tajjuk

He took decent set pieces for Bologna. What he tries most of the time is to whip the ball in with lots of pace, some come off some don't. I suppose it sums him how he's been this season, sometimes good, sometimes poor. You could using the flip side have someone that puts in 'safer' more flighted freekicks/corners that will most probably get in the general direction they are supposed to be going but also are much easier to clear. Depends what you want dependable and predictable or dangerous but inconsistent.

He has quality but shown little of it over the season and that's partly the reasons they are where they are. He's has been very average for most of the season. It's funny the amount of abuse Gaston gets on here yet Johnson has probably been worse for them, cost similar amount, on more wages, yet from what I've seen on the Sunderland forums they don't seem to have a thread slagging him off every week.

Since when is 14th for a newly promoted club 'struggling'? Newcastle who finished 5th last year and are now 17th could be described as 'struggling', in now way have we been struggling, maybe at the start of the season but not really since then when we've been averaging around 1.5 points per game. You really are a tool.

Mayuka a CB? Do you mean Yoshida? Secondly we wouldn't have been relying on others to stay up as I pointed out we have 39 points with two games to play, Newcastle, Norwich and Sunderland have 38 points with two games to play, regardless of what Wigan did or do we would have only got relegated if our results were worse than all 3 of those teams. Therefore it has always been 'in our hands'. Win two games and we would have guaranteed safety regardless of the Wigan result or any other result. Like I said Barry talks tripe.

I'm pretty confident on this one, if we can nulify spurs for almost 90 minutes I fancy our chances against a Sunderland side who have just struggled against the worst away team in the league and got beat 6-1 by Villa. Sunderland have only scored 40 goals in the league. Sessengon, Fletcher and Gardner have scored 24 of them and they will all be out for Saturday.

Ridiculous complete tosh as usual from you Barry, even if Wigan had won that we were at no point relying on others, last time I checked we were 14th and above Norwich, Newcastle and Sunderland. Therefore they would have needed us to slip up to overhaul us. We also have the easiest fixtures of all the teams below us. Newly promoted team stays up and wins plaudits for it's style of play, plus it's looking likely we will be higher up than 17th. That is a successful season yet you still push this rubbish about transfers.

Wigan have to win, they won't get anything against Arsenal at the Emirates when they are trying to get a champions league place. They need 6 points from these 3 games really. Can't see Villa beating Chelsea, Norwich v West Brom could be any result. Newcastle should beat QPR away. Our game is then a massive 6 pointer, beat Sunderland and we are safe. Last round of fixtures is in our favour, we have Stoke at home, Newcastle have Arsenal, Norwich are at Man City, Wigan and Villa play each other and Sunderland have Spurs away. (BTW Fulham have Liverpool then Swansea away, it's quite conceivable that they could pick up no extra points) If you go by the theory that Wigan win tonight then win at home against Villa. 41 points will keep you safe. We need one win or two draws really.

Alpine will most likely panic unless we replace the whole team by June, no attnetion should be paid to it. There has to more to it than the left footed thing, all 3 of our centre-backs plus Fox are now the weakest areas of the team. Yoshida is the most consistent and theres obviously not a lot of difference between Fonte and Hooiveld. I think Jos got in the team whils it has been doing ok and because of this he hasn't lost his place. After the defeat last week we might see some changes.

Would make sense, fits in with Turkish saying MP went to Barca this week.

Saying he's fit and available isn't the same thing as saying he's going to play.

They can be signed before the 1st of July if they are from the same association so if we've signed a player from another premier league club he could be at the club after the Stoke game, but then there are no games and everyone goes on holiday after that anyway so there is little point getting them in. Transfers outside England though can't be registered until the 1st of July and obviously bosmans you need to wait for their existing contract to expire. I'd reckon one is Astori, we've been massively linked to him. I rekcon the other one might be a bosman transfer.

Agree, they are probably best on the counter attack, which is bad for us as we are unlikely to go there and sit back. Bale also seems to go through phases, his good phases though are devastating. If they play him through the middle with Cork and Morgan in there we might be able to crowd him out and keep him quiet. Not expecting anything from the game but we seem to play a lot better against teams that are better than us so you never know. At least we need to see a better performance than last week which was clearly an 'on the beach' performance, the mentality needs to be better.

According to that BBC article we have 2 lined up, we've been very heavily linked to Astori so he might be one. I would suspect another is a bosman. Does anyone know some major players who's contract runs out this summer?

According to that BBC interview with Pochettino we have already signed two new players and the club is looking at more, so presumably those will come in on the 1st of July. In fact that is a key point, unless the transfer are from another English league club you can't actually sign anyone until the 1st July so I'm not sure what all this rubbish about June transfers is about. That already makes Alpine wrong. I'm sure he will weasel it round and will claim these new signings are the wrong signings whoever they are.

