Wait two weeks until the window opens and sign some players who aren't utterly pathetic? Better off putting Sema central with Dele-Bashiru than signing this loser.
The reaction of Cardiff fans seems to be one of complete bafflement rather than laughing at us. Most seem unable to understand why anyone has signed him based on what they saw.
He just needs to deliver three 6/10 performances then we never need see him again. Whether he can hit those heights remains to be seen.
Why don’t we do that too? We have four winnable games until then and our only available midfielder is someone who has completed one league 90 mins in 3 years at the club (on Sunday).
Exactly. He’s been training with us for just this eventuality and just needs to make no catastrophic errors in 4 games before he can sit on the sidelines counting that dosh from the few contracted months he negotiated on top.
And if TDB has an injury set back? We're back to wasting our best attacker in holding mid, or some kid who just lost 5-0 to Oxford United's U23. Better to sign an actual midfielder as a stop gap, even if he's not going to be *good*, at least he's better than the options above?
I have literally not seen a single negative comment about Bacuna on a Cardiff fans forum or any other forum . Literally.
Tbf there was a tweet in the the summer from Cardiff with loads of not very complementary responses but maybe he will be better here ? Hopefully will be match fit and keep fit for a start !
Looks like we really don't learn our lessons as fans of the great Watford FC, what with the numerous posts loudly declaring how he will only be required for 4 games. He's going to play more minutes than anyone else come the rest of the season - it's written in the stars. And not in a good way. Don't get me wrong, though - I understand the necessary Cactch-22 nature of it all. It's just deeply, deeply uninspiring again, and still at least predominantly a manifestation of two already hugely evident things - terrible recruitment and squad-building in the summer, based around our patented 'seat-of-your-pants'/arrogant-kunt ethos, and either the fact that those curses placed on us last year have not in fact worn off, or that our medical department continues to be rather impressively shyte.
Couldn't we have just played the Gaspar kid we signed from Arsenal? He's a midfielder and definitely wasn't signed as a favour for his dad.
We've got Huddersfield, Millwall Swansea and Norwich to play before the transfer window opens, and knowing our reluctance to play people straight away, probably Reading in the cup and Blackpool to play before Jan signings come on stream. Louza's out, Choudhury's out, Cleverly's out, Gosling's out, Kayembe's out; do we really want Pedro wasted for 6 games? Who else were we going to get out of contract? Sensible signing.
No problem with this signing at all. Anyone saying wait for the window needs to give their head a wobble. We have four huge games between now and then, and to go into them with only one recognised central midfielder would be nuts. I expect he will be a squad player after January but it’s a sensible addition at the moment.
Given we get a player injured every game we may need to bring in about 20 new signings to get through this season. Hopefully Bacuna picks up an injury early doors
I'd completely agree if we'd got a couple injuries to CBs and needed to bring in...Zat Knight (or whoever) that that would be an indictment of our (lack of) recruitment. But I think going into a Championship season with Cleverly, Gosling, Choudhury, Kayembe, Asprilla, and eventually Louza/TBD as options wasn't the worst crime the recruitment team has committed. Fully agree on the deficiencies of the medical team, though. Can't be a coincidence at this point that we regularly have one of the worst injury records every year.
Not convinced with the midfielders there's much they could have done. What can you do with Cleverley who was following specialist advice but ended up needing a op, Louza who got a completely freak injury in a nothing incident, Choudhury who appears to have picked up a matchday contact injury and TDB who has been broken for most of the past 2 years? Gosling's achilles was clearly a loading type injury but then Bilic has said in a number of interviews he speaks to the fitness/medical team often, they've been telling him what certain players can do but it's clear sometimes he has to risk pushing beyond that to put a reasonable XI on the pitch. It's probably only slightly too simplistic to say Gosling was only 10 minutes away from being fine and having the WC break to recover completely. I'd love to be a fly on the wall and hear some inside analysis of Call me Rob's summer pre-season fitness programme. Bilic hinted quite heavily at one point he'd inherited a squad that wasn't up the rigours of Championship football. And we know a lot of in-season injury problems can stem from a poor pre-season.
Must admit, I always disliked Drinkwater but gradually realised it was because he was an annoying gritty terrier that could break up play. I'd have him in for 5 months...
Tom DB is a big worry as well. I've always liked the lad and wanted him to come good etc. To see him back is great and he moved the ball well against Hull, HOWEVER to me it looked like he was being really careful not to get into much "contact". Maybe I'm wrong but I'll bet that knee is not going to take a proper block tackle....
Not defending the signing but there are quite a lot of comments from Cardiff fans about how well he started for them before his levels dropped. In fairness that's what we need, if he can be ok for a month then job done. Not sure who else we could have got to be fair
Years of sitting on decent money, then half a season realising that you're washed up, he might well have a bit of fight in him. We can only hope. All we need is a handful of acceptable performances out of him
Think expectations are slightly different as well. They paid £3m for him and presumably imagined him being a fairly important player. We just need a body in for 2 weeks until the current crisis abates with returning players and new signings available. Its a shambles that yet again we need to dip into this market, but I'm not sure this requires the uproar as the present alternatives are Joao and Sema in midfield and then being short in other positions.
Can easily see him becoming another Sánchez in that he gets praised for putting in performances which aren't totally useless
Certainly wouldn't disagree with this either, but my own personal opinion is that that list is tempered by contextual views of several of those players, as well as the knock-on from other positions - our spectacular right-sided defensive recruitment failure meant Gosling was drawn away from that midfield crew, and wasn't considered good enough to regularly contribute before forcing his way in thanks to some of those sorcery results. Alongside that, for me it was always profligacy to rely on Cleverley contributing much of anything given his injury problems and the way he's looked physically and leg-ily over the past year or so, whilst Kayembe's quality and ability to contribute at the level we really need/want was always a question mark at best. Then there's the decision to essentially wait and rely on the sole player who could make a midfield work when they were always guaranteed to be out for the first couple of months, and subsequently working their way back to fitness; probably liable to re-injury, which almost immediately happened. Bad luck and bad medical practice (to the varying degrees you, I, or any other observer choose to believe) but none of it was particularly hard to imagine/envisage/prepare for, really, to my mind. Therein lies the pant seat flying, still.
Just had a nice assist for Deeney in the opening minutes of the Brum game. Looks a decent signing already.
Did what I expected he would do. Rusty, not world beater but at least puts foot in and didn't do a huge amount wrong by being a body in midfield. Will have much stiffer tests. Allowed Pedro to be an attacking player and that in itself made the signing worthwhile.
Job done with JP scoring the goals today, if Bacuna can keep it up it will look a very good stop-gap signing and I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t get anyone else in as the likes of Kayembe and Cleverly could well be back a few weeks into January.
Looked very overweight, unless he was wearing a few layers. Didn't seem to stop him getting around the pitch for an hour though, plus I saw him pass forwards so he's already better than Kayembe.
