Wanted to post the same. He is on 250k pw which is shitloads.

Wouldn't mind him back on a loan tbh,he is exactly the type of midfielder we need. (a man can dream)

injured?

That was pretty good. No need for the coat

Hojbjerg confirmed.

Really don't get the dislike for Willian, he's probably been the most underrated player in the league for the past five seasons

Think it's his age, but he looked as fast as ever. Think we are too tainted by Ozil turning into Cleverley.

alexis had the best season of his career in 2016-17 then fell off a cliff in under a year

Maybe there is a mental gap as soon as you get your super contract. Özil falloff is more staggering for me as Alexis always relied on his physical attributes and agility while Özil on his amazing vision and passing ability which should not get affected to this degree by age. Think his head was all over the place and could not get back on track or just couldn't be bothered

Didn't Ozil still create the most chances for us last season despite being frozen out by Emery and removed from the squad altogether after the restart by the brass because of the wage thing?

And pretty sure Ramsey is on close to 400k/week (according to Ornstein at the time). That's what a free transfer will do.

Ahh...interesting. ty. If I could have any CB in the world at my club, Marquinhos would be right up there.

Definitely fun to have Brazilians at the club again after so long. Wenger never seemed to go for them.

Alexis was always going to fall off/needed a break. Played every tournament for chile, there was a copa like every year for a stretch there plus all the friendlies and qualifiers. Dude didn't have a break for like 6 years and was reliant on his physical ability.

Ozil fall off is purely effort. David Silva is still good.

There is decent evidence to support this. A few American studies have looked at free agency and performance and found a decline in performance after a being awarded a huge contract.

the book the drunkard's walk deals with this a bit in the opening chapters

yes there are always outside factors, but random variance is usually the greater explanation

it's a reasonable assumption most of the best players were sunrunning variance and correspondingly, the disappointing players were getting hit by a mac truck of variance

age definitely a factor as well but typically speaking it's far likelier that guys like Ozil were performing well above their EV and now seem to be major disapointments because their production is now normalized - quite often they are given a big contract in the midst of their great play and then the contract is viewed as the reason for lowered performance

same how if Chelsea loaned or sold Kepa this offseason and he returned to being pretty good again the narrative would be focused on him needing a change of scenery etc etc when the far likelier explanation is he had a really bad/unlucky year

Bale, coutinho, ....

In other words, unexplained variance and individual differences.

KWP the other way too. Very happy to see that we're getting our business done early.

No fees confirmed but BBC still going with "well in excess of Tottenham's £15m opening offer" for Hojberg and £12 for KWP.

Orny said 15 that can rise to 19 based on add ons.

Good business nonetheless. Not sure about Hojberg, is it good business by Spurs?

idk bro.
looking at the stats one player is a 25yo with 249 senior club appearences and 33 national caps. he has also been a team captain.
the other is 23yo with 34 senior club appearences 0 national caps.
both guys fill a hole in their new teams.
the price difference is around £5m.

I don't watch all that many Spurs games (mostly just vs big teams) but he seems like he fills a needed gap for them.

He was our best player not named 'Danny' last season.

Contract lengths tho.

oh yeah that and englishness make kwp one of the biggest bargains ever.

It wasnt a dig. I genuinely didn't know much about Hojberg. Seems like a hard worker in midfield which Mou should love.

Aurier is getting sold too right? Who is the right back target then? Surely they won't start another season with him as a RB. Going forward he is more than decent, but defensively just subpar.

the main example they used was in the israeli airforce they decided that praising/rewarding pilots for great performances was bad because they'd just slack off and underperform later whereas they took pretty draconian punishments towards those pilots who made big errors because they found that those errors were rarely repeated

i could be confusing an actual study vs a theory or anecdote but the general gyst of the book was that a statistician showed them that both the great performances and the huge mistakes were both outliers that would revert to the mean naturally so they went back to rewarding good performance and laid off on those who made mistakes and found it had zero impact

there's a ton of parallels in sports with the underperforming guy "just needed a change of scenery" or the guy "slacked off once he got paid" but for the most part those performances would have been the same regardless of location or contract

This kind of analysis is highly situation specific. In the military, if you **** up, someone dies.

If you use this kind of transactional leadership with footballers they will just rolls their eyes, drive off in their gold Bentley and call their agent.

I also think I've read a study where they evaluated the impact of half-time team talks on performance (i.e., stripping the paint off the walls v encouragement/control), and it had zero effect.

oh don't get me wrong, I 100% believe those factors are real, I'm sorry if I made it seem like this is pure variance

fully agree big contracts changing mental state, moves to a system where you feel more comfortable, etc etc are all impacts for sure, I just think they are often overstated - ie kepa, pretty sure no matter where he plays next year he's going to have a better year