verlaine1979

Bah. Look at Cork offloading the ball and immediately running into space. WTF has happened with our squad of midget statues?

Are they playing in the same positions? Adams and Armstrong both strikers for Brum and Blackburn, while Tella seems to be playing on the wing? Also Adams and Armstrong both the main men in mediocre sides, while Tella is contributing in a team with several high performers. To be clear, I've not seen a minute of Burnley's games this season, but with the above in mind, comparing his numbers to those of Adams and Armstrong seems pretty pointless.

Yeah, I think the analogy to Lavia being missing is what sparked the memory. What we've got left in the squad isn't good enough to stick with a CM/DM two, so we should play three there instead.

Surely when JWP+1 is getting overrun whoever we play alongside him, the answer is to play a compact, as-mobile-as-possible three in the middle? Isn't that one of the tricks Koeman used to arrest one of our slides back in the day? I seem to recall a game against Everton where he gave Reed a start to make the midfield harder to play through in a 3-5-2 and it worked well.

Perhaps a smidge over-assertive, though there was still a caveating modifier. But the fact remains, Semmens is a club employee with zero skin in the game. If you'd prefer to believe that Gao handed him complete authority to dispose of a c.300m (purchase price) asset however he saw fit, be my guest. But it doesn't pass the sniff test of how any other HNWIs I've encountered operate. EDIT: By zero skin I mean he wasn't several hundred million in the hole and personally liable for most of that in the form of high interest loans sourced in Macau. I have no specific knowledge of the situation and have never met Semmens (I live in California), but I do know a couple of people out here with that kind of wealth, and they don't ever abdicate those kinds of decisions. With a quarter of a billion quid on the line, who Martin Semmens wanted as his next boss would have been vanishingly low down on Gao's list of priorities when seeking a buyer.

Hah, and didn't notice the Athletic article also mentioned how keen NJ is on keeping Walcott for all his invaluable experience. This is going to be a disaster.

As directors of an entity majority owned by Gao, I'm confident that they had no veto over who took over the club, which is really all that matters here. Look at the timeline of the last two take-overs: in both cases, KL and Gao were highly motivated to sell (for KL Saints was apparently the highest value asset in her inheritance by far, for Gao he was bleeding cash from high interest loans and bought the club at the precise moment with the Chinese government stopped capital outflows for sport). But in both cases it took almost two years to find a buyer. For the simple reason that we're not an attractive proposition for investment. Hardly anyone was interested. And yet, in both cases the club spun it as a careful process to bring in the only person capable of moving us forward. Which is of course, far preferable to saying that you sold to the only buyer who showed a serious interest.

I suspected he'd wind up one of those conservative types who tries to cram as many mediocre old pros into the side as he can. But never in my worst imaginings did I think he'd want to bring Bednarek and Stephens back to the squad. Stinks of management by cliche.

For several seasons now I've had the feeling when we try to pass and move that we're playing at the very limits of our capabilities. I can't remember the last time I saw us move the ball with the simple fluidity that Brighton were able to summon against us - maybe that Newcastle win immediately after the pandemic restart? Everything is so frantic with us. But maybe it's just the case that our limitations are well known. Clubs understand that we have no capacity to move the ball through the middle, so we'll always look to the fullbacks on the touchline as soon as we can, where there is much less space and less margin for error.

All of which means "we spent the past two years desperately seeking an investor to buy this rapidly depreciating asset off the Chinese national that bought it, but that's been incredibly hard as other investment opportunities have massively outperformed sport during the pandemic. Now the owner has accepted he has to take a 100m haircut on his investment, and Serbia's only billionaire has decided to take a punt on it." The idea that Semmens was fending off the wrong kind of billionaires for two years until he found one that would do his bidding is just fantasy.

Seen a few people saying Semmens is responsible for SR and hand-picked them. This is clearly a nonsense. As with when Gao came along, it's an almost total certainty that SR were the top bidder from a very, very short list of interested parties. In both cases, I wouldn't be surprised if they were the only candidates to make a solid offer. Semmens is an employee, not a king-maker.

Yeah, I should've said, some of the kids we recruited this summer have a few of those qualities. But they should be garlanding a solid squad,not our last hope to stay up. My mind goes back to our attempts to recruit Sangare. He's an absolute unit in midfield, with pace and power from what I've seen. How did Diallo end up as our back up after that transfer fell through? Did we suddenly decide we didn't need presence in the middle any more?

Though on a related note, it's criminal how little athleticism, pace and power we've added to the squad over the past few years. This must be the weakest, smallest, slowest squad in the league. And it's not like any of them have great technique to compensate. Look at Elyounoussi - he's just mediocre across every characteristic.

It took Poch two games to give us an identity distinct from how we'd played under Adkins. That's what's so weird about the Jones appointment. His only reputation was for scrappy over-performance with the tools at hand. Not a sniff about him being a tactical innovator or someone with a particular footballing vision and intelligence. And that's what this squad needs. Someone to literally re- teach them the basics of movement and passing, as they seem to have forgotten them completely. We play like statues waiting for the pass. Brighton on the other hand were constantly in motion, buzzing around making space for what were relatively simple passes.

Doesn't it actually suggest that we concede a lot more goals than we should? The chart isn't very clear, but looks like our expected goals for is about 1 per game and our expected goals against is about 1.35. That would equate to 15 for and about 20 against, when the reality is we've scored 13 but let in 27.

He's definitely hit a few good through balls in his time here. But aside from that freak game against Chelsea, his hold up play this season hasn't been great. If the ball isn't right for him to control it on his chest, he's not winning it any other way. And his finishing is dire. Pointless, but I do wish we weren't a club reduced to strategizing how to get the best out of Che Adams.

Sadlly think we missed the boat on selling JWP. I'd guess his value is back down to about 30m tops now. Just not quick or strong enough to run a game from defensive midfield, and spending so long in a highly conservative position has pretty much robbed him of any desire to move the ball between the lines.

Lucky not to be 2 down.

Hah until I saw the team sheet, I'd forgotten just how sick I am of this squad.

A new manager making a big step up into a difficult position will often lean on the club's senior players, assuming that nobody ever got sacked for picking the old pros. If Jones brings that kind of conservatism it isn't likely to end well, since we know exactly what our senior players are capable of and it isn't enough. He needs to turn the full backs, Edozie, Aribo, Mara + A.N. Other into a dynamic attack full of movement and creativity. Good luck with that.

One of the best things about the US coverage has been that the commentators don't feel the need to fill every second with chat. If nothing much is happening, they just let you watch that bit in silence.

Since when do buying clubs agree terms with players before agreeing terms with the selling club? Isn't it contractually the other way around?

What's Welsh for "we're not still here"?

As soon as move breaks down, the midfield play the safe square ball every time, even when Foden is in space on the wing. They just don't trust themselves to play a pass that beats the defender. That mini break by Rashford just now was a great example - Rice could've easily bent a pass in to Foden, but chose just to lay it off to Henderson who then waited for Walker to catch up and it broke down with the Welsh defense reset.

It seems pretty obvious Gakpo wasn't convinced about signing for us or Leeds. Didn't Van Gaal tell him to aim higher? Seems he was right. He's going to wind up a starter for United or a similar club come January.