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We'll still have to see if the lack of DM costs us in the long run, because having to play Casado there until De Jong comes back is really far from ideal. But it's difficult to make such choices with no money, under normal circumstances we'd have been able to get everything we needed, alas. On...

Imagine Osimhen and Nico next summer window 😍

I think he understands that something is badly wrong but doesn't want to cave as he's buying himself time. The conversation he might not be ready for yet is about Bruno and Rashford, their wider role in the culture of the club and their reliance on those two players to attack. How United have...

Still, if we have the chance we should take him, there's no point being bitter that he rejected us temporarily. My only question would be who goes to the bench? We'll see by the end of this season if Raphinha keeps up his good form or not but then it would be him competing for that spot with...

Should be a crime to spend this much money and end up with a EL level squad.

That's what planning ahead is, well, strikers are not exactly in plentiful supply, so if the chance for a long-term 9 comes up we have to investigate it. Depending on where we are in winter buying Osimhen could even mean Lewa falls under the 50% playing time that ends his contract, if we want...

It also isn't clear if he is onside here. Not sure if they even checked it.

Is it worth trying in the winter or summer? We would have to make some big sale probably. Also Lewa still seems good for this season so maybe if he came during winter he would have to be bench for half a season, then phase Lewa out next season.

Raphinha for RAC 1 "The minimum objective? The minimum objective is to win. The Champions League? Of course. It must be this one. Playing for Barça means the main objective is to win all the titles: the League, the Champions League, the Cup, the Super Cup... If you are in a club like this and...

It shouldn't go down that much from one season in Turkey, they also play in Europe and were in CL group stages + EL last time so he'll have some high level experience.

Wtf, that's got to be one of the first times that a top European player in his prime has gone to Turkey. Can't remember anything close in modern times, maybe Zaha but he was older and not at the level of Osimhen. Turkey on the up.

It depends on the strength of Madrid. I think as long as we don't have any more awful injuries to important players this squad (when fully or mostly fit) should be able to aim for around 90 points under a good manager, which is usually enough to win LaLiga. That would be classed as a success...

Xavi won a league title and that is great, however I would expect a Barca manager to win LaLiga at least once in 2 seasons, including Flick, particularly if poor in Europe (discarding the first season as that wasn't a fair chance to). Remember Madrid are notoriously bad in LaLiga compared with...

Felix is whatever, but Cancelo was a decent player and we would have liked to have him now given the situation at fullback. I'm sure we would have tried a loan if we could. Then Gundogan is of course a great player.

I agree, some of the improvement is going to be due to signings always under every manager, no matter what. The question is how much is the players and how much is the manager. Xavi definitely tactically improved the team particularly during that first season also, but that wasn't even my point...

You do... the whole point of what I was saying though is 9th wasn't really a true representation of the team at the time, because so many had been injured, it made the team look worse than it was. The starting point was never that bad and that's why we recovered quickly.

You said yourself... "He did better because injured players came back from being injured and we signed a few players in January. "No shit Sherlock, that's how every team improves" Now saying the improvement is because of Xavi as well? Why are you involving degrees of nuance in your answer...

Yes, when you have a large part of your team injured, it isn't necessarily wise to quote those results at that time as a true representation of your teams level. Saying he 'took over with the team 9th' suggests that we were worse than we actually were, it was in November with many injuries...

That is a truly impressive spin on the post, I applaud you.

I have seen multiple times in games where Araujo gets extremely rough with the opposing forwards or even shoves them with both hands completely and it isn't called in Spain. Here is one example. Not the only one, but easily findable and illustrates my point well. He is used to being overly...