feltmonkey

I said "arguably" not indisputably. They're both great players. The argument for Kane being the better player would be that he has a more rounded game, and is a superb creater of goals as well as a goalscorer. His timing and weighting of a pass is exceptional. He also plays for a weaker team than Lewandowski, and in a stronger league. I'm not making the argument that one is better than the other though - just saying that you could make a case for either.

There's often a kind of clog in transfer windows where it seems everyone is trying to sort out a replacement, no-one wants to sell until they know they've got their replacement sorted, no-one's got the money to buy until they've sold their big-money star, that sort of thing. It's being exacerbated by the two big Spanish clubs needing to sell before they can buy and nobody feeling particularly inclined to buy their overpaid flops. If the Verane transfer to Man Utd happens we might see things start to move. The Kane thing is fascinating. Arguably the best striker in the world, he's keen to move, but it looks extremely unlikely that he will, and he's going to end up stranded at what is now, lets face it, an upper-mid-table team with a squad that isn't going to take them up the table.

Yeah, true. The reason we had to play McFred so often was because we were so shakey at centre-back, wasn't it? Lindelof would get bullied and they'd both get outpaced if anyone ran past them. Verane could hopefully make a big difference, and I think the reason we were looking at Pau Torrez was his pace, although he looks like he'd get bullied even more than Lindelof. Camavinga would be an amazing signing, but is looking less and less likely. I don't know Barrios. Who is he?

Yeah, I can't argue with that. Up until the last few weeks I was thinking that if we got the right defensive midfielder in to play alongside him in a two that would be the way to go, but watching him alongside Kante in the Euros - Kante, the best in the world, and in superb form - I've changed my mind. Pogba still caused problems. He was absolutely unplayable going forward, but he was a big part of how Switzerland were able to come back into that last game. Over the last season he's lacked motivation for United, and we've seen a lot more of the Pogba from that last ten minutes against Switzerland than the brilliant attacking player he was in most of the Euros. I don't know who we could get for £50m to replace him though. We'd probably have to browse the Barcelona fire sale. Pedri or De Jong? That would be funny. No realistic chance of either of course, but just imagine!

It would probably be best for both the club and the player. He's a great player, one of the best we have, but his attitude is questionable, and he's limited as to what system he can play in. In a midfield two, he can cause defensive problems. A midfield three with Fernandes deeper - say Pogba, Fred, Fernandes - could reduce the effectiveness of Fernandes, and the propensity for both Pogba and Bruno to give the ball away a lot might be an issue. He did well in a more attacking role last season, on the left wing, but we're overloaded in that position. Surely Rashford, and Sancho will be the first choice wide players. We could play a diamond with Fernandes at the top, Pogba on the left, and split strikers, but most of the time when we did that last season it was frustrating how many chances we would create for a centre forward that wasn't there. Pogba is in the odd position of being a great player, but not a key player in the squad. If he signs a new contract, great. He's a brilliant player to have. If he goes, let's get some money for him and move on. No big deal. We would absolutely need to sign another midfielder though. You can't win the league if your entire stock of central midfielders is Fred, McTominay, Matic, and De Beek. Maybe Hannibal or Garner could step up, but it doesn't fill you with confidence, does it?

Erm, absolutely everywhere. It doesn't appear to be a secret.

Well yeah, for a start Pogba has rejected a new contract so the options are to sell him now or lose him for nothing next summer.

A slightly disappointing announcement video though. It took so long to announce him, I thought they must have at least been teaching him how to play the piano.

Yes, I think this is right. There's also the grey area between what they say they can do and what they actually can do. From what I've heard, IP law is pretty labyrinthine and difficult to enforce. I doubt they will start issuing cease and desists left and right, although they have said they will have a zero-tollerance stance on fan animations, which obviously comes from the fact that Warhammer+ will have a few animations available. What I find strange is that this enormous growth they've had over the past few years has coincided with them making a concerted effort to be more customer-friendly, approachable, and being involved with and supportive of the community. Making a big statement that they intend to shut down elements of that community is a bit of a shift away from that, and that is a shame. The response from the community kind of shows why they wouldn't want to be too close to those guys though. There are some really dislikable, entitled elements to the fanbase. It's entirely sensible to give yourself a get out to issue cease and desists to whoever you feel like when you've got prominent community figures like Arch turning out to be an alt-right fuckhead. People were also making a lot of money from their IP, I think the Astartes guy was making a lot of cash, for example. Why should a company allow that to happen? Employing him to make content for them instead of just stomping on him isn't an anti-community move, despite what they idiots started shouting when they realised it meant that they now had to pay to watch his videos. We'll have to wait and see what happens. Hopefully this is a self-protection measure and not the prelude for a load of parts of the comminity being made to stop what they're doing.

Have you guys seen the shitstorm about the new IP guidlines GW have issued? They've effectively shut down all fan animations specifically, with the potential to stop all lore videos, codex reviews, and the rules they've issued around "fan artworks" could easily be used to shut down all painting tutorials and patreons that use GW miniatures and paint schemes. They'd be crazy to do so, and it wouldn't stand up in court to try to stop videos of a product being used for it's intended purpose, of course, but it seems a touch heavy-handed. It's probably a result of the upcoming launch of Warhammer + I suppose. The internet has over-reacted, as it tends to do. It is a shame that we won't see any more fan animations appear on youtube, and it seems a bit of an own goal to destroy the breeding ground for your own talent, as GW have hired the likes of the guy who did the Astartes videos to produce stuff for them. And of course we will - ALAS! - never again be able to watch the Man Reads Book codex reviews.

Crazy end to the match. You don't often see a 2-ball innings from an individual batsman with as many twists and turns as the one from Liam Livingston tonight.

The second goal was very nice. I do like the look of Pellistri. Didn't Heaton make a really good save in the first half as well? I didn't see it.

Hey, stop trying to tug at my heartstrings by mentioning his injury.

In terms of effectiveness, he would be. He's so useless his own teammates talk openly about not giving him the ball because he helps the opposition more than his own team. If we went full Woodward and signed him, of course he'd be ahead of them in the pecking order - we'd have to justify the price and his wages - but he shouldn't be as all those players understand that the point of football is to win the game, score goals, that sort of thing, not to get on YouTube. In my opinion he is, bar none, the most over-rated player in the world. Anyway, friendly time is back. Football has been gone for over a week! Good grief. Nice to see Heaton getting a start. Quite a few forgotten men in there too - Andreas, Chong, Williams, Pellistri. Brace for a stunning goal from Andreas "Pre-Season Pirlo" Pereira.