It’s all a bit dodgy from West Ham, though. Hard to see Maguire fitting in on any front foot team. Could help the Luton Towns, the Evertons. The Hammers are supposedly more ambitious. Ward-Prowse won’t hurt their midfield, especially if they can also stash McTominay in there. Even if they get all that done, they’ll need some more threat or they’ll be sticking around in the bottom half of the table.
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I’d think so, yes. Before he went to Utd he was legitimately one of the best defenders in the league. The fact Utd massively over paid for him doesnt change that he would have made 14-15 teams in the premier league better by playing for them. Fuck, even for all the mockery since the move, even at Utd during the relative success of the early Ole years, in the period where he had the licence to play reactive counter-attacking football, Maguire was effective for them and anchored a relatively well performing defense.
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He’s fucking awful he looks completely shot, I’d buy a 3 legged donkey before I bought Maguire.
Polishing turds again.
I’m in a foul mood ignore.
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Think they have set out to replace the ‘leadership’ that they lost with Rice. Fair, but not sure either have the quality for a team that should have ambitions to get into Europe.
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Lost their best all-around player from a side that finished 14th? Europe does not seem realistic. They are actually a surprisingly old squad now. A lot of players 28+, so this is a key transfer window for them - and it doesn’t appear to be going well at all.
Spending £30M on a 30-year old centre back doesn’t seem like a great idea to me, particularly one that comes with the constraints that Maguire does. If you don’t give him the right kind of midfield protection, he becomes a real liability.
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Had a go on the BBC predictor, this is what I came up with.
The blueshite to escape by the skin of their teeth again due to Luton and Sheffield United both being well below par and Wolves being in turmoil. Villa with Emery and some solid signings to push hard for a CL spot. 10th-16th could be in any order. Assuming Spurs will lose Kane.
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And the fact like they are a single use plastic. Brilliant once in the mid 1980s but they will still be around for centuries after the decline of civilisation.
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My first thought was that West Ham was too high…and then I could not really disagree with any particular team being below them. Hoping for a better run from Sheffield United and Luton, but cannot really disagree there either. Wolves look to be in real trouble too. But that 10-17 is really hard to predict, not sure if we can count on Everton being reliably crap.
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Burnley are really close to making me like them these days.
Almost
But for me Kompany ruins it all.
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De Bruyne
“We spoke to the Arsenal players and even the referees [about it] – they don’t even want to do it, but it’s the new rule and it’s what it is,”
De Bruyne. “A game like today, even the first half with three minutes extra, you can only guess what’s going to happen if you play a lower team who keep time-wasting all the time.”
“Today we played 12 to 13 minutes [extra]. I can see games going for 20-25 minutes [more]. I think this will change in one to two months, but this is the first game. I’m thinking if we play Sevilla [in the UEFA Super Cup] on Wednesday and have 15-20 extra minutes and then play on Saturday again against Newcastle it’s like two times extra time. We’ll see how it goes, but it doesn’t make any sense.”
Love the dig at Newcastle 
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It’s not supposed to make sense…don’t time waste should be the message to both teams before a game…no time wasting=no added extra time…easy or am I missing something…i know you’ll inform me if I am…pls enlighten…
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I’ve been listening to Gary Lineker’s new podcast. TBH this feels very much like talking pish on MotD but the season preview is quite interesting.
The Liverpool bit is about half an hour in. They see us finishing top 4 which I think is fair. Obviously things have moved on somewhat from there (which Shearer actually hints at . knowingly or not).
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A world first: the words “Micah Richards” and “strong opinions” in the same sentence.
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who is getting all these American investors on sky sports for interviews before the game. Madness
Vince the first one to happily bend over for Pep.
1-0 Haaland