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It’s to demonstrate the inflation of Championship player prices. His fee was around the same fees fetched for several established Prem players like Livramento, Ward-Prowse, Barnes and Maddison. That fee is nearly £10m more than Jude Bellingham’s fee. So we shouldn’t have any qualms asking for...

They are a similar profile of player, true. When you look into the numbers, Sheaf is a superior player by far. The only areas Eccles really bests Sheaf in is blocks, clearances, xA, corner taking - I posted their respective stats in another thread (fbref). The reason Sheaf was value at around...

You’re right that statistics aren’t the be all and end all. However, there comes a point when a subjective opinion is backed up by some objective markers. Therefore, the issue with your take is that a) the statistics don’t support you and b) you’re also an outlier on the eye test too. Is...

I would argue, but I’ll just leave this here instead. He’s statistically one of the best midfielders in the league. His ‘clangers’ (i.e. errors) is in the bottom 9% of midfielders in the league and the same is true for miscontrolls (bottoms 22%) and dispossesses (bottom 21%). The statistics...

His performances in qualification weren’t great. I like Watkins and that moment in the Euros was one of the best footballing moments I’ve experienced at a game. That said, I don’t think he’ll ever be a first choice because he’s not young enough to be a Kane successor per se. It wasn’t...

Has he not proven his worth in the 5 years he’s been with us? This season, he’s come back and played a handful of games and over the season he will get back to his top level. Sheaf is, without a doubt, miles ahead of any midfielder we have at our club. On the Viveash point, he made a lot of...

Both of Spain’s wingers you mentioned also invert because they both play on the opposite side of the dominant foot. Yesterday we just didn’t have a focal point upfront and it was far too easy for Greece to counter attack when we lost the ball as we decided to play 3 defensively minded players...

Taking Carsley’s principles from the U21s, that’s fine because it’s designed to attack space which we did to great affect in the 2 prior games. The problems we have will require creative solutions and Carsley is right when he said we have to open to putting players in different positions. If...

Any look at stats of Sheaf’s performances quickly dispels probably the strangest take on our team.

You are probably right actually - 2022 was his breakthrough and then started to play further forward for England. The original point is that Bellingham has not played with Rice together in a midfield two to great affect so the midfield needs someone like Mainoo or Gomes besides Rice to allow...

What would your team be for Sunday Otis?

We played 4-2-3-1 in every game and Bellingham was a 10. Bellingham at CM in a 4-3-3 should work, but who plays with them? There needs to be an anchor to let those players operate which leads to one of Mainoo or Angel Gomes - both of whom did well v ROI and Finaland. Who then is dropped out of...

Does Anthony Gordon not have that profile? He’s obviously not to the standard Vini. We tried something new and it didn’t pay off, it’s not too dissimilar to what other great teams have done before like Man City (Foden and KDB being false 9s) and Real Madrid with Bellingham. Or even some of the...

There’s still a lot of goals in that team, Watkins hasn’t always looked great for England when we’re ball-dominant. The defence was similar to Finland and it went well. I do agree that we lacked balance because in attack we had only the two CBs back. In attack a lot of teams will merge into a...

I do recall that game v well, unfortunately. Carsley got caught out being too attacking on this occasion. I wouldn’t mind him taking the job still if we go on to win the Group. It’s a transitional phase for him and the team and one bad performance and result doesn’t make you a bad manager.

I don’t think it would work, we played something similar under Southgate and it looked underwhelming. Bellingham has played as a false 9 for most of Real Madrid’s games last year so it wasn’t a terrible idea on paper. Looking at the bench yesterday, there wasn’t many game changers on it...

Plenty of people said that they’d have played a midfield 3 of Rice, Foden and Bellingham and a front 3 of Palmer, Saka and Kane. Bellingham playing as a false 9 wasn’t a terrible idea ‘in theory’ and it’s concerning that without Kane we look bereft of ideas. I wasn’t enamoured with Watkins or...

It can be both you know! 👍🏻 Go through the Euros thread and have a look at many of the poster’s teams. A lot of these suggested XI’s had Palmer, Foden, Saka and Bellingham all in the team.

This is in line with what I’ve been told from a friend and that he was a ‘complicated character’. To add to what you’ve said, it’s been mentioned that he had pretty toxic relationships with players and staff. The whole nature of his departure points to something egregious behind the scenes. If...

The team was too unbalanced today because we packed the team with too much attacking talent. Ironically, many people were calling for this kind of line up in the build up and during the Euros and today showed exactly why it doesn’t really work because you need to be able to defend. It was an...