spacemonkey

In terms of left field options, Fabian Hürzeler took over St. Pauli after 17 matches last season with the team one point off the bottom, proceeding to win his first 10 in the league and finishing the season 5th with 2.41 PPG since he took over. This season has continued in a similar vein, unbeaten until match day 21 and sitting top of the 2. Bundesliga. His contract is already up this summer and he's struggling to agree a new one as he's insisting on a release clause which the club don't want to agree to. He's only 30 so quite the start to his management career. Somewhat animated on the touchline, picking up two suspensions in quick succession recently and reacting to his red card by joining the fans in the standing area from where he continued to shout instructions. He uses a similar 3-4-3 setup to Xabi and is getting a fair bit of hype in Germany without giving off the vibe of loving himself a bit too much like Nagelsmann. Not that I'd take him over Xabi. Or Frank Thomas, of course.

Seemed to me to just play right back first half and then switch to playing the Trent hybrid role second half which due to us having a lot of possession meant he was largely to be found in midfield. Thought he did well anyway.

Wonder if we're going to see both Dom and Trent move forwards when Mo leaves with a new starting RB then coming in. Wouldn't be surprised if Dom saw minutes in Mo's position in January anyway. Hopefully not already later this month.

Guess he'd be good for the homegrown quota.

He gave away the penalty this evening against Turkey. Handball, bit unlucky. I've seen him a couple of times for the national team and he hasn't stood out to me particularly. Not surprising amongst such illustrious company, perhaps.

According to Transfermarkt our net spend over the past 10 years is about 3 x that of Real Madrid. Over the past five Real have taken in more than they've spent. The combined net spend of all current La Liga clubs over the past 10 years is less than one tenth of that of the current PL teams. If he goes to Madrid, I don't think it's because we can't keep up with them financially at this point. Different story with City, United and Chelsea though.

Ake and Carson also qualify as homegrown but you don't need to fill all the homegrown slots, it's just that any that aren't filled reduce your maximum overall squad size. City only declared a 20 man squad last year of which 5 homegrown so no problem. We declared a 24 man squad with 8 homegrown. Sadly we've lost Joe Hardy over the summer (huh?) but we did add Ben Davies of course and Ojo came back from loan as did Woodburn. I make it 10 homegrown currently but expect Ojo, Woodburn and one of Nat and Ben Davies will leave so we'd then be one down.

On the subject of players who have left, I see Can has been left out of Juve's squad for the CL group stage and Coates picked up a red card after conceding three penalties in Sporting's 3-2 defeat to Rio Ave at the weekend. Oof.

Kruse was great on the counter (fast and good finisher) for St. Pauli 10 years ago and it was cool to see him step up to Freiburg, Gladbach and the national team but he has since fallen out with Hecking at Wolfsburg and Low for the national team due to his various off-field antics so not sure that fits in with the emphasis that Klopp puts on the character side of things. On the other hand, he probably does qualify as a "versatile forward" (also attacking midfield) is a goal threat and would be free. He won't be short of options anyway.

Adler might have been decent in the past but never really managed to deliver consistently in Hamburg. More mistakes in him than Mignolet these days.

The Hertha coach was quoted a few days ago saying that they haven't had a midfielder like Grujic in his 22 years there. He could still work out for us, either on the pitch or just financially.

To be fair to Tuchel, the quotes are from the interpreter's version of Tuchel's response which was itself in fairly broken French. The journalist had asked him whether he felt the result was "logique" and I think he was just stating that he didn't feel it was inevitable, they could have got a draw or even a win. True enough. Don't think he was suggesting that they deserved more than they got.

Other possible alternatives with whom we've been linked previously, if memory serves: Kai Havertz, James Maddison, Bruno Fernandes.

Was this from Trent's tackle? http://www.goal.com/en/news/graphic-content-evra-shows-off-gruesome-leg-injury-that/1h2ozsx0pxlef1jyo917i5rouk

Not sure that's right about Can. Could only find sources stating that he's on 8 cards for the season so he should be ok for the next couple of games at least. Could be tight until the end of the season though so he's likely to miss two at some point. Would be handy to have him for United and Chelsea.