Why are we so different from those clubs? We’re a a global brand, owned by the largest sports conglomerate in the world, which is itself owned by one of the ~100 richest people in the world, making top-of-the-table money in by far the richest league in the world. We’ve spent as much as anybody in the last few years and we haven’t even made any Champions League money. We absolutely can afford wages like that.

Yeah, and Wenger pretending Sanogo was good is peak banter stuff. But Chamakh and Gervinho get huge bonus points for having extremely fucked up hair and I can’t imagine a banter XI without Lord Bendtner, the Banter King

For me it can’t be Willian because there are too many other factors at play for why it didn’t work out, and it not working out is one of the things that led to Bukayo Saka becoming one of the best attackers in the world.

Honestly it’s such a shame that there are only three spots for Chamakh, Gervinho, Bendtner, and Sanogo. I feel like a banter XI isn’t complete without all four. I think Sanogo misses out for me just because he barely played and cost nothing, but Wenger pretending he might be good is peak banter era. Decisions decisions…

People say Raya makes them nervous on corners when Ramsdale has let in what, three or four goals directly from the corner kick? Doesn’t make sense to me.

I still have a hard time believing we have no money to spend in January. It would be an odd decision to leave ourselves no room to add to the squad in the event of injuries or underperformance.

Stats people love to misuse stats that they don’t understand, and anti-stats people really overestimate their ability to scout footballers from their couch

I think he’s still getting used to the system and playing a little conservatively to not lose possession/control.

Seems to be a pretty common issue for players getting acclimated to our style—it makes sense, a big part of it is down to knowing where your teammates are supposed to be and trusting them to be there. It can take time to develop those relationships.

Lmao at the people complaining about the club saying “we need to make our academy more accessible for the community we represent,” which is a perfectly valid criticism.

Like, did you read the article? They didn’t say “sorry everyone is white, we’ll do better next year.” They acknowledged a shortcoming at youth level.

Please enlighten me on how he is a different profile then, since it doesn’t sound like he provides much different from what we already have other than being a bit bigger

Is he a different profile? He’s a center forward whose game is based around holdup play, physicality, and defensive intensity, and his record from open play suggests he is not a particularly good finisher when the ball falls to him in the box.

Sounds like he’s a pretty similar profile, which explains why we would be interested but not at £70 million.

Sure it’s not perfect, but I don’t think having to play a few games with Eddie Nketiah over the season explains a consistent 20 percentage point difference between the two, either

I mean the whole point of plotting pass completion against expected is to account for those differences. Play style might explain a difference in the number of difficult/low-expected completion passes attempted but it can’t really explain away differences in completion rates of similarly difficult passes.

What does this have to do with style of play?

I don’t understand the discourse around players “justifying the price tag” or whatever. The transfer fee should only ever matter if it’s preventing the club from adding improvements long-term. If it isn’t, then the only thing that matters is if the player is effective or not.