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joey_big_nose

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Everything posted by joey_big_nose

  1. I'd say we're one good striker from being a good team personally on paper. If Venkys have the cash I'd write Brereton off and go out and buy a top striker. It's the only area we are seriously deficient. Simple as that id say. A winger also if possible. But we're not too bad. All the other comments are jumping off the deep end after a run of poor results. The losing goals late is a mentality thing which a decent manger should sort out. Hopefully Mowbray will do that. If not sadly we need to swap him out
  2. I can't really see why that would be to be honest. Main mistake I can see Mowbray making is bringing in Brereton who looks no way good enough. Everything else he has done seems reasonable, performances have largely been modestly good, and he's in a table position we would have accepted at the start of the season. But to lose winning positions again and again is not sustainable.
  3. How we handle the last 30 mins of a game has turned into a very significant problem. One that could ultimately cost Mowbray his job I think if it doesn't change between now and the end of the season. Seems to be something fundamentally wrong. I'm not sure what it is, but it's happened far too often for there to be purely chance.
  4. I just can't actually see us paying £7m for him. I think we must be paying a much smaller sum (like less than 1m) wrapped up in a lot of other conditional clauses that lead to that number. Otherwise it's a totally crazy deal. He's looked a total fish out of water every time he's played. Not just from a physicality and technique standpoint, but also from his positioning and movement which are bizarre. He's not only not what we need, hes *profoundly* not what we need - virtually any way you cut it. Which - when you consider we haven't spent more than 2m on a player in 5 years - is exceptionally weird. Unless he was signed for a lot less cash. Or - I hope - I'm missing some harbinger of his quality somewhere. But forgive me I can't see it.
  5. From what I've seen Gallagher is a far better bet than Brereton to lead the line.
  6. Sort of, he continued to be used on the wing and then sold. It's only at Fulham he starting playing centrally and making the full use of his talent.
  7. Disappointing considering where we were at half time. By the end of the game we were holding on to a draw against 10 men and that should never happen. We've got some talented young players, but they have some pretty significant weak areas. Armstrong has pace to burn but picks the wrong passes all the time. Rothwell oozes technical class but has major lapses of concentration, Dack is a fabulous attacking mid but can be man-marked out of a game. Onthe upside they are all young so should improve. On a side note I can see why Mowbrays chooses Smallwood over Rothwell. Smallwood was very solid. But I think there's something of Cairney about Rothwell, hes not physically strong but he is fantastic on the ball. I think we have to accept that he will make mistakes as he learns, but let him have a run of games at cm as in terms of his ability he looks like he could turn into a premier league player. It's about making a strategic investment. I fear like Cairney under Bowyer Rohhwell wwillonly play a marginal role and have to move for his career to kick on.
  8. I'd say a 7/10. Hes got us promoted and competitive in the top half of the Championship on very little if you exclude Brereton. If Dack goes he will bring £20m+ into the club. I can't see how that's a 5/10.
  9. Good analysis that. Looking at the fixtures we've had probably the easier half of the season so far too. Still got to play most of the clubs above us away. Realistically finishing top half would be a very good season. Then it's all about how we recruit over the summer. The reality is we will need to pull together a high quality squad with real togetherness to make a real promotion push. The odds, like all clubs without parachute payments, will be against us. Hopefully Venkys can help.
  10. Bit harsh on recruitment. He's brought decent quality in on a tight budget (Brereton excepted who is early days atm). Dack was an exceptional buy, while the loans who have come in have broadly been good.
  11. I'd say big money signings like this you expect to see some combination of great skill, great pace or great physical dominance. Rhodes had outstanding finishing, Bellamy great pace and skill, Santa Cruz great physicality. For £7m you really expect there to be something remarkable in there. Even players who we have signed for a third of that money have come in with something exciting about them (Marshalls skill, Dack obviously, Grahams experience and goal scoring record etc.)
  12. Speedie gave an excellent answer above, but to add to it the state /federal dynamic hurts the US response severely to any major disaster. A single event can have a dozen different jurisdictions responding (multople city, state and federal agencies) which makes things very confused. Information integration and sharing tends to be poor as a result. Non federal countries like the UK (you have devolution to Scotland, Wales and NI but services are well integrated for efficiency) have a much easier time coordinating and responding.
