I don't feel like kids football is strong enough a barometer to judge the potential success of a young player at senior level, especially with immediate effect. But my point has never been about the individuals, it is about the expectation that a number come through at once, usually out of necessity. I have never doubted the quality of the individuals, but as with basically every youth team, some may well come through, some will tumble into obscurity, and even of those that will come through, they won't all be ready NOW, purely forced out of necessity. Say if Wharton and Phillips are the two that eventually come through, they might need a bit more development to do so. No need to rush it. If I had said x y and z youngsters aren't good enough, you would have a point but I never have. The focus seems to be simply to equal the quality of squad last season but surely the onus is to better it. I would try and get what I consider to be enough first teamers without considering the young lads, so we are covered prudently regardless of if and when they breakthrough, and allow any that are good enough to supplement it. It's a long old slog of a season and especially with 5 subs available, we can't afford to take risks not signing players. Just to clarify, just because the manager does something does not mean that it is automatically right or that our opinions have to align with it. We have both said that we should sign another midfielder, I don't think we will and to me, we would look very threadbare, with no improvement on an area to which we was already light of quality last year. Take Hull away, one absentee in Travis and we looked all over the place, I think if and when he misses any games this year, it could happen again.

The thing is, the benchmark is always to revert to being "as good" as last season. I personally don't think that we were strong enough in central midfield last season, and got lucky with injuries/suspensions. Surely the aim is to be better than last season?

You'd drop Dack from the squad entirely?!

Great post. If a young player as an individual is deemed to be good enough then he will break through either way, every summer with this one particularly bad, we have this thing where people say we don't need to replace x number of senior departees because our young players will all simultaneously step up. That R number is a load of nonsense. If you start measuring targets like that, there becomes a very real chance of that objective conflicting with that of winning football matches.

Arsenal also have spent crazy money in recent years so Arteta is lucky to seemingly have total security in his job.

One drawback could be that there may be a 19th man who usually is on the fringes of the first team but equally becomes rusty as he is around the first team squad on matchdays and not topping up with the reserves.

I imagine one of our attackers will be left out altogether this weekend because there are space for 4 in the starting 11 and you are probably over-doing it by having more than 3 on the game. You would imagine that Szmodics will be at least in the squad, as well Brereton, Gallagher, Dolan and Hedges, so it is 2 from 3 in Markanday, Dack and Vale. Markanday didn't come on at the weekend, neither did Dack, and Vale struggled and would be who I would leave out as the 19th man, but interesting to see who is left out. Mind you, Vale has been compared to both Mark Hughes and now Firmino after his performance last weekend so I guess how can you possibly leave him out!

That would only be valid if ours (or indeed anyones) transfer recruitment was 100% efficient. As it is, it seems perfectly valid to suggest that we should/could sign various players.

If proof is an expectation. How do you know that Ayala and Dack struggled with Tomasson's training?

I doubt we paid an initial 500k for Szmodics when they paid much more to sign him.

Obviously, but the purpose of this forum is for us to share our opinions.

They are critical if we have any ambition of doing anything decent this season I would say.

We 100% need both critically to be honest.

We need better than both as our main striker if we want to do well this season.

His first touch is terrible and he really struggles to hold the ball up so I dont see how he would be good in that situation at all. An extreme and old example of him running down the clock was him setting up Prestons counter attack last minute equaliser in the relegation season! Dack is great when holding on to a lead. Very intelligent and excellent ar holding it up and killing time.

Gallagher has a lot of flaws but one thing he does have is that he is quite quick and powerful over long distances. Vale looks very slow and kept getting beaten by the QPR centre backs in races to the ball and was also shrugged off the ball a few times.

Following the bizarre Norwich model. Spend a decent amount to get to the promotion and when you get there, treat being there as an inconvenience.

That certainly wasn't evident on Saturday.

Having a natural goalscorer tends to help the team, to flip it around.

Has it played out publically? It seems like you are eager to prove your earlier assumption. It was said earlier last week that he wasn't going to start due to a lack of minutes. He as expected didn't start and we was winning for most of the game, so he wasn't brought on. A huge deal has been made of that fairly logical sequence of events which lit like wildfire when his girlfriend responded to a fan (stupidly) saying that he wanted to play, which I would be more worried if he wasn't arsed. Ayala played at the weekend and was excellent. Did the whispers come directly from a member of the coaching team or from elsewhere?

Yeah I think many have taken the comments about players being fluid and expressing themselves and really have ran with it to the point whereby actual players thriving in their best position has gone out of the window! If Gallagher for examples keeps playing wide and I really hope he does not, in a couple of months, I suspect that people will stop overlooking that sort of thing regardless of any "fluid front 4" rhetoric when he continues to struggle. Why do you keep going on about his work rate? Why would his work rate noticeably decline after injury? His physical state of course could and my comments have always been subject to him making at least close to a full physical recovery. If he is nowhere near the same player, which we cannot possibly conclude yet, then obviously he may struggle to ever regain his place. But assuming he does, I don't see why he couldn't participate in a pressing side, he is being talked about as if he is Andy Carroll. He has never been quick but he can press even if it would never have been his primary attribute like say a Dolan, who alternatively could only dream of being like Dack in the final third. He has scored goals when either he or a team mate has won the ball back high up in the past, 2 goals that spring to mind are West Brom away and Wigan at home a few seasons ago. The likes of Dolan/Szmodics/Hedges/Gallagher could perhaps be more integral/start the press but it is not as if Dack is a big immobile lump that couldn't help. I think there is a lot of emphasis on him because if you remove him and Brereton, even allowing for another striker coming in which is far from certain, I don't see many goals at all in what remains. You can press all you want but you need to offer a regular and consistent goal threat. Regarding your question, I firmly believe that you build around your players and IF he makes a near full recovery, he is our best player so he takes the number 10 role and we must try to get the best out of him, even if there is a tinge of compromise tactically. But as previously mentioned, I don't see why that is totally at odds with what Tomasson has mentioned anyway. Everything depends on his physical state to which you seem to have already made your mind up on. He came back from one and then after a couple of months had hit form similar to prior to his injury before the unfortunate second injury. Since the second one, due to the timing of the season he has never started a game since. How you can possibly say that he isn't the player he was at this stage seems beyond premature.

It was sharpness that Dack lacked last season though, which he would only get by starting games. Gallagher? Ideally not at all. I never have said that he isn't any better up front, I just think that people seem to have an inflated opinion on his ability and what his goal tally would be if he played as a number 9. That being said, he is more suited playing there than anywhere else, but he shouldn't be first choice.

Hopefully this will work as well in practice as it does in theory but the key is that players begin in positions that best suit them to begin with. For example, Gallagher will struggle regardless of the instructions on how fluid he can be when out on the right wing.

We don't want players who are able to play in positions, we surely want ones who thrive in certain positions that best suit their abilities. Any talk of square pegs in round holes seems to have gone the other way to the point whereby anyone goes anywhere!

https://londonroad.net/Forum/showthread.php?tid=21067&page=4 Some opinions on Szmodics.