At least under Jokanovic it was possible to understand what formation Fulham were using and what roles the players had within it even though things weren't really clicking for them - but under Ranieri it was a complete ****show as they were changing formations constantly and the players' roles were changing within it, for example Seri would be a box-to-box midfielder one week, a deep-lying playmaker the next, and the following week a defensive midfielder. It says a lot that, based on today's lineup, Scott Parker's done something that Ranieri never thought of: play Calum Chambers as a centre back, rather than a central midfielder...
Another Bloody Winger Watch According to the Torygraph we have found yet another winger to add to the dozens being linked to us in Benfica's 19-year old Jota (not to be confused with Wolves' 22 year-old winger Diogo Jota, or Birmingham's 27 year-old Spanish winger Jota...) who has moved into Benfica's first team from their youth ranks in recent weeks, and of course this means his agent is happily telling anyone will listen that he has a £25m release clause, almost as if he wants a new contract drawn up PDQ considering his client played a whole hour against Dinamo Zagreb in the Europa League the other night
Wasn’t that a Bob Monkhouse gag? “People laughed at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian when I grew up. Well they’re not laughing now!”
Lower League Rando Watch/Yet Another Bloody Winger Watch Two for one! Yay! In the quest to link us with just about every Championship winger under the age of 24, today's lucky contestant is Brentford's Said Benrahma, who's had a pretty impressive season with him notching up nine goals and twelve assists in the Championship and those stats don't appear to be a fluke as he was equally prolific playing for Chateauroux in Ligue 2 last season and also chipped in when making cameos for Nice and Angers in Ligue 1 when he was in his teens Of course if he did sign two things could be guaranteed: i.) Questions about how, we chose the goalscoring winger in the Brentford team that isn't Ollie Watkins ii.) The inevitability of one set of fans chanting "terrorist" at him because he's an Algerian international
Doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry. I'm assuming that this isn't him, though: https://www.texastribune.org/library/data/texas-prisons/inmates/julio-cesar-torres-ibarra/1138507/
Okay, here's the thing... His agent showed up on Bolivian TV on Friday and the pundits were saying how great it would be if his client had signed for us, at which point his agent said that he had, so I dismissed the whole thing as the bollockiest pile of bollocks because when an agent is doing less of a job in talking up his client than a Bolivian football pundit something seems off. On top of that, does anyone think that "contract" he's signing is genuine? I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that we don't have the club logo so prominently featured on player contracts that it would actually block out the text of the contract anyone was signing, so the photo to prove the story is just as suspect. Naturally this led to a bit of digging around, and I am happy to confirm that Club Blooming do exist, and but there's no mention of Torres anywhere on their site and he isn't listed as a member of their first team squad, so the only evidence of him existing is his name being listed in the squad on Blooming's Wikipedia page...and, of course, the evidence of him existing is his name in text only. The terms of the deal don't sound plausible either, because when has any non-Spanish team ever signed a player on loan for them to play for their U23 squad? In short, I'll believe it when I see his name show up on the teamsheet for an U23 game At least there was evidence that Musa Yahaya existed before we signed him...only to not sign him...but somehow we received a transfer fee when Porto B signed him from Portimonense in spite us having not signed him...my head hurts
According to one bod on Twitter, we're signing an agreement in April so we can loan him to a Championship club next season Said bod on Twitter clearly doesn't understand that, when we have a player on loan, we can't loan them to anyone else...
Tielemans Watch Did you really think I would let this one die? In an interview with Nieuwsblad he stated that he will be heading back to Monaco at the end of his loan - and he went on to say that he would be open to listening out for any interest in the summer, be it if Monaco are interested in retaining him or if another team is interested in giving him a new start. DO IT LEVY
1. Well it has for aeons eternal lied. 2. IMHO he has got a feel for what is required in the PL, and is up for staying. Unfortunate for Leicester, but Spurs have form on Euro loanees (Toby) .
Levy has said that the new stadium's financing won't affect our transfer spending in future windows. We weren't going to spend any money before and we're still not going to.
E E-F E-F-E EFEF EFEF EFEF... "I'm not happy here - I'm working hard but never get the chance to play. I have to play more, maybe at a different club. I'll think about that." - Renato Sanches describing how much he's enjoying his time at Bayern to Kicker
E E-F E-F-E EFEF EFEF EFEF... Pt.2 Mateo Kovacic has told Marca that a.) He wants to leave Los Ladrones b.) He'd like to stay in the Premier League Given the Chavs don't have an option to make the loan permanent, and that even if they did they have a transfer ban coming up, I wonder if there's a way we can exploit this while also giving the Francoists a few quid to help them unsettle Eden Hazard all summer long?