u/SeparateAd7305

Used FotMob for match ratings.

Current Players

Yasin Ayari (Sweden): 5-1 win over Tunisia. 8.9 match rating (MOTM).

Breakout star of the tournament! If you’ve watched the seagulls, you have seen some head scratching outside of the box attempts from Ayari. Well on the world’s stage he connects twice to score a brace, the first and last goal. 2 goals on 0.07 xG! Cool moment for Ayari as his father is Tunisian and he had an opportunity to play for the national team.

Maxim de Cuyper (Belgium): 1-1 draw with Egypt. 6.7 match rating.

De Cuyper came on in the 56th minute. Yellow card in the 75th minute. Choice-Mortgage2411 has some more to say about this game in the comments!

Diego Gomez (Paraguay): 4-1 loss to USA. 6.4 match rating. Subbed off at the 80th minute.

Quite honestly an uninspiring Diego Gomez performance as his team was on the receiving end of belt from the USMNT. Outshined on the pitch by ex-Brightonian Enciso. I’ve got the feeling that while it might be a rough World Cup for Gomez, he’ll hit a worldie at some point.

Pascal Gross (Germany): DNP

Ferdi Kadioglu (Turkey): 2-0 loss to Australia. 7.6 match rating.

In a shocking defeat to the Socceroos, Kadioglu was the best player for Turkey. He had no help up the left side but him and Guler were arguably the only bright spots for Turkey. Created 5 chances and completed 92 of his 102 passes.

Bart Verbruggen (Netherlands): 2-2 Draw with Japan. 5.8 match rating.

A rough game for the man in between the posts as he lets in two goals. A deflection on one can be blamed for the miss but you hope to grab at least one of those. Was only tested one time outside of the scores.

Mats Wieffer (Netherlands): DNP

Honorable Ex Players

Jan Paul van Hecke (Netherlands): Stout defending got him snapped up by RDZ before he could drive his price up even more. Looked really really good and made a couple of key challenges.

Alexis Mac Allister (Argentina): Bald Mac Allister played well in a game where the 🐐 took over.

Moisés Caicedo (Ecuador): FotMob doesn’t agree (6.9) but I thought Caicedo looked good and created more chances than I’ve seen from him in a minute.

Marc Cucurella (Spain): A newly minted Real Madrid man, looked great in spite of the 0-0 draw.

Leandro Trossard (Belgium): Didn’t watch! Someone let me know.

Viktor Gyökeres (Sweden): Goal and assist was good for 3rd best on the team behind Ayari and Isak (2 assists and a goal).

Julio Enciso (Paraguay): Enciso I thought looked like the best player on Paraguay. He was all over the place and walked away with an assist.

Jürgen Locadia (Curaçao): Who knew this guy was still kicking?

(Not expecting anyone to have detailed answers, more so just for the sake of discussion and to distract me from yesterday’s result!)

To my knowledge of our outbound transfer strategy, The Tony Bloom Machine spits out a number that is a player’s “value”. If another team meets that number and the player wants to go, we accept the transfer offer.

My question arises from the stickiness of that number. How much can that number change based on recent performances/seasons? The thought here is that it feels we have had several players who began to eye a move and check out with a noticeable decrease in their performance.

Take a player like Baleba. Does his “value” decrease from its peak after a statistically unimpressive season? Especially when you can point to external factors being an explanation?

I’m looking for an album with an album cover that was a chess board, maybe on some stairs? Chess board has a clear alcohol-ish bottle on it with a tape label of the album name. Genre was alternative/indie/rock.

Thanks in advance!