Asha

@AdamJoseph i know nothing of him but i hope he's better than Ed's initial assessment on the pod. Like i think i'd be happy with Fred 2.0

With Ederson now a case of when & not if, it's clear that Manchester United aren't waiting to find out this summer. They found a deal at a price they liked & are pulling the trigger on it while working on others. You don't have to sign the #1 CM first & risk setting a benchmark expected for #2 & even #3. This demonstrates preparation for the summer. As soon as they season finished, the club was ready to go. What he adds physically stands out most. That running capacity is something the midfield just doesn't have. He'll certainly add ability to press, football IQ, ball carrying & replacements for aspects of Casemiro. His work rate is relentless & he's good in the air. He's proved incredibly durable & has barely had injuries. He adds strength & power, I won't pretend he's perfect, but I can see what the recruitment team does. There's an element of trust required on this deal. If Michael Carrick sees something he likes in the player, that says something. He's not at the top of my list, but I always try to understand why something happened. Mateus Fernandes, you're next.

@thePoS_007 “No messing, we actually can’t afford Rashford cause we just overpaid on Gordon by 30 or so million”

If Barca don't sign Rashford too, Bayern are the next potential destination (big earners like Muller, Goretzka, Guerreiro all leaving). Without that, Rashford or United will likely need to take the knee on wages to make a full sale happen this summer.

@AdamJoseph he's keeping good company with Lionel Messi for the european record

Bruno Fernandes breaking the Premier League's Assists in a Season record from a corner is superb banter because of how much it will rile the morons already upset that he has 21. Now? It's time to go get 22.

@Irekejunior @OptaJoe Do you know that Martin Zubimendi is just the fifth player to win the title and play every game in his first season in the Premier League?

@Melatomin @OptaJoe lol. do you know the reason 1992 was excluded is because it's everyone's first season in the premier league?

38 - Martin Zubimendi is just the second ever player to win the title and play every game in his first season in the Premier League (excluding 1992-93), after Jens Lehmann in 2003-04. Champions. #CRYARS

@ORlSHA @OptaJoe @orisha @ORISHA How many Premier Leagues have Everton won, 0 or 9?

@ORlSHA @OptaJoe @ORISHA

@utdreport Lammens

IF Bruno Fernandes gets an assist today, who do you think will score? 👀⚽️

@nqatpod do United need 3 midfielders that profile completely different from each other/kobbie?

Interesting one, Ederson. All-rounder, good physical profile, does a bit of everything. Elliot Anderson-light if you want a bit of a lazy shortcut Questions I'd ask are: Does his physicality translate well to the Prem? Is his passing too conservative to be useful to United? Do we really need another ball carrier?

@Melatomin There's benefit to both, so left it out. West Ham means Mateus Fernandes, Spurs means banter.

My hater fever dream is City bottling the title tonight, Liverpool losing to Brentford on Sunday & Bournemouth making Champions League by beating Forest. No CL football for Liverpool or Chelsea, while Pep's era goes out with a whimper because only GOAT's walk away with titles.

@nqatpod @Muppetiers marketing

@Muppetiers Minor point here but why do we keep calling it a supercomputer? The amount of parameters involved in the model is really not that many. Can easily run that on a decent laptop, let alone some computer with 2 exaflops of compute and a few thousand CPUs.

The animals picking the winner have better accuracy than the Opta supercomputer.

@AdamJoseph @UtdMicah tbf to her she walked this back fairly quickly and admitted it was a little ridiculous in retrospect

@Zonal_Marking @nqatpod The problem with this argument is Casemiro's running did not look like someone who was conditioning himself rather he looked like someone whose legs had gone. His legs haven't suddenly fixed themselves, but as Ed has said the team worked around his issues

@nqatpod I didn’t once said “he couldn’t be bothered”. Top-level football is extremely intense mentally and physically. When you’re long-term exhausted you condition yourself for, and prioritise, the biggest things. The biggest thing for him is the World Cup. That’s it.

Let's be honest: for Brazilians at a certain stage it's all about the World Cup. Club football is largely training / selection for that. Casemiro looked sharp around WC2022. He was completely off it about 2024. He's had a great resurgence ahead of WC2026. x.com/TeleFootball/s…

Good or bad omen?

@nqatpod might he not be the squad filler (ugarte replacement) rather than the Anderson/Baleba?

Raw numbers look good but every time I’ve seen him get the impression he’s a jack of all trades, master of none. High physical ceiling, mid passing. Squad filler in PL. wouldn’t be at all surprised if this isn’t agent trying to take a market.

@CantEverDie I say this also as someone who eats meat, being a massive loser: Meat eaters 🤝 drivers

i’m not even a vegetarian, usually eat meat at least once a day, but watching people who eat meat be incredibly wrong and annoying about vegetarianism and vegetarian diets puts me on defense mode

@Malachians me @ Utd's back up players

Ffs what is this? 😂

@AdamJoseph 100%, was mostly sent in jest

@Melatomin Nor should he barring an unexpected offer. He's been mostly reliable. This is a definite case of picking who you want to go rather than who should.

'Under INEOS leadership, Manchester United is implementing a strict "two-year rule" to drive performance, where players are given roughly two seasons to prove their worth or face being moved on.' We'll find out this summer how real that statement is.