  13. What worries me about Brereton is he seems to lack a lot of basics that are core for his role like control with back to goal, getting in the box and physical presence, while he seems to gravitate to things that aren't core like dropping deep and running at the defence with the ball. I like to think I give players a fair shake, but it seems pretty evident to me he is going to struggle. You can see why he is played wide. I want him to do well, but if I was a betting man I wouldn't put money on this working out. Haven't seen a major signing look so out of alignment with what we need for a long time. (Because I'm sad Ive just gone through 15 seasons of Transfer Market and the only one I could find similarly ill fitting was Barry Ferguson who was a very strange signing when you have Tugay. But even then he was a good player in his role.) Still early days yada yada. Looking forward to being proved wrong. But it seems a monumental dropped bollock from where I'm sitting.
  14. Amazing! I just checked who qualified for the finals and it is England, Portugal, Switzerland and Netherlands. I reckon we might just about be favourites out of that bunch.
  15. Not sure that's totally true - we (supposedly) splurged 7m on Brereton and he looks a someone to develop rather than the finished product. It's mad but I don't think you can get established championship promotion quality players for less than 5-10m a piece now. The best value players you get on loan (as we have with Palmer and Reed).
  16. ?.. They have three of the finest players in world football - Hazard, Courtois and De Brunye - plus Lukaku whose having a bit of a dip, but when in form is superb. Their team is filled with top CL regulars. I think they would be big favourites to beat us again if we played them. It's important I think to keep things in perspective. Otherwise we will get onto that old cycle of hypeing up to an unreasonable degree then blowing the whole system up when we almost certainly get beaten by a better team. I'll go into a tournament expecting England to challenge to win when we have the top bracket of players. But we just don't. There's always a chance in football that a team can win without being in the top bracket of player quality - Greece in 2004, Leicester in 2016, arguably Portugal in 2016 also - but it's rare.
  17. I get your point, but France, Belgium, Brazil all have teams entirely made of world class guaranteed starters for their clubs. Germany and Spain are on the slide but still have tremendous established talent available. Not doing us down, but if you ask who really is world class only Kane and - at a real push - Walker and Sterling fall in that bracket. It's a young team with a lot of potential but they've got to grow. Some of the players today really should be looking for moves abroad to foreign clubs in the CL to develop. Thinking the likes of Pickford, Chilwell, Delph, Rashford. They need to get regular games at that level.
  18. Agree with all of that. Great game, great tournament - I hope whoever at UEFA came up with it gets recognised. Southgates done a phenomenal job, especially when you consider only a handful of his players are top class and playing regularly in the Champions League. We're swapping players in and out, adapting to different formations, scoring different types of goals. The level of technique shown is a higher level than in the past. All that said when we do play a team like France, Belgium or Brazil on song I think we will still be massive underdogs - we just have nowhere near the quality of those teams - but it's fantastic to see the progression. And maybe in the future the likes of Sancho could mature to be genuine world class players. That's really what we need.
  19. I'd say the only thing missing today was finishing. Id get another striker in January if possible. Graham looks shattered one game in two. Brereton has improved but just doesn't look a goal scorer to me.
  20. Great performance. Somehow only ended up with one point. Created enough chances to win two games, but just couldn't put them away.
  21. Im sure Mowbray will play Evans Bennett and Rodwell if fit, probs Smallwood and Evans in cm, Reed wide right, Bennett on the left. So Rothwell, Palmer and Armstrong all drop do the bench from that lineup imo.Quite a string squad really as all of them are very good options.
  22. I'm surprised we brought on Rodwell rather than Williams tbh. Then we could have kept Rodwell to tighten up midfield later in the game. Either way losing Lenihan was a big blow. Also same problem of not being able to retain the ball once Graham went off. Brereton looks like he should be a target man but I see why Mowbrays plays him wide as he drops deep, likes the ball to feet, and seems terrible in the air. I'm just so confused by why we signed him when we have half a dozen people who can do a job on the wing, but only one proper striker. Anyhow for next game I don't think Mowbray will be devastated, we just need to learn from that experience. Maybe we would have been better to put Armstrong up top when Graham went off and just played the long ball over onto his pace. Hmm. Genuinely don't get what putting Dack up there does for us. You could argue that part of the reason Swansea scores those three was previously Dack was dropping in to support Evans and Smallwood, and when Graham went off he couldn't do that any longer.
  23. Have to say we look a solid well balanced unit. Wouldn't mind seeing Rothwell get some game time second half. Not sure who will would take off though. Everyone's done their jobs.
  24. Basically that says he's either not fit enough or is not trying enough. Fair points from Mowbray. He did look well off the pace on Saturday.
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