I think our players are more interested in golf, PlayStation, darts and pissing about in their luxury cars than what the managers say in press conferences tbh
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Transfers The Winter Transfer Thread - 25/26
- Thread starter The Fighting Cock
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Embarrassing that all you have is retorts about Ange. You mention him so much maybe you are suffering from some sort of managerial Stockholm syndrome.
But I can't be anymore clearer when I say I'm not crying because Ange is gone... but I am furious because we hired a guy who plays dull attritional football, who has never won anything in his entire career... and compounding it by carrying on with the facade.
And all this because I think we need to strengthen the quite obviously thin squad because I want to see things get better instead of not signing anyone on purpose so we can all have a whinge.
We need some quality, proper quality, who will work whether it's Frank, Poch, Maresca or the ghost of Levy in the dugout. Anything else is self sabotage, but maybe you're addicted to the misery
Both of these won’t ever control a game of football. They are decent PL midfielders but don’t make us better.
Me too. His range of passing was incredible and he opened the game up for us so much. At the lane even though it wasn’t the biggest pitch he could stretch teams with that switch to isolate Lennon with a full back. Brilliant midfielder that could have been top top drawer with a bit more mobility and pace.
Exactly, what are people saying here. We need better players.
We have 35-40 players on professional contracts. The squad is not thin. I can agree it might not be full of quality but it's not a lower half of the table squad. Self sabotage is spending another 200m on attacking players in January for a manager who has no clue how to play progressive football and will likely be sacked. If you truly want to see things get better then stop defending the indefensible. Frank needs replacing and then a proper manager can start molding the team into winners. All Frank is doing is molding us into losers who should be grateful for a hard fought point at Brentford. And before you say it, I don't care about their home record. Brentford are utter garbage.
Scott is definitely a player technical enough to control football games.
Garner isn’t bad technically either even if he’s definitely more dominant physically in that Everton team.
No he’s not. He’s good at running at players with the ball, but he’s a bang average passer. I like him, but he’s not what we need.
Garner was part of that Man United youth team that were meant to be the next big thing before United melted down. After the club let go of the rope that group became pretty toxic ... laughing gas, sex parties etc. The collapse of their academy group fucked up some talent that United could really have used ... Angel Gomes, Tuanzebe, Elanga and of course "he who shall not be named in transfer talk". Not sure if Garner was caught up in it but he must have been affected by what was happening. Nice that he has got himself back on track.
Nah, of course I don't. But Tel and Palhinha were two players under Frank who he couldn't make use of. Says alot about him as a manager no?
And don't tell me he doesn't know about how we operate - Levy was still here when he signed to be our manager. He should be intelligent enough to have asked during interview, no? Basic job interview 101? Even if he didn't, he's not blind or deaf before he signed to have not known the slightest bit Levy likes opportunistic signings? The whole league knows. So it's still on him either he doesn't sound out about the players he wanted, or he couldn't bring the best out of the players we have here.
Bang average passer?
I’ll take another look when we play them and see if I agree with that because I’ve always seen him as a really smooth passer
No he’s not a guy that can dictate the game. There are not that many that can now. Scott is tidy enough and mobile. No different to gray Bentancur and Bergvall to be honest. There’s not a big enough jump in ability if any to go get him or Garner.
Because frankly, pardon the pun, he was being offered the chance to swap Brentford for one of the biggest clubs on the planet, and god knows how much of a pay rise he got. This might be his only chance at a club this size. It's a gamble for him and us, and it looks like not working out for either party.
Despite everything ENIC do we are an attractive proposition still.
Back to Locatelli then
Pretty much
I'll post stuff from a different game to support my conclusion regarding midfielders just acting as decoys to presumably kick it forward in a more efficient manner towards an attacker isolated with his defender, although it at the first glance might imply an intent to play out from the back in a rather risk-prone manner.
It's from the Newcastle game where I can vividly remember us spending the first 20 minutes or so doing this weird goal kick routine where midfielders were dropping deep as if we were trying to play out from the back, only for the keeper / a defender