qwertyell

https://streamin.me/v/39de8405 Just saying (and not mentioning that he missed a penalty in the first match).

The second coming of Glenn Roeder was Jack Stephens-esque here as well. No awareness or urgency to the only danger in the box and fails to get across his man for the first goal, and a feeble attempt at a block that even Will Smallbone might think a bit limp on the second. Again, my concern with people raving about the guy who wasn't good enough to get in the worst defence in the PL (and second worst in history) last season and insisting we build our future defence around him, is that his stock has been artificially inflated by A) not being tainted by this season's disaster, and B) the disproportionate weight given to how comfortable a defender looks on the ball verses whether he can actually defend the goal. Give him a chance, sure. But I don't see how he has suddenly become a better option than the garbage we already have on the books, on account of how misty-eyed QPR fans got watching him contribute to making their defensive record worse as they limped into 15th in the championship.

The scouting department were tasked with finding a direct Che Adams replacement, and simply typed "big lump who can only shoot with his right foot" into Google. I mean, that still makes him better than any striker on our books. But it's a low bar.

I'm not sure how much stock we should place in being young player of the year for the team that finished 15th in the championship. Young player of the year for Watford, who finished higher in 14th, was a striker who scored 2 goals. Should we sign him to fix our goalscoring problems?

Would we be similarly happy signing Wood, though, who is also an U21 international who has only had Championship experience (before this season)? I'm not convinced Wood is particularly good, but unlike Edwards, he can win the ball in the air and is quite quick across the deck. My concern with Edwards is that there is a modern trend to be dazzled by how comfortable a defender looks on the ball and completely disregard the question of whether they can actually defend or not. I still remember how poor he looked against Cardiff reserves in the League Cup last season - and QPR's defensive record actually got worse after he joined them in January, in spite of him allegedly "impressing". I wouldn't write him off until we've had a proper look at him, but short stature centre backs of limited pace who don't defend particularly well are not exactly in high demand for a reason.

Tuchel: "It surprised me because we started well. We created an xG of three and underperformed with one. It just shows we were not precise enough and had a lack of quality in finishing." Oh dear, he's one of those.

Nobody said it was a standard benchmark. But it was literally referenced in Spurs' official statement about the sacking, so somebody was taking notes. You don't think a side in the bottom five for form across the best part of two seasons is perhaps trending in the wrong direction? That £400m spent on players only to finish 17th with their most losses ever in a PL season might be considered a tad underachieve-y? He had a good start but quickly got found out - like many a manager before him. And unless Spurs are going to somehow win next season's champions league, the only path back into the competition for them is by finishing top four/five, which they obviously can't do with bottom five results. Those good 10 games were a long time ago. Something had to change.

78 points from his last 66 games. Only Wolves of the non-relegated clubs accrued less. He only managed Spurs for 76 games. So after his first 10 matches, they were basically a bottom five team under him. He wasn't choosing to "focus on Europe" across all those 66 games. He was just crap.

He joined them on loan. Spent most of the season on the bench. De Zerbi didn't fancy him, but Marseille were obligated to make the transfer permanent at the end of the season regardless. So it's not inconceivable that he could be available - perhaps a loan.

Reims lost their relegation play off and dropped down to ligue 2. Perhaps Billy Stiils might have an eye on a couple of his former players who may now be available for our level. He'll certainly remember their keeper Yehvann Diouf (25), who set the record for the most saves in a ligue 1 game (14) when Reims won 2-0 at Lens recently.

Ungainly was certainly a word that sprang to mind. To be fair, Konate at Liverpool looks a bit like Bambi on ice at times, but seems to make it work for him. I've watched a bit more of Quarshie, and there's no way we'd be signing someone that raw for the first team squad if we were still a Premier League team fighting for our lives (or whatever you'd call the "fight" we put up this season). As a Championship side expected to dominate a lot of games, there's probably something there to try and polish up at an easier level - and for a minor outlay that we can probably make back selling him for parts if it comes down to it.

