English Premier League 2024-25

Reece James outpaced by Soler. If that’s the norm then the injuries might have taken their toll.

lol if that foul on Bowen had been committed on a Arsenal player you’d never have heard the end of it.

Hair was offside

We appear to have signed a Holding

They just didn't want to sell him to a rival competitor for 11-13th place

Guehi is out of contract in 18 months too. I guess Palace can probably get close to £70m in the summer from someone, but when did anyone ever spend that kind of money on a CB and it turned out to be a great deal?

Van Dijk is the only example from the top of my head. Then ManU tried to emulate it with Slabhead

Ferdinand was about 30M iirc, a sum that’s probably more than 70M in today’s market. But there haven’t been many such successes.

Best value CB transfer of all time was Sol.

Bamba? (RIP)

VVD
Ruben Dias
Gvardiol is a CB though doesn't play there

Are the only three that come to mind in terms of raw numbers.

Players just cost more now though.

John Stones was about 50m, right? That might be City’s best defensive signing in recent years.

As much as a twat as he is both during his playing career and as a pundit, I still think Rio must be the top CB signing.

Ah yeah.

I think Nesta was like 30m 25ish years ago which is definitely more than 80m in today's football money too.

I'm surprised we bid 70m for Guehi but I do like the intention is shows. We've spent SO MUCH money in the last c. 5 years but a lot of it has been very badly spent. Glad that we're willing to continue taking risks.

Also learned today that Kevin Danso counts as home grown despite being born in Austria and of Ghanaian descent, so that's nice.

Think every Spurs fan will tell you that our CMs are the biggest gap in the squad, while they're fine I don't think any of Sarr, Bentancur, and certainly not Bissouma are good enough there. Squad players for the most part sure. Maybe Archie Gray is good enough who knows.

How much did Vidic cost?

£7m

then vidic was one of the best CB signings of all time

Bargain

Who was JT's partner during that 04/05 season, Carvalho iirc?

Carvalho and I think Gallas was there too

The real losers are all of us. Had he succeeded as a coach we now wouldn't have to listen to the worst pundit ever.

Yeah. He was Ok in the early days of his career when he was keen to make a good impression, but it wasn't long before all the bitter pro-Manure aggression surfaced and in tandem with their decline as a club began to dominate his so-called opinions.

This.

That podcast they do with him, Wright, Keane and a guest where they just sit around telling stories and stuff is honestly pretty good and basically what most ex-footballers should be doing instead of any sort of thinking or god forbid analysis.

Stones has been very decent, but yes, Rio was a stellar signing.

The point is for £70m+ you want an absolute Rolls Royce at the back, not just someone who is a solid defender.

That seems a little bit like our OAP minds just not being able to keep up with inflation (and in particular, football inflation). We remember Ronaldo going to Real for £80m and thinking "that's about right for the 2nd best player in the world". These days £70-80m does not even come close to getting you a sure fire hit.

I think that also has to do with how the sheer amount of money in football has fundamentally changed the transfer game wrt number of moves and squad depths. In the worst case scenario your new expensive striker only scored 10 goals, but still played, and then perhaps pulled himself together and/or moved on after a season or two.

Now within a month that new striker is benched altogether because the club have three more and simply cannot risk relegation or missing CL. He is considered a complete failure.

100% this.
When Rio came to Leeds he was the most expensive defender in the world at 18m.
He became the only player to do that twice when Man Utd payed 30m just 2 years later.

He’d be a 100m+ defender in today’s market.