The Fish

It's a guarantee.

Dunno if it's the weather or whatever but I can feel the first jangles of a wave of anxiety/depression. Struggling to focus, have a jittery energy, kind of catastrophising everything, pushing back deadlines etc. So basically, if I a moody cunt over the next week/month, I fucking warned you.

We've got the Geordie Maradona, we don't need Mbappe.

Can't think of many taxes that have been applied punitively that've worked as intended, without entirely foreseeable side effects.

Didn't I see something about Spurs being interested in signing him?

From what I've seen, way too much is being made of that challenge. It will take him a while to get used tot he league, but frankly every time he's bundled off the ball, or Barnes doesn't beat a man, or our next signing fails to do something it'll be jumped on. We did so well in our first few windows, any perceived misstep will be held up as some kind of proof that those windows were flukey or something.

Sports Washing.

I want to be clear, I like ASM, I've loved watching him play in Black and White, I've loved him taking the piss on the pitch and twitter and all that. But he's just the most saleable, least integral player in the squad. My issue has been the fetishisation of him. He's mint, but he's not the fucking Messiah. He'll give me as much joy with his goals and step-overs on some BEin highlight show, and those will be as integral to our season as they were when he was here under Howe. Give it 3 or 4 seasons and we might buy another player with his talent, who'll dance around opponents, and twist defenders' blood, but then also do the rest of the work too.

Away from Wearside, not so much.

There's going to be a lot of games this season, and we play a very energetic style. I wouldn't be shocked if Trippier and Livramento share the right back slot.

There's a lot of that. The idea that we're gaming the system by having a PIF owned club buying a player from another PIF owned club. When in reality the PL teams benefiting most from the sudden largesse have been Wolves and Chelsea. We're selling a player for around their Transfermarkt 'market value', those clubs sold their players for comfortably more than they're worth. The Sela sponsorship is 'outrageous', when in reality it's the going rate for a CL club who have the ambition to become a force (and the financial backing to achieve it). But I guess it's one of the costs of being owned by the Saudis. If Zuckerberg had bought us, put Instagram as our sponsor and bought a ASM for his newly acquire MLS club, nobody would really give a shit.

Been re-watching the video below and aside from some cracking goals that I had totally forgotten about, one thing stood out. John Anderson goes from appreciating Schar's goal against Forest with some reservation, to greeting every goal with open laughter.

Claire Balding, perhaps?

One thing to note here is that his xG is in the 71st percentile, but his goal return is 91st percentile. And it's like that consistently. He's one of those rare players who consistently scores more goals than you'd expect given the chances. Now this could be some ridiculous fluke of facing poor goalkeeping performances for his entire career, or, what is more likely, is that he's a very good finisher. I've seen some criticism of his passing, but I wonder if those critics are accounting for where those passes are played and what the circumstance are. e.g. from the highlights I've seen the majority of his passes are in attack, around the box. He plays a high volume of attempted 1-2s through congested areas of the pitch. This obviously reduces the likelihood of that pass being successful. Same is true with Tonali. The passes that fail are usually the ones that would lead to a good chance.

Oh PL... dear dear me.

The idea that the world of finance is woke is fucking hilarious. I'm sure Caspian, Hugo and Max are all forgoing Soho House to join the NHS marches or Just Stop Oil protests.

Look, I've had a lot of fun taking the piss out of you for your weird fanboy adulation of ASM, but I've just been having a laugh. Don't let it upset you, ok?

Bloody loves a one-two, this lad. And with players like Bruno and Tonali able to link up with him, it's gonna be good.

I think we have to be realistic when it comes to squad building under the watchful gaze of FFP. We lurched from a bottom half of the Premier League team, to needing a Champions League squad in, what, 18 months? We didn't have a season or two competing in the Europa League where we could have brought in more depth and raised the valuation of our existing stock. Had we ended up 6th, a LB another CB and some young players like Minteh or Kuol/Ashby, we'd have been happy. The demands of Europa League aren't as, well, demanding as they are for the Champions League and the player who we now see as not good enough, would have been fine for the likes of Union Saint-Gilloise or LASK. We could have been confident of progressing with a team comprising of Burn, ASM, Almiron, Longstaff et al. So now, we're trying to dramatically improve the quality and depth of our squad to do well in the planets elite football competition, without breaking FFP rules, without a recent history of the competition and with a squad that's barely deep enough to compete in the Premier League.

Who will?