Tbh, I think it’s almost certain to be all three promoted sides going back down. They look much weaker than this year’s group, and I don’t think any of them will have the finances to build a PL squad.
Apart from maybe 3-4 players, they feel like a proper parts bin of a team to me. They don't seem to have modernised their recruitment in the same way Bournemouth and Brentford have. But yeah, looking at who is coming up, it's hard to see any of them being able to strengthen enough to stay up without existing Prem teams completely crashing out. Ipswich might fare better on a second go.
Speaking of Fulham players, Spurs are indeed interested in Harry Wilson. Wouldn’t be the most ambitious signing but I kinda like it. For one, we need to be realistic about who we can target this window. And two, it’s always nice to have a versatile player with PL experience as depth.
It’s “best” because they’re (mostly) favorable to most of the country for TV and then decent times for fans to attend. 5pm games are never fun for anyone on the west coast.
I'd like the World Cup to start so I can ignore Celtic's managerial search not going past 74 year old Martin O'Neill and Robbie Keane.
So many new inconsistencies. Wrong corners can be checked, but not wrong goal-kicks. Second yellows can be checked but not the first one. Red cards can be given for covering your mouth, but the wording of the rule is so vague that it will only create controversies (if it is ever used, I don't think any ref will sent off a player for that).
Ghana looking better thqn My school let us have this day off! My English teacher essentially said 'it will save all of you skiving anyway."
McKenna favourite for the Fulham job, seems likely. Insider information is that Mark Ashton was working late yesterday, so either McKenna's gone or the owners have grown a spine and are sacking the CEO-unt
Been a lot of chat in the Arsenal-sphere about penalties and since the world cup is coming up, it feels like it may come up again. Someone posted a link to a statistical analysis of penalties and shootouts and there were some pretty crazy stats. The biggest was about players taking the fifth penalty. If they can win the shoutout for their team, they score just under 90% of the time. If they need to score to avoid losing, it drops to just under a third. It also which shows what a massive psychological advantage going first is (you are statistically twice as likely to win if you go first).
@LongThroes is the situation with spurs and Vuskovic similar to what happened with Arsenal/Saliba? I remember him being loaned out a couple times and it being controversial with the fans.
Related to penalties, at one point wasn’t there talk of switching taking order every round to try and eliminate that statistical inequality for what’s supposed to be an “equal” tiebreaker?
Jason Ayto came over to be sporting director after 11 years at arsenal. He just left the club yesterday after 9 months. Thats a good start to the summer.
I haven’t followed the Vuskovic thing, but it could be. From memory, Saliba was loaned back to St Ettienne for six months initially, but then Arteta felt he needed another year to learn, so he went to Marseille. I think Saliba didn’t agree because he’s a boyhood Arsenal fan and wanted to play for the club, but went ahead with it anyway. I know the club, Arteta, and Saliba all say it was overblown by the media, but I think there was a bit of tension there until Arteta made it clear that he saw him as a starting centre back the next season. It’s all worked out now, but I reckon if Saliba didn’t have such strong ties to the club it could have ended differently.