Premier League - 2023/24

"The new Brentford"

 

Wolves had the opportunity to change managers at the end of the season. This is why if there are any doubts, you have to part ways. Now they're going into the season without Neves, Moutinho, Jimenez or a manager.

 

One less relegation spot for Luton to worry about. Sheff Utd also going down. Only have to finish above one of CP, Bmuff or NF to survive.

 

fewer

 

Filth have signed Ross Barclays Bank.

Forgot he even existed.

Not quite a Delay Alli descent but not far from it.

 

They should be just about relegated when he regains his fitness

 

Signings we can only dream of these days. We are so tin pot now.

 

Rather have Robert Barclay Academy than Ross Barclay!

Hopefully!

 

Enough to break the (Barclays) bank?!

 

So farewell then Barry Swain

You will depart from White Hart Lane

To Bavaria

Or somewhere over there

In Germany

For an outrageous fee

Whither 'ashen faced' Ron Knee?


EJ Thribb aged 17 and 1/3

 

Bayern offer for Kane accepted in case you've no idea what @I Blame Bassett is talking about!

 

Always Κασσάνδρα!

 

Sid and Doris will be incandescent with rage! (As well as bonkers.)

 

This,as Herr Flick would say,is true!

 

Speaking to a Chelsea st today about this who seemed to think that Barclay was finished. Cant remember when he last played. As a signing it stands out not least because it seems that Luton have done most of their business by getting players from Rotherham and Barnsley or such like. Will be interesting to see how he does for them.

I havent kept up on this seasons premiership transfers so i took a look at Skys in/out list. Some of the money being spent by the likes of middling teams like Muff and Brentford is eye watering - and people were worried about the Saudi league! This could well be the season that Everton finally drop, a number of out goings and only Young coming in on a free.

 

Not a chance IMO, their signings have pretty much all been terrible.

 

Numerous injuries I believe.
Looking ( through my fingers) at his joining pictures he doesn't look overly happy.

Then again,who would?!

 

I never do....

 

FTFY

 

Nor do I!

 

Ross Barkley last played on May 27 for Nice in their 3-2 win at Montpellier on the last day of the Ligue 1 season. He played 85 minutes and scored too.

These big club season ticket holders who have very strong opinions about everything but know very little (especially everything that's happening outside their own very narrow field of vision) are among the very worst things about working in an office with other human beings who follow football! You just have to stand there and listen to them while your inner monologue goes: "Wrong... wrong again... didn't happen... not true" etc.

 

Sounds like a conversation with my mother-in-law.

 

Yet they released him.
Time will tell I suppose.

 

Chelsea fan, is she?

 

The head of performance at OGC Nice is Dave Brailsford, the former British Cycling and Team Sky / Ineos boss. Lots of changes there over the past three windows.

Anyway, I wasn’t necessarily saying Barkley was an ace signing for Luton. He may turn out to be a decent gamble. It was more a comment on the fans of big clubs whose horizons stop around mid-table in the Premier League. The comment was that Barkley hasn’t played for ages when he made almost 30 appearances last season and played right up to the end of last season.

 

Worse: Liverpool.

 

Ha!

 

True enough.

I used to coach a very pleasant young lad,mad Spurs fan and wanted to be a journalist.

He could tell you everything you wanted to know about top 6 PL clubs,the doctrine according to Sky etc.

I asked him to name the teams in the Championship and two players from each team.

Nothing.

Not a sausage.

Bugger all!

 

It's not a surprise when you consider the media coverage. There's more coverage of the Championship, lower division and non-league game than there's ever been but all the oxygen on the easiest to consume platforms (TalkSport, much of Sky) is taken up with endless talk about the same big clubs / players. And what there is about the smaller clubs tends to be superficial and full of cliches or focuses on that club's one talismanic player. (Something I think of as The Deeney Effect).

Take a show like Monday Night Football – how often is the hour before, say, Nottingham Forest v Fulham taken up almost exclusively with talk about the big four / top six. Sometimes you're lucky to get eight minutes on the actual teams about to play.

What amazes me is the pundits who've played or managed at a lower level either don't know anything about the clubs at those levels now or they are embarrassed to show their knowledge and think their audience isn't interested. A fella like Jamie O'Hara, for example, seems to revel in his ignorance of almost everything and yet he spent three years at Billericay.

There's almost no discussion or analysis of how current trends at the top of the game influence coaches and teams lower down. Watching Ben Hamer struggle to pass the ball out from the back on Tuesday, for example – and he's not the only goalkeeper/defence to find it hard – I wondered whether there's been any analysis of how this has become the norm.

I've a lot of respect for the pundits who put the work in. Jobi McAnuff is one who I think knows a lot about clubs outside the Premier League.

Anyway, that's wandered off topic a bit.

TL; DR: The Premier League has a lot to answer for, really.

 

https://twitter.com/rossgallagher7/status/1689969890327658497?s=46&t=dJMeIix2oCIhjphLJhwpfg

 

" Bloody vikings!"