[SIGNED perm] William Troost-ekong

Ekong will have to warm his spot. If he gets his head down and trains hard, I’m sure he will get in the starting 11. Ivic would be stupid to bring him in right away. 3 clean sheets, chemistry and understanding between the backline which started in pre-season. A couple of shakey moments m, but all in all, we’ve been solid.

Ekong will have to take his place on the bench. I’m sure during the break Ivic will have a good look at him though. So who knows, maybe after the break he’s in the starting 11. However I would feel the boys, that have done well so far. None of them deserve to be dropped.

 

Wouldn't put that on Cathcart at all, its Kabasele who gives away the ball, then bizarrely tries to over compensate by running out to stop the cross, instead of covering the middle

 

I doubt Ivic will start WTE as long as we are playing/defending well & winning. He'll wait for a crap performance/result or an injury. He will probably get minutes from the bench in the mean time.

 

So who was Cathcart supposed to be marking?

With 3 at the back, Kabasele does the right thing in going towards the ball and he should have another CB nearby. Cathcart reacts to slow to cover in my opinion.

Splitting hairs anyway as I think Cathcart has been decent. I just don’t think he’s been faultless.

 

https://twitter.com/AdamLeventhal/status/1310302277140385794

Adam Leventhal is saying the same thing. Troooost-Ekong is due to arrive in London tomorrow.

 

Agree that was more on Kaba but Cathcart made a very similar pass right at the start of the second half but we just dealt with it better.

 

Leventhal has just seen the original tweet hasn’t he?

 

I think he has haha.

 

Cathcarts job is to track the left winger advancing on the far side

Kabasele actually has a good starting position in the 1st picture (after his misplaced pass), the problem is that he makes the classic error of trying to over compensate for his first mistake and races out to close down the right winger, rather than sticking with the centre forward in the middle (where the actual danger is) and letting Wilmot chase back the right winger instead



By the time we get to the second picture, Kabasele has left their centre forward completely unmarked 12 yards out in order to gamble on blocking the cross. Cathcart desperately tries to get across to compensate for Kaba's decision but obviously can't make up the ground in time



Thankfully for us, the scummer hit the bar and we went up the other end and scored

 

Fair enough, I just watched it back and you’re right.

 

I’ve heard this could happen tomorrow

#itk #breakingnews

 

Thought Cathcart was great against Luton to be fair and I’m definitely not a fan of his.

 

If we keep 3 at the back we need at least one who can pass forward, or even better, bring the ball out of defence as well.

 

Yeah he's generally been fine overall so far. Poor on the ball as always but agree he's been solid defensively. It's just that he's an ageing defender who isn't anything like Premier League quality any more, so I'd rather continue to develop and give game time to Wilmot, who's performances I think have been to a fairly similar level.

 

I think it's important to have that 'nous' and 'knowhow' at this level. He's been there and done it in terms of getting out of the division.

I think keeping Cathcart & Kabasele in the team is important, this fella will clearly add some strength and depth in this position which is needed.

 

His long diagonal switch up to Sema did get us the goal to be fair to him. Him and Kabasele both seem to almost do worse when they have time on the ball to think and try pick a pass.

There is enough games in quick succession that I suspect both will get enough game time. Wilmot should be the priority though as he is young and has the potential to be a premier league quality player.

 

That can happen when you're always falling over yourself to nitpick and correct people in every other post.

 

I thought Wilmot had a good game yesterday, in the two previous league games he gave the ball away quite a few times and was caught out of position again a few times, yesterday he did what he had to do, no more no less! He is young and has a lot of learning still to do, playing in a three is helping him get up to speed nicely!

 

Agree. Don't have any stats to back it up but felt like Luton didn't press that high or persistently on us, perhaps due to being scared of Sarr's pace. Think this helped Wilmot as he had more time on the ball and showed a decent range of passes.

 

Yawn.

Maybe just evidence that it’s not beyond me to admit when I’m wrong. You should try it.

 

Thanks.

 

Well WTE is supposed to coming over tomorrow according to the Wobby, so hopefully he will sign this week, but even if he does I doubt he will start, but might possibly be on the bench for Saturday.

As for who WTE would replace in the current starting back three, barring injuries I would imagine we will have to wait until the Derby Co game on Oct 17th before we would know that. Of course that is if Vlad decides to break up the existing back three and parachute WTE into the starting eleven.

 

Our defence is pretty good for Championship level, I'm not sure WTE will walk straight into our team (especially when we're winning and keeping clean sheets), but it does look like he'd be replacing Kabasele. He prefers to play in the middle of a three, might not quite be as quick as Kabs, but is better with the ball at his feet (Cathcart isn't great in this regard, but better than Kabasele)

 

Sema was good yesterday, made a cracking start, hope he's not one to be sold because he'll be a top player in the Championship if we keep him and he avoids injury. That said, our corners were generally poor yesterday, had one where Chalobah should have scored, but in general, a lot of low crosses which they telegraphed

 

What stats are these from mate? I had Cathcart on 76% pass completion - behind Sarr 85%, Garner 81%, Wilmot 79% and then Sema + Cathcart on 76%

 

That's great, but why exactly are you showing me these stats? I'm unsure of the point you're trying to prove? Is it that Cathcart is a good passer of a football after I said he's generally poor on the ball? Because regardless of whether that's true or not (and it seems that your stats might actually be wrong anyway), it's clearly not the basis of my reasoning as to why, if given a choice between the two, I would pick Wilmot over him. Even then I've said I agree that Cathcart has been solid overall.

I also praised players at times yesterday, particularly Ngakia, and posted after the game about it being a good performance, but of course it's yet again convenient for you to go out of your way to ignore that. Isn't it quite amazing how I'm told I'm "so negative" and to be more positive, yet when there are examples of me being more positive, it is purposely and completely ignored by the likes of you in favour of highlighting my "negativity" that is supposedly oh so painful for you to read and engage with. Laughable, really. Our corners were s**t, you've alluded to that yourself, so why you're even mentioning that in regards to me having pointed it out I truly have no idea.

"I appreciate you thrive off negativity, so let me just go out of my way to create a post that fits that narrative whilst purposely ignoring anything that's been said that doesn't".

Maybe you should pick your battles better..

 

it's a long campaign and we will get plenty of injuries, so all the CB's will play a part I have no doubt

 

Thing is Norn, stats are great and all but they just don't tell the whole story. Cathcart can top all of those lists and it still doesn't prove Nath wrong. Cathcart could have easily racked up most of those tapping to ball back to Foster or rolling the simple pass out to Ngakia. I'm much more interested in what he does under pressure and I think he's middling to poor in that scenario. I don't think Luton's forwards pressed much and Cathcart rarely had a rush on his hands but when he did the quality of his out ball was much reduced.

I think he'd be my first choice to drop to the bench too, if Troost-Ekong can get Kaba in line.

 

I do feel measuring pass completion stats etc for centre backs isn't massively useful without context - my impression (which may or may not be born out in the stats) is that Cathcart tends to take the slightly easier pass, whereas Wilmot is more willing to try the difficult passes.

It is strange that our set pieces looked pretty good first two games, but were pretty dreadful last game. Maybe we felt we could't get much joy with ogres they had defending. With all that said Nate should probably have buried one.

 

Fox in the box