Greuther Furth vs Hamburg (who finished 2nd) league game from 10 days ago is up in full on the YouTubes if anyone wants a long look at Quarshie, who started for Greuther Furth, against reasonable opposition. I've done 10 minutes. He's made one block, a really clumsy foul that should've been a yellow card, and launched a pretty impressive throw in into the box. And he's just tried and failed to play an attacker offside but recovered to block another shot. I'm not watching any more. But I can confirm he A) exists and B) is tall.

Jordan Torunarigha? 27, formerly of Hertha Berlin, has just left Gent at the end of his contract. Left sided, quick, athletic, German (although he's switched to Nigeria). And free.

Don't be said because it's over, be sad because it happened.

Their longest run without defeat was 6 games. He's only won 17 games in total.

I knew a guy who got his testicles twisted like a set of iPod headphones and needed surgery to open up the bag and get them all untangled.

I'd forgotten he was a religious loon, among other things, and it was God's will that he was pant-soilingly useless with us.

My objection to O'Neil is that he's a shit philosophy manager - and we've had our fill of them, surely. I watched a Wolves game earlier in the season where they were a goal down at home with ten minutes to play, and they didn't attack. At all. They just continued methodically passing slowly, sideways and backwards in rigid formation, barely making it to the halfway line, then turning around and going backwards to start again. The crowd couldn't roar them on because they literally did nothing but pad their passing stats. In the end the fans became apathetic and simply shrugged their way to another passive defeat. Fuck that.

I see Rusty turned up on Match of the Day 2 last night. It's the perfect gig for him - he gets to preach his visionary football hypothesis to the waiting nation, whilst simultaneously lecturing why everyone else's approach is stupid and they're not brave enough. Or something about scar tissue. Takes some front to shamelessly sit there dissecting the shortcomings of - in this instance - Chelsea trying badly to play out from the back, and Tottenham being a defensively disorganised rabble. A bit like how Gary Neville has somehow become the all-knowing authority on everything, in spite of making an absolute fool out of himself when someone called his bluff and (briefly) gave him a manager's job.

Hope to be wrong, but I can only see Ryan Seager in Ballard: prolific scorer as a youth, but ultimately didn't have any weapons for top level senior football. Like Seager, Ballard isn't very big, physical, quick or creative. He can sniff out a chance, but that kind of "fox in the box" striker that contributes next to nothing in general play died out years ago with the dawning of the lone number nine role that 99% of teams have favoured over the last decade. I'm probably doing him a disservice - Seager wasn't the England age groups regular that Ballard has been coming up - and his ceiling is higher, but it's a comparison that still stands out to me when I see him play.

Chris Rigg (Sunderland): "“I laugh at it, you’ve got to enjoy it or football isn’t the game for you. There was this one time, we were playing Southampton and I was shoving one of their defenders. I was marking him and he just said: ‘You’re still getting breastfed, aren’t you?’ That was a good one, but it doesn’t knock me out of my stride. They are testing me mentally as well as physically.” Got to be Stephens, the dressing room bantsmeister general.

Made his senior debut for Lyon at the weekend, playing the last 20 minutes. Just turned 17. Not sure there was much we could do to hang on to him - he didn't want to sign a scholarship, so that was that. Good luck to him. He's a talented boy.

Just a note for those who are convinced most of our current squad options will be fine for a Championship promotion push. Luton got relegated from the PL last season on 26 points (15 more than we're going to get), scoring 52 goals (we've managed 25), and conceding 85 goals (we're on 82 with 3 games to play). They retained mostly the same squad. And they'll be in League One next season. Football's pretty merciless when you're a bunch of losers who have become comfortable with losing. Clear them out. Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

He's not walking. That's him at full pelt.

Hard to know what our market is - how attractive a draw Saints in the Championship might be. But assuming (probably wrongly) that players from the top divisions in much smaller leagues are possibly within reach, we might want to have a look in Romania for Cluj's striker Louis Munteanu (22), who is a very decent all-rounder not entirely dissimilar in style to Gyorkeres. Had an unsuccessful taste of Serie A with Fiorentina (too young for the step up, maybe? He joined them at 18), but he's developing nicely now he back in Romania and banging them in from all angles. Ask Dan Petrescu to do the tapping up?