Fabrice29

I'm not sure what you're trying to point out here but all it does is prove he was pretty good for us that season once he came and minus the two Armstrongs, Adams and maybe Smallbone, he was probably our most productive player given his minutes (could also throw in Alcaraz too given CA played more and produced less). And yeah, Sulemana has been garbage but weirdly still considered as a mis managed talent on here.

Course you could have mate, thats why nobody else did.

No. Only Stuart Armstrong and Adam Armstrong delivered more assists than Brooks for us that season. He played 1029 minutes. Only Sulemana, McCarthy, Mara, Rothwell, Holgate, Tella, JWP, Sam Amo, Stewart and Dibling played less than him. The idea that he was doing bugger all is nuts. As is the idea of signing a "luxury" player being a bad thing.

You seem to get annoyed by some very minor things

Fitted the bill when he first joined but based on his recent appearances for us I'd say he no longer fits that criteria. Best thing he could do is get somewhere he's guaranteed a spot every week so he can build up that physicality again, not sure we are in a position to be guaranteeing him that.

We literally had the top scorer in the Championship last time we were in it. The idea that we haven't been attacking or trying to score goals is insane but if you really want to peddle that myth then I don't think expecting a multi million pound striker to get into the team, contribute or at the very least ensure his 2nd touch isn't a tackle 75% of the time can be considered expecting too much. The ones that dropped him quite quickly seemed to know what they were doing with him. 40 appearances in 2 and a half years, 4 goals and 3 of those probably should have been prevented with better goalkeeping. But yeah, mismanaged.

Just one person replying to you with some factual nuances about the game you mentioned isn’t people getting ‘so upset about it’

The new way of recruiting and game model was always going to bring these types of signings. Physical attributes and off the ball qualities are high priorities again so will always lead to trying to find gems in a cheaper market. We have plenty of proven Championship players in our team already and people seem to forget we spent last summer topping up on PL experience only for quite a lot of them being underwhelming. Biggest risk is the focus on the off the ball qualities will lead to us neglecting the on the ball stuff like we ended up doing under RH in the end. Hopefully with enough joined up thinking in the building between Spors and Still and combined with the proven quality we already have we can avoid neglecting that but these types of signings were always going to happen under this way and are a natural part of the game model changing.

Probably worth looking at the stats of all the players whose role in the team was to not get a shot away and recycle possession only.

The lad was the top scorer for us. I wanted Armstrong gone two summers ago when we first went down but the moment he starts banging them in for us he becomes a central player for us and he rightly deserves another crack in the PL, in a team he’s central in. We had to recruit better in the summer but not move on our best players.

If we had moved Armstrong on last summer there would have been uproar. Especially considering our recruitment last summer was piss poor anyway, I don’t think there’s any evidence we’d have replaced him effectively. We’d seen him not perform in the PL but we were playing a completely different way and he’d spearheaded the team to promotion. Trying to move on the striker who got you promoted would have pissed off the squad, manager and fans. It wasn’t worth the risk. We definitely could have done better in not relying on him but moving him on would have been madness.

I don’t think those players are comparable to Armstrong in anyway tbh. Armstrong has attempted the step up twice with us already. He was also the main goalscorer unlike Sharp. He’s been shipped out already in January and will need convincing he’s part of the squad again. And yes, you can obviously sell players once we’ve gone up. But given we signed quite a few players who had experience of playing in the PL last season, some of which were rarely seen, I probably wouldn’t risk that with our top goalscorer.

Imagine selling our top scorer that got us promoted ffs 🤣 This place continues to amaze. Think people massively misunderstand motivation in humans if you think we can ask Armstrong to just get us promoted again and score all those goals like he did last time but also realise he’ll be sold in the summer if he does. To get performances out of people next season you’ve got to convince them they’ll be part of a 2 year cycle at least. Just like the last time we were trying to get out the Championship. You either commit the players to the journey or you sell now.

Didn't he stop scoring the last few months?

Hope you were saying the same about the striker who delivered 3 goals and 2 assists in 621 minutes in the Championship.

He’s not being written off easily. He’s played under 5 managers, different tactics, positions, styles and two different leagues over 2 and half seasons and his best defence anyone can put up is ‘he’s 23 and showed promise’. It’s perfectly okay for him to go on and prosper somewhere else but it’s also very reasonable to have watched him over quite a long period now and think it would be quite fun to watch someone else instead. He isn’t a youngster just thrown into the team, he’s not a victim of being in a rubbish team, he’s not been hard done by with opportunities or ‘never be in a side that actually allows him to be a winger’. He’s a big money signing, signed to help us get out of relegation trouble and even if you give him a pass on the first one, he had ample opportunity to make his presence felt in the Championship and this season and he’s flattered to deceive on a regular basis. Only really putting in performances when the opposition is set up to defend against him high up the pitch and in a man marking situation. Good luck to him but good riddance to someone who is no longer a hard luck situation.

This is the record for some of our players in the Championship last time. I know which one I am not sort of keen to see again personally. Only one of them seems to regularly get bought up as some sort of untapped potential on here though.

Matt O'Riley was targeted when we played a completely different game model and were just embarking on a PL season. Matt O'Riley was barely a realistic target then, only really propped up by a relationship with our manager at the time and was rightly recruited by an established PL team. Not sure where the idea that it hasn't worked out for him at Brighton has come from but if he is moving on, it's not to a team who has just been relegated to the Championship who will now play a different way, in a lesser league and offer less wages for the pleasure than when he previously rejected us.

Only if I was specifically calling you stupid, stupid. Yep. I’ve been posting your ‘we won’t get promoted under Martin’ posts and telling them Martin has a history of proving idiots wrong.

You don’t need two capitals for that. Stupid.

Don’t give me stuff to patronise you about then…stop saying really stupid stuff about things you don’t understand. It’s okay not to get it and it’s okay to not comment on it if you don’t. See! You make it far too easy. Anyway, glad you’ve managed to get inside the ground now.

Sorry, yes I messed up the dates my bad. I wasn’t making any comparison to SR and Saints though. Just pointing out you don’t need to be a high status flying club to make a success of it.

You’re very close to getting it but yet so far btw 🤣 As for the Grandad chap, he’s consistently on here refusing to try to understand Xg because it’s new, so not sure that’s a winnable situation at all. Think he’s still refusing to understand how the new tickets work as well.

Did we really struggle to break down low blocks that much by the way? Think there was only a couple of games we didn’t score in in the Championship. Forest this season in the Prem could be considered a low block. Think being one of the top scorers in the league as a team and having the actual top scorer of the league feels like a pretty good retort to that theory.

Brighton have been doing it since 2009 and I wouldn’t have classed them as a high flying status club. No idea when they really started seeing the fruits of it in the first team of Brighton.