gojo_ed

5 losses out of 5 with Man City, Arsenal, Man Utd away to come, Newcastle at home. Heck even Forest and Bournemouth will see us as easy pickings. This could spiral very quickly, I think we need certainty and an appointment in place pronto. Sorry Frank you are a legend but a naive manager tactically.

Well deserved at this point, what an absolutely turgid, yet disastrous season. Frank you're on a hiding to nothing here, you're not going to get the job. Why not just go out all guns blazing. 4.5 games and one deflected goal is a beige and cowardly way to manage to be honest.

2nd half highlights

Zappacosta for Azpi when you're 2-0 down in the Cup with 10 minutes to go, must be taking the piss.

Barkley for Kovacic will change the match.

http://www.skysports.com/football/news/11668/10932605/watford-interested-in-chelsea-midfielder-nathaniel-chalobah Some reports claiming he's pushing for a move

Being reported in the Guardian as well, though I know this is Sid Lowe's paper. Seems pretty weird to me.

Congrats to Arsenal, better team on the day and 2-1 flattered us to be honest. Only positive I guess is it shows us we still have work to do and won't give any false impression that our squad doesn't need improvement, as happened in 2010. Great season though, this time 12 months ago we would have taken "only" being Champions :)

Oo a tough one, I'll "narrow" it down to three. 97/98- First European trophy since 71, Zola coming off the bench was magic 09/10- The best attacking team we've had, scoring 6 or 7 seemed par for the course. Carlo an absolute gent as well. 11/12- For sheer improbability this probably comes out on top. In February it looked like our season was over, 3-1 down against Napoli. The rest is history!

If they play like this evening, I'm not too worried. Ajax were hopelessly naive, constantly attacking down the centre and trying fancy flicks every time. José's dream- United could just stay compact and pick them off on the counter and at set pieces. As we've seen this season you need to be a bit more expansive in the league. José did this in the first half of 14/15 before we got taken apart by Spurs, making him revert to type. It wasn't a coincidence that we crawled over the finish line that season. With the level of competition at the top you need to have a proper attacking plan. Griezmann will help if they get him, but not sure one player will change it all given they're probably losing Zlatan.

Aren't betting odds partly driven by customers? If lots of punters put massive money on one team, the odds will naturally come down as the bookies look to minimise their exposure. Doesn't make them more likely in reality.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/may/17/bournemouth-nathan-ake-asmir-begovic-bids £30m for Begovic and Aké is good money. I'd be inclined to let Asmir go if we can find another HG keeper of similar standard. Aké on the other hand we should keep, depending on who we buy/call back he will have a bigger role next season.

The accountant in me had to do the sums, sorry ;) So we signed him in 2013 for £3.5m on a 5 year deal. His carrying value on our balance sheet before he left would be £0.7m, assuming the rest has been amortised straight line over his contract. Technically then we made an accounting profit on disposal of £5.3m in this year's books. Might seem a technicality, but the way this works means that what looks like a pointless transfer can in reality prove to boost our accounts considerably. Of course the amortisation charge and wages were an expense in the other years' accounts, so in total terms the situation would be: Amortisation- £2.8m 4 years of wages- £2.0-£3.0m (nowhere really had a certain figure, but based on Google and a few Newcastle blogs they had him down as £10k per week/£0.5m per year. Seems a bit low to me, but I'm also assuming that we covered this and Newcastle didn't contribute) Meaning that in cash terms we quite possibly made a small surplus.

All of them were special, but 04/05 has to just because of how frighteningly relentless we were -an absolute machine. On another note, we should just relish this win and having such a period of success in the past 15 years. Liverpool fans would kill to be in our position, they've waited decades for a title. Arsenal have had 2 FA Cups in 10 years. Spurs have won nothing except for the most-points-in-two-seasons-moral trophy, brought to you by Jermaine Jenas. We don't like these teams, but they are huge teams who are rightly envious of us. Let's enjoy this title, and hopefully the Double to come!