Certainly deserves a spot IMO. I like unusual goals like that.
May have to wait till Pep goes, or Haaland goes, for anyone to have a look in, although Alvarez also looks very promising. Having him and Foden to bring off the bench is kind of insane.
You probably have more chance than Inter of getting the job done, but City should be strong favourites for both games.
Players are too specialised. You'd think CMs would have more chance given they can have influence and contact all over the park, but there is a ton more to management than what you pick up as a player
It would be super-interesting if Brighton could become like a Dortmund and hang around in the Euro places long term, but in the short term they are probably at risk of losing their talented recruitment staff to bigger clubs (plus already sold a ton of good players, lost Potter and Ashworth).
I'm hoping we smash Leicester, but they also still have a small chance of staying up if they win on the last day (home to West Ham) and the other results go their way. Anything can happen on one day of results. They have the better goal difference of the 3 clubs too (6 better than Everton).
The 5th place will be dependant on being one of the 2 best performing leagues in Europe in the prior season, and the wording I've seen is slightly ambiguous as to whether it's next season or the season after. It's supposed to affect the 2024 CL anyway so if that's correct I would have thought the 23/24 season's league table would determine which teams play in the CL and the number of places be determined by this season's (22/23) Euro performance - although I guess they could use next season's, but that would mean the number of places wouldn't be known in advance. My way is the logical way lol but it also seems very soon after the discussions took place and I don't see any articles or commentators ever discussing the importance of this season's Euro results so that introduces some uncertainty. If it happens I guess you'd expect City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Utd And Newcastle, assuming Chelsea haven't sorted themselves out by the beginning of the season and Spurs remain Spurs.
Me too, like of all the goals Pele attempted to score the most unuque ever, and this one always stood out for me.
City's squad depth is otherworldly, I don't think there's any squad in Europe that can compare to it man for man, it's like trying to destroy the Death Star, we need a trench run!
I agree that we have a better shot than Inter as we are much more familiar with City, but they're looking pretty unstoppable right now.
There are so many nuances to coaching now as well, with the more complex systems and different uses of players, not to mention in-game management coming more to the forefront.
That's the difficulty for Brighton, they have to hold on to the important cogs in their machine long enough to get a strong foothold in the top 7, Dortmund for instance only usually sell one big player pre summer, no mass exodus stuff like at Ajax.
I was really surprised to see Leicester get a point last night, suddenly things look really grim for Everton and Leeds are all but down.
Lol Spursing needs to be officially added to the dictionary.
honestly these European competitions have gotten more and more convoluted, I remember the days when only the actual winners of leagues went into the European Cup, now the team who sold the most pies at halftime across the season gets in!
I agree, he's a good player & I do like him, but he's essentially a ball winning midfielder. It's not a position I would pay £80m+ for unless the player is.. well, more complete than Declan Rice or/and is literally a World Class ball winning midfielder that, alone, can revolutionise your midfield. I don't know if Rice does that to any of the clubs he's connected with.
If Rice was available for say no less than £80m & as far as Manchester United goes let's assume we have that to spend, I'd rather sign Ruben Neves, who was reportedly available for £30m last summer & I'd also sign Ward-Prowse for say probably another £30m. I'd let McTominay leave or part-trade him for Ward-Prowse if Southampton would take him & I'd keep Fred/Eriksen as backups/rotation. It's not ideal, but we'd have more depth, in theory be better in possession, have a couple of good set-piece takers also. Kovacic would also do & you could even sell Fred also hopefully getting about £20m for him, you could upgrade your midfield for relatively very little by today's standard.
We need a goalscorer & ideally a CB to be Varane's rotation given he can't seem to play 2 games a week without picking up a knock.. but the goalscorer for me is top priority.
Striker is definitely the priority I agree, I'm not massively keen on the ones we are being linked with, Kane has obviously been a world class #9 and has the all round game that suits Ten Hag, but he's nearly 30 and has had his fair share of injuries, it just feels like it could be another high expenditure for a short term fix. Osimehn is technically loose with average link play and Vlahovic doesn't look good enough to me.
I like the link to the South Korean CB from Napoli, he's a good age to come in and join the rotation with Lindelof, not the type who'll be in a huff if he's not starting every week.
It's crazy that we are
still talking about midfield isn't mate? I feel we need a truly elite #8 and a squad DM to cover for Casemiro, Rice isn't either of these for me. McTominay definitely needs to go along with Maguire, and I'd like our midfield options to like below at the start of next season.
DM - Casemiro/Alvarez
#8 - New #8/Fred
#10/#8 - Bruno/Eriksen
I'd dip back into Ajax for Alvarez who I think would be happy to be a squad player for Ten Hag and shouldn't cost too much. For the #8 Bellingham is tye dream, I'm sure Ten Hag will want to try for De Jong again and I could see Macallister being an option, it's possible he even sees the versatile Kudus from Ajax as an option and I'd hope we'd have an interest in Barella from Inter.
Poor Frank.
Xhaka, Partey, Odegaard, Saka, Martinelli and Jesus are a solid front 6 for Arsenal. If they can build on that and deepen their squad, it could be interesting next season. Should be able to keep the momentum going with the extra champions league place (I believe from next season) and Spurs and Chelsea possibly not being at the races still.
I hope we can stop them, there's always something hollow about any records City or PSG get.
