

We absolutely should have signed Van Dijk from Celtic. We had Dejan Lovren, Martin Skrtel and Kolo Toure starting games the season he went to Southampton. He was comfortably better than them even back then.

I was actually hoping Keita would sneak off into the Guinea squad for these internationals so we'd at least have a bit of clarity about whether he's actually injured or just a twat.

We should be leery of bringing ideas from rugby union into football imo. It's a very stop start game with a ton of very difficult to follow rules that are interpreted very differently between referees even at the top level. Watching a southern hemisphere game is almost like watching a different sport compared to a Six Nations game, the styles of play and refereeing are so different. I used to watch a fair bit of rugby and half the time I'd have no idea what the ref had given a decision for. I actually played the game until I was fifteen and I would still have no clue.

This is utterly pathetic, if true.

I'd be surprised if Arthur makes much of an impact, by the time he's up to speed we'll have Jones and probably Henderson back. Don't reckon Klopp will play a guy on loan ahead of a player who needs minutes like Jones does.

Harvey takes too many touches and doesn't hit his passes precisely or aggressively enough. Henderson is a much better passer of the ball than he is. I know Klopp has said it would never happen, but I'd try Trent as that right-sided 8 for a bit, if Gomez or even Tsimikas could play right-back effectively. He has started to go wherever he likes in attack anyway, he was playing centrally between the lines of Ajax's defenders and midfield for most of that second half, leaving us wide open down our right flank. Trent's actually not that bad in a one-on-one defensive duel, it's his positioning and his recovery that let him down, so maybe as a midfielder he could do more of the former and have someone behind him to mop up. This is just bollocks anyway seeing as Klopp's already said he won't do it I guess.

Everyone else is injured. I see what you're seeing though. He's nowhere near the level we need, not as a midfielder anyway, not yet.

Some goal, this. It's like they've been watching videos of us from 2019.

Have you met many Americans?

Although a bottom-four playoff where only the winner gets to stay up sounds boss. If a little pointless.

How would a relegation playoff work with the Championship promotion playoffs? Losing finalist plays the team who finished 17th in the Prem? That sounds shit to be honest.

Trust your eyes. When you know, you know. Nah I'm just messing. Would be crazy to write him off completely. But seriously, I think he's got a load of potential and it could be seen as an amazing signing in a few years, but the fee was huge for what he's giving us right now. If we'd sent Ox, Keita, Milner and Henderson to the glue factory and got Tchouameni and Barella similar players instead, Darwin would be finding things a lot easier.