The Championship 2020-21

What I would say is that Bournemouth look a lot more settled, I think I've underestimated them for sure, but hopefully there's a lot more to come from us, whereas I don't think Bournemouth are going to get any better. Besides, they're only 3 points ahead of us at the moment, and they were outplayed by a Boro side we beat playing in second gear

 

I’m definitely not a happy clapper but I do have to say that some of the negativity this early is well over the top.

To put it in perspective Brentford picked up 12 points from their first 11 games, and still finished 3rd on 83 points. In fact they were on 7 points after 7 games.

Our squad has been greatly unsettled with all the nonsense. Ivic literally only had 10 players fit enough to work with in week 1 of pre-season.

His comment the other day about looking forward to the break because it will allow them to do things they weren’t able to do during preseason is very telling.

Once the window closes on Monday, we will have a better idea of who we have. Of course some will still move to English clubs, but I don’t see many of them doing that. Prices will go up after Monday because replacements will be harder to get. I think you will see a lot of clubs do most of their business between Sunday and Monday. The next 48 hours are massive for most teams.

I fully believe that after the break we will be even sharper, the players will know what to do and the squad will be settled.

Let’s not forget that Ivic’s favourite formation is 4-3-3. We don’t currently have the players to do that.

Once we sing a LB and CDM, I fully expect him (and hope) to switch to his 4-3-3 and drop 3-5-2.

Anyway it’s very early days. No-one has outplayed us. We’ve been the best team in every game so far. Even today we battered Reading. A goal against the run of play and they stick 10 men behind the ball, dive and cheat their way to victory. Ugly but that’s what crap teams like Reading do. We will learn from it and the players will grow from the experience. Get Perica, Hughes, Deeney and Gray back in this break and all of a sudden it looks different. Plus we will sign a LB and CDM.

After the break our team should look like

Foster

Ngakia, Ekong, Kaba, new LB

Garner, New CDM, Hughes (c)

Sarr, Gray, Pedro

That’s a top 2 team

Plus the likes of Wilmot, Cathcart, Chalobah, Dele-Bashiru, Cleverley, Quina, Penaranda, Perica and Deeney all providing options from the bench. It’s a very solid team.

It’s a long shot, and I don’t think we will keep any of them, but imagine if no-one takes a risk on Deulofeu, Capoue or Welbeck. They will have a tough choice to make. Work hard and put themselves in the shop window for January, or rot, training away from the squad and being completely unmatch fit in January. Even if we have them for 10-15 games. Those three change our team dramatically.

The break has come at a good time for us. Time to regroup, not many internationals leaving, so Ivic will have the bulk of the squad to work with. Work on shape, fitness, movement and finishing will be Ivic’s priority based on his press conferences so far.

I still think we will get promoted.

 

Great post Markoa I totally agree with you

 

I second that, a great post Markoa, made me feel a lot happier after yesterday's defeat.

 

This. Give me Sinclair and Murray over Deulofeu and Suarez every day of the week.

 

Excellent post. That changes somewhat if Barry Douglas is the standard, however. Masina is better than him.

 

That's some implosion from Brentford.

We stay 7th.

 

Brentford lose 4-2 at home to Preston. 4 points from 4 games. Imagine their fans would swap their start for ours.

 

That was a real bizarre one. They were 2-0 up at half time as well.

 

Very bizarre as they haven't seemed to have any issues in the League Cup against Prem opposition. I for one hope they go all the way in that competition!

 

Agree with that team , but I’d have Cath in for Kab.

New CDM looks like it could be Capoue staying .
New LB is King Ken, with Massina or Kiko as back up .

 

Sema is wasted at LB and although he is a willing runner he is ultimately more effective higher up the pitch than further back. We need an LB.

 

Gibbs-White on loan at Swansea looking by far the signing of the summer in the Champ.

Annoying they landed him while we've ended up with Garner.

 

Doesn’t matter where he plays , he’s still best player on the park .

 

Struber has left Barnsley for NY Red Bulls.

 

Taken them as far as they could go tbf, did a brilliant job to even get them to stay up by default, but they have such little firepower they make our strikeforce look like prime Ronaldo

 

Unless they appoint another manager who can perform miracles, that's them down I suppose then

 

The EFL on Instagram just shared the top 3 rated players according to their FIFA rating in each of the EFL divisions.

From the Championship:
1) Ben Foster - 79
2) Ismaila Sarr - 78
3) Etienne Capoue - 78

Even if we're just scraping a few 1-0 wins here and there in real life, in the digital world we're taking the piss.

 

In fairness we could have the below first X1 and i reckon you would think we were poor

 

Matt Grimes>Busquets though

 

Lamouchi sacked as well!

Who else were we linked with before Ivic? Must be quaking in their boots.

 

Hahahahahahahaha.

 

Chris Hughton quickly appointed too. So can expect them to suddenly be harder to beat.

At least he won't automatically be favourite for our job for a while...

 

He'd made a crap start with them this season though. Albeit perhaps links with other clubs could have destabilised him and the dressing room?

Either way, I think we dodged one there; we're surely better off with Ivic than we would have been with him.

 

It's definitely not his fault tbf, he's done what he can with such limited forward options, so his relationship with their board sounded strained enough as it was, interest from Red Bull was just the final nail in the coffin. I preferred Ivic from the get-go, but Struber is a fine manager, they were nailed on for League 1 before he came along, but he kept them up by hook or by crook by playing some very impressive football

 

We are positively Burnley-like compared to them lol, just how many players do they have? I don't see them being in the play-offs, upper mid-table at best, especially as they already have ground to make up

 

Yeah, but it seems to have completely deserted them already this season.

 

Equally we could be 18th in Championship after 36 games and you would see the dross put out by Pozzo as this team.

 

yeh no chance of them doing that. Idiots who think that might happen! We need proven championship goalscorers

 

Owners didn't want to back him in the transfer market and lost some of his first team as well which he thought weren't adequately replaced. Moving to NYRB gets him back in the Red Bull machine and primes him for the Salzburg job when Marsch gets a better offer in a season or so.

 

We're still weeks away from Vlad's tactical approach being bedded in and have had far from a settled squad.

Despite that, we've had some excellent spells in games; even in the Reading game we were largely dominant, we just didn't threaten much. I put a lot of that down to players not yet being familiar with the system and those they are playing with.

This should improve in the coming weeks. If it doesn't, that's the time to start getting concerned.

As with Joka, it takes time for everything to come together. Once the dust settles I reckon we'll be in good shape.

 

This summer, so far, Championship clubs have collectively spent around £50m on incoming transfers. £8m of that is Norwich, £8.5m is Forest so around £34m split between the other 22 clubs.

Last summer it was around £175m.

Obviously everyone knows teams are spending less in the current climate but hadn't realised the drop off was that big. Huge opportunity to go straight back up this year, with everyone struggling. Made a good start keeping Sarr, Hughes and Capoue.

 

Capoue + Hughes + 1 of Clevs/Chalobah will be one of the best midfields in the league, I said in another thread this is one of the weakest Championships I've ever seen.