Yawn, joke thread form a joke poster. How's your assessment of Boruc going Barry? Looking a million miles off like most of your other posts. I see the Coutinho comments pop up after he has a good game, the same Countiho who a few weeks ago was decidely average against us whilst Gaston was good very good against Liverpool. Funny the Coutinho comments weren't brought up then. I think Jordan Henderson had a good game as well so maybe we should sign him up, probably could get him at a snip aorund £20 million. Had gaston been brilliant? no, has he been anywhere near as bad as some people make out? not even close. Shocking that a 22 year old attacking mid in a new league has been inconsistent, I mean that's never happened before now has it. Gaston is the new scapegoat it seems now Guly doesn't play so often.

Bad day at the office, get over it and move on. Some massive very laughable over reactions as per usual on here if we were as bad as some people make out we would be down with QPR and Reading. People are entitled to their opinions but there should be some level of rationale to them, it's convenient to see certain posters crop up with their "I told you so" based on one game, yet conveniently ignoring the team's generally good form over the previous 6. Think Adkins said don't get too high when you win don't get too down when you loose. Most of the WBA players played very well most of ours had a bad game. It happens, doesn't make them bad players.

He has some pedigree but he was hardly a regular at Real Madrid and evetually even lost his place in midfield to to Contreau who is a left back. Mourinho did like him though. If we want a Madrid bit-part player then we whould get Callejon who I think we were previously linted with and played a lot under Pochettino at Espanyol.

Started well for QPR faded badly, has some quality certainly with the ball but not sure about his off the ball work. They played him out wide right a few times as well so not sure what his best position is. Would trust Pochettino though. Certainly not worth £9 million or £60k a week but a lesser deal I think he'd be a decent option.

Norwich made over £4 million from catering last year!

All of them. End thread.

Thought I'd throw in a Vidic and Kompany in there as an extra comparison. They will obviously have to be deending less often than we have with both Manchesters averaging about 5-7% more possesion than us. Starkest one for me is the pass success, Kompany averaging nearly 90% completion. If we are going to be a passing team that keeps the ball we probably need our centre-backs to find their men more often, this will also result in the defence being under less pressure. I definitely think this is our wekaest area. Two quality centre-backs in the summer could massively improve our team I reckon, although Forren is supposed to be a very good ball playing defender.

Boruc is a clown and we should drop him for Davis.

Failling to win headers, not winning enough tackles, not making enough interceptpions will lead to concdeing goals. Hence why Jos has probably been preffered in some games against teams with more aerial threat becuase he's more likely to win his headers than Jose or Yoshida, failure to win those headers against teams like West Ham Stoke etc. gives them a higher% of play and means they are more likely to score against us. All defenders make errors, you are just highlighting Hooiveld's but you haven't highlighted mistakes from our other centre-backs, so what you have posted is more meaningless because it has no context. Also not all mistakes are punished but they are still errors none the less.

Extremely harsh to include that Reading tackle, that was neither error nor mistake. Anyway, statistically all 3 are pretty similar. From Whoscored - [table] [tr] [th][/th] [th]Maya Yoshida[/th] [th]Jos Fonte[/th] [th]Jos Hooiveld[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]Games[/td] [td]29[/td] [td]22[/td] [td]18[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Tackles (pg)[/td] [td]1.9[/td] [td]1.4[/td] [td]1.7[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Interceptions (pg)[/td] [td]2.1[/td] [td]1.6[/td] [td]2.2[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Fouls (pg)[/td] [td]0.7[/td] [td]0.8[/td] [td]0.8[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Offsides won (pg)[/td] [td]1[/td] [td]1.7[/td] [td]0.9[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Clearances (pg)[/td] [td]7.5[/td] [td]8.8[/td] [td]8[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Was Dribbled (pg)[/td] [td]0.4[/td] [td]0.4[/td] [td]0.2[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Shots Blocked (pg)[/td] [td]0.5[/td] [td]0.8[/td] [td]0.9[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Own Goals[/td] [td]0[/td] [td]0[/td] [td]3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Pass Success[/td] [td]76.4%[/td] [td]78.6%[/td] [td]74.1%[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Aerial Duels Won (pg)[/td] [td]2.9[/td] [td]2.9[/td] [td]3.7[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Cards[/td] [td]2Y[/td] [td]5Y[/td] [td]4Y[/td] [/tr] [/table] So statistically each game Jos wins more headers, blocks more shots, gets dribbled past less and makes more interceptions. However he catches people offside less, has conceded 3 OGs, is more likely to get a yellow and passes worse. From those stats Yoshida is the better and more efficient tackler of the 3, Fonte is the more cultured and better organiser and Jos is the better 'trenches' type defender.

Coutinho and Michu aren't realistic, former has just moved and the latter will move to a big club for £20 million I reckon. Also Micah Richards for centre-back? has terrible positiong and never convinced in that position, not to mention is injury prone. Realistic targets are probably players already linked like Astori (although Caligiari are sitting 10th now in Serie A), Sinclair and Adrian. Wouldn't say no to Remy but you'd wonder how long he'd be here and how much a week we would have to pay him. Shawcross is a good shout, especially if Stoke go down but rekcon there would be competition from the likes of Spurs. Definitely a versatile wide player with pace and quality centre-back should be key. I'd have a look at Holland, Strootman and Lens from PSV, Alderweireld from Ajax.