I'm finding it very odd that one of the biggest complaints last season was that the squad was too big.........what has changed exactly? It looks to me that we have managed to make it even worse.

13 players have left that were in the squad last season. We have signed 6 players (Slonina, Gusto, Moreira, Angelo, Nkunku, Jackson) and 7 have returned from loan (Colwill, Sarr, Maatsen, Santos, Casadei, Hudson-Odoi, Lukaku) We have players like Uguochukwu, Disasi and possibly Sanchez coming in, 3 players I don't rate. We still want Caicedo and now there is talk of signing Vlahovic too, maybe Kudus at some point as well.

What is going on here? More players have come in than have gone out.

Also, in some cases, especially with some of the signings, expected signings and possibly players going out, it looks like we are downgrading in certain areas. Disasi looks no better than Koulibaly and I personally think he would be a downgrade on Chalobah if we let him leave. Slonina is currently not better than Mendy, and if Sanchez comes in, he is no better than Mendy either. Santos, Casadei, Uguochukwu, is this an upgrade on Kante, Kovacic and Zakaria? With how bad Kovacic performed last season and with the injuries to Kante and Zakaria, I suppose it can't be much worse, but when it comes to their ability, I don't see the new 3 to be anywhere near as good. Attack looks much healthier though.

Edited August 1, 20232 yr by Scott Harris

I wouldnt disagree with anything the majority are suggesting, but id like to see cucurella loaned out to somewhere he can thrive (to increase his sale price) and hall kept as our number 2 left back. Chilwell will inevitably suffer injuries and time out which will give hall or maatsen ample opportunity.

We do seem to be getting bloated again ,I can only hope its part of the masterplan and Pochettino has all the answers.

I imagine loans are going to play a big part here but who's going ?

We aren't really getting bloated, we've just taken a load of academy players + previous loan army players on the tour to assess whether they are ready for first team duties. Once you chop that lot, plus send the guys who are ear-marked for loan to Strasbourg, then the squad numbers come down to exactly what Pochettino wants, even with some new signings.

Granted we still have to get the sales of CHO, Ziyech, Lukaku over the line, but still a month to go to achieve that, 

Malang Sarr is probably the only one that will be impossible to shift, as he's being paid about 7x what he should be. I'm expecting we'll reach an agreement to terminate his contract, like we did with Bakayoko,