On paper yes. Kambaye isn't consistent enough for me yet and gets caught out chasing back. Louza will need to adapt quickly because challenges will be flying in right left and centre. Choudhury just needs to win the ball and play it simple.
Please carry on about how good the defence is based on nonsense valuations. How much is Kabasele worth?
So what has our years in the premier league given us? 6 from 8 now so about £600m and we are worse off now than we have ever been. The premier league is cancer for that very reason, unless you are bankrolled by a nation state or some billionaire you will ruin yourself trying to stay there (see contracts handed out to Deeney, Rose etc) or look at Forest, they could still come down as well. I wouldn’t rather get spanked by Liverpool than by Stoke. I don’t care what league we are in, I want to see players who play for the club and fans. Not the current crop who couldn’t have pointed to Watford on a map of you held a gun to their heads. People have different opinions on what success looks like, for you clearly it’s being on MOTD and having Lineker smear at us cos we don’t belong. I’m happy with not belonging, I don’t want to belong as to me the premier league is just a reflection of the current state of society. A rich persons play thing and who cares about the little people.
Hey there. How are you? Enjoying the season so far? I heard that now you’re working in a bank? The family man, a football fan eh
Yes fair points but we do have Asprilla too who I omitted plus of course Clevs and Gosling as back up or spare parts.
Nice summary. Yeah I reckon most are in the middle but like with other wider aspects of society their voices tend to get drowned out by the more extreme ends of the spectrum.
For me it's more frustrating especially with say Laird. Edwards clearly likes a 3-5-2 and over the summer looked like we were setting up for said formation.
I was joking about the valuations , obviously the £16m was artificially inflated although hes still a good lb. The rest of the points stand but I can understand why you would choose to ignore them and make it about Kabasele instead.
I would have liked Laird and certainly above Gasper so share the frustration, But do Pedro, Saar and Davis naturally fit into a 3-5-2? I really don't think it's bad thing if the thinking evolves into a 4-3-3.
My summary of the window is that once again we’ve done ok BUT are left with a nagging feeling that for not much more outlay , we could all be feeling very pleased this morning. And I think that’s what is doing frustrating. One or two more key positions filled and bingo. But once again we’ve been left slightly short. It’s like that classic poem about for the want of a nail, the shoe was lost etc and eventually the whole kingdom falls because of something small. The hints were there on Tuesday night when Rob said any more incomings were unlikely, and so it proved. Maybe he didn’t tell the club he wanted another right back. If, however, he did and we didn’t deliver, that’s not great. It’s natural that by now we all want to know where the season is likely to take us, but tbh I still have no idea. For me something doesn’t quite feel right. We seem to be muddling along, waiting to find our best side and formation. However, we’ve picked up 12 points doing so, which I guess is a good thing. There were several positives about the window. Keeping Sarr and Pedro for one. Never underestimate the importance of potential match winners. I’m looking forward to seeing Davis and Hause, Louza will feel like a new signing, and Choudhuru has already hit the ground running. So it’s certainly not a fail, or a manager hung out to dry as some on Twitter like to endlessly howl. However, it does feel like a fairly decent window that could have been even better. And that feeling is going to gnaw away at us isn’t it every time Kamara starts at rigjt-back or Gaspar can’t play three times a week Pity
No I agree with your formation going forward. The way JP played just behind the front two was majestic at times. Sarr proved he can as one of a two up top. Add Davis and Asprilla and it looks more than capable going forward. Louza will obviously add to our midfield but I'm still concerned about the right side of our defence. Hopefully a confident Gaspar and say FS will for a decent pairing on that side.
If you don't think our current players have at least been putting a proper shift in this season then you can't have been paying attention. We were poor last year, with some over the hill mercenary signings we shouldn't have made, but you can't fault our work rate so far under Edwards. Our two best players probably couldn't have pointed to Watford on a map before we signed them, but they're still our best players and wouldn't be here helping us to potentially get promoted again were it not for our years of PL football. If you'd really rather us have the likes of Shaq Forde, James Morris and Ashley Fletcher starting for us as we languish in the bottom half of the Champ then that's very odd, but if you insist.
Covid affected every club, and if anything it should’ve been more of a leveller between us and bigger clubs who would’ve lost more revenue through gate receipts and closed the gap between us and them.
I mean, I’d say it’s far more nuanced than that. But I’m not going to get into an endless debate about it. You think we have had a bad window and seem to think keeping Joao Pedro and Sarr is a moot point because we didn’t get a RWB who attacks, despite the HC never even mentioning once that he wanted one - I disagree. I think keeping those players is huge regardless of the circumstances. I doubt either of us will be swayed from our views so happy to agree to disagree.
I think I'm the only teat that thinks we look stronger now... (assuming the loanees live up to the hype and bachmann continues this form).
Absolutely. Which is a plus but it would of been nice with both. It's a mistake imo but one the hopefully benefits us going forward.
A good manager would adapt the formation to fit the players he has. Unfortunately we do not have a good manager. That ex Udinese manager would have us win the league with 100 points, for example.
We were in the relegation zone and on our third manager before anyone knew covid existed. Relegation set us back, and relegation happened due to negligence from the owner. Covid didn’t help of course, but then if it didn’t help us who did it help? Every club has their ground closed in the same way as we did. If covid affected us more than any other club it’s because of how poor our finances were in comparison to other clubs, and again that is down to the owner not covid itself. Anyone blaming covid for our current position really isn’t seeing the wood for the trees.
There was negligence from the owner in our recruitment which cost us, but I still think we'd have narrowly survived that season given our form under Pearson were it not for the covid disruption killing our momentum and giving Villa time to galvanise.
Relegation for any small/med club can ultimately be blamed on the owner. Like the Stokes, WBAs, Swanseas, QPRs, Cardiffs, Burnleys, Norwichs, Bournemouths etc of this world, anything but excellent stewardship will result in relegation. Only the boys with the huge budgets and endless supply of funds get to stay forever. However I do think we would have escaped under Pearson given the 10/15 game form we were on had covid not caused a huge reset. We'll never know.
The frustration is that it was almost an ok window - not signing a RWB is just completely nonsensical and undermines the manager and his preferred system. The good signings we have made have the potential to be very good, but it still feels scattergun. The exciting signings are also all loans so it still feels like a short term fix. We have cleared a lot of dead wood, but the squad now feels light, with very little depth beyond the first eleven. It is also really disappointing that we have made zero permanent signings of promising young players. The likes of Twine, Wilson, McNally and many others have been hoovered up by our rivals for fees that seem well within our reach and we have continued to shop in the foreign journeyman market. I'm not saying the players named would immediately improve the team, but it would be a statement of intent, a change in direction. Meanwhile our existing young players have been quietly ushered out the door - Baah, Mepude, Quina, Penaranda. Again not saying they were the answer, but it continues to undermine any claim we might have to be a route to the top for young players.
I think you can still blame the club for that though, the enforced break was either a disadvantage or an advantage depending on how you approached it and we had a choice with that. We were hell bent on getting the season written off as our means of survival, when in reality with the sums of money at stake by scrapping the season it was never ever going to happen. We chose to go down a path which killed our momentum and that choice backfired.
But there has been so so many over the hill journeymen over the last 10 years, hundreds. We sign like 15 players every summer most never see the team sheet and there is no connection to the team anymore. Just another interchangeable player from another backwater who may or may not come good. Why we didn’t just build a team around the Zola team and just add one or two players every year I don’t know. And it’s not about being unambitious, punching above our weight has appeared (to someone looking in) ruined our club and left us on the brink. Hopefully it isn’t that bad, but this mad rush to get back to the promised land where a good season is finishing 10th and maybe winning 8 games to me isn’t my main concern or priority
This is quite interesting. Sqaud retention for 22-23. https://twitter.com/experimental361/status/1565640452853882880/photo/2
Pearson had Covid pretty badly and for an extended period which in hindsight explained a lot about the shocking post break malaise - im not sure that was a path the club chose to go down. But no doubt Gino didn't wash his hands properly so it was probably the clubs fault Pearson got it in the first place.
On the face of that it looks like we have done a good job of rebuilding. Then you realise it just means most minutes will be played by former back-ups - not so much of a rebuild, and certainly not good in the long term.
Agreed with much of this, although Asprilla is a new player for us this season at least, and Baah is just on loan
"Why we didn’t just build a team around the Zola team and just add one or two players every year I don’t know." The team which failed to get promoted?! Anyway, that's in some part what we did and why we got promoted the following season. And even just adding one or two players every year, and given many of their ages, would have meant we'd have replaced them all by now anyway with likely more other "interchangeable players from another backwater who may or may not come good". Also, here's a reminder of Zola's team for the playoffs vs Leicester: Almunia - was a very good keeper Doyley - one of our own, but not very good. Wouldn't even get in our team now despite our problems on the right side of defence Cassetti - was a good player, but was 35, and as much of an ""interchangeable player from another backwater " as Gaspar who likely couldn't point out Watford on a map Ekstrand - meh. Was very much an ""interchangeable player from another backwater " and wasn't particularly good in the PL. Hause and Sierralta are similar, if not slightly preferable. Anya - had pace, but lacked quality. Filled in early on in the PL but wasn't really up to it. Abdi - a good player of the type we're currently lacking in our team, true, but also wasn't up to the PL. Battochio - meh, not sure he was even better than Kayembe. Another random johnny foreigner. Chalobah - was very good back then, sure. We now have Choudhury and Louza playing in a similar role to him though and they're also good. Briggs - dog turd loanee. Even worse than our current RB options Deeney - was good then and started off well in the PL, but that only lasted until Ighalo left Vydra - was good then, but never made much of an impact in the PL As for our time in the PL apparently appearing to "leave us on the brink" weren't we even more "on the brink" under Bassini?! And we didn't even have 6 years of often enjoyable PL football to show for it.
Yep. I think we all get so wrapped up in the idea of bringing in a few gems to ensure we've got a decent team, but it's clear the club IS looking to "reset" - and a huge part of that is calming our finances. Yes a good RWB would have been ideal but RE now has a totally reasonable bunch (for this division) we've had a good clear out and we've got Hause, Louza, Davis still to integrate.... I'm sure RE is already looking at who of his youngsters he might try and coach into a RWB, Hungbo..?? I'm delighted we've kept JP and Sarr - best strike force in the division.... Let's enjoy.!!
