roversfan99

Football sadly has long ceased to become a game directed for the benefit of the fans. Prices, kick off times, further attempts at greed, we are just collateral damage.

Lots of I think and guesses as to what might have happened at Boro but ultimately he will be better off financially, he will be probably living back at home and they are factors you ridiculously said at the time he shouldnt consider. And backed up with saying that Theo Walcott said the same as if that was a clincher! Money is still important even if you earning a good wage to begin with, its better to have a lot more.

Not only his connections but a massive pay rise and at least being a Premier League manager short term You didnt respect them reasons, you said that he shouldnt consider those reasons.

We have needed him from the start of the season, especially when Hyam was sold. His body is incapable of being a Championship footballer.

He is one for the future. Sadly its a grim future.

Really big blow. And it seems that none of our defenders will be back fit and obviously we cant sign or recall anyone before January and there are 3 or 4 games before that.

I would be surprised if the first team came in to play a friendly today, the day after a first team match.

If Suhail is still around? Of course he will. He is bullet proof. He is a snake who has been attached to Venkys all this time. We could get a brilliant CEO and he would be set up to fail here. Would be like appointing Pep Guardiola as assistant manager to Steve Kean.

Makes no difference if it is someone underneath Suhail. Wont have any power and will be overruled.

It makes no difference. It will be someone with absolutely no power beneath Suhail. At least Nixon has got about 400 stories about it.

And how do you know hes good at it?

We did know that Baradji would take months and months to be fit when he signed, yes. But you can question these decisions. You dont just have to just shrug and agree. Mind you, if Tavares wasnt so shit, maybe it wouldnt have been as problematic.

But what I am saying is either scenario falls back to poor recruitment. Tavares is crap and Baradji is unfit. Forshaw played 3 games in a week. So if neither is seen as a potential alternative to Tronstad, why sign them both aswell as TGH who also plays a more box to box role? That suggests imbalanced recruitment signing 3 players to do the same thing. If Tavares in particular wasnt chosen to start in any game because he is shit, in favour of repeatedly flogging Forshaw until he got injured, then again poor recruitment.

Its pretty blatantly implied. They are all centre midfielders, and we seem to be in the habit of boxing off midfielders into holding midfielders and box to box midfielders. He said that Tronstad (our holding midfielder) has back up of Forshaw and Montgomery. He also said Baradji is box to box and suggested that Tavares isnt either. In which case, why sign 3 players for the same one position?

The irony. Its realistic to try and rectify all of our transfer and squad issues if the owners are willing to do so.

Ive no idea what your point is anymore. That makes no sense.

So its just pesky injuries. We finished 7th last season. Travis and Tronstad missed big chunks of the season, Ohashi was out for ages, Beck was out repeatedly, Carter was out repeatedly, Wharton was out all season, Kargbo ripped his hamstring as soon as he started a game, Cantwell kept missing games. Sorry, doesnt add up.

If Baradji, Tavares and Gardner Hickman are all considered "box to box midfielders." Then why arent you asking why we signed 3 of them when we play only 1, whereas we have just made do with Montgomery who came into the season having never started a game there (he seems more of a box to box midfielder too to me) and Forshaw who clearly doesnt have the body to play regular Championship football. I dont think Tavares is a box to box midfielder either to be honest. You are really tripping yourself up trying to deflect any blame away from the club in favour of just blaming injuries.

You dont factor in quality. We have a large number of players mainly signed in the summer who in theory should provide that cover but are that bad that they dont. The injuries we have in midfield wouldnt be problematic if Tavares wasnt woeful, Henriksson wasnt woeful and Baradji wasnt signed with a long term injury. Its easier just to make excuses. Cut backs in wages overlooked. Cut backs in concourse food quality for some reason not overlooked.

As fans, we cant possibly know how many we will realistically be able to get. All we can surely comment on is how many we need. You keep mentioning a "long term Tronstad replacement" ever since Nixon came out with his propaganda piece saying thats what we supposedly want. Alebiosu cover will be too late with AFCON. We would save travel costs on Harris as their fans would be queueing up to drive him here. Very poor. If so many players have impacted us positively, then why are we doing so badly? You always talk about stockpiling. How many of them are first 11 quality AND are reliable in terms of fitness? None I would suggest. How about trying to improve the quality of the first 11? Novel idea I know.

How can I possibly answer that though. Under this regime, probably none, maybe at a push one or two. But we should try to fix as many of those glaring holes as we possibly can. Lets hope that Henriksson, De Neve, Tavares etc are actually not absolutely terrible but in fact turn out to be brilliant for us. Dont hold your breath on that though.

Some might call it brave, some might see it as a luxury couldnt afford. If Tavares and Henriksson werent so bad and if TGH wasnt at best bang average then it might not be such an issue. Well whatever, pedantics aside. The main reason for how weak, thin and imbalanced our squad is self inflicted. It always comes back to the owners. But notably, whoever is directly involved in choosing transfers is mainly to blame. Hence why I am not just following the narrative of misfortune. There obviously will be some hard luck with injuries but its not the main reason our squad is so poor and imbalanced.

And I never said it was realistic. And I know that it wont happen. Its just roughly how light I think the squad is. I have no doubt that even come February that the squad will be nowhere near how we need it to be.

Its easy to almost exclusively dismiss any errors made by people at the club in favour of pushing the hard luck and woe is me narrative. The main reason for our lack of depth is due to failings in recruitment. We have a number of new signings that if they were even ok, the squad wouldnt look as exposed as it does. If Gueye/Henriksson/Tavares/De Neve were even ok then we would at least have some competition for places. Baradji shouldnt just have made his first useful cameo on December 9th to make us think there might be a player in there, not far off half way through the season. And again, the defensive problems are totally self inflicted. You seem to be justifying and making excuses for the recruitment. I get that no club has a 100% recruitment success rate. But its about 2 things. To have half of our signings not only not really working but being absolutely awful, thats whats not acceptable. And also, its as much about what we didnt do in the summer that is costing us, especially in defence. We have injuries, its the middle of December, all teams have injuries. If you just want to pin it all on injuries and not look internally, then thats fine, Gestede will be happy with that at least. And that all levels out with us in 20th. We can seperate home and away form but ultimately it all comes down to where we are with those combined and its crap.

I wonder with Cantwell back whether Ismael will be tempted to go back to a back 4. The change was made when Cantwell got injured and initially it worked really well for 3 games but not so much since. Cantwell has to play but im not so sure it suits him as much, and it also would lack balance if we had both him and Miroshita with just one proper midfielder doing all the work, even if its Tronstad. The issue is, the squad is so horribly imbalanced and full of crap whichever way we play. The defence is a bombscare, Miller is poor, McLoughlin is below average and Pratt has done remarkably well for a young lad who was at Chorley a month ago but I dont think honestly he is at the level yet. We also have the issue of right back with Alebiosu about to leave for AFCON. And with Hedges out, we dont have any competent options whether its left wing back or left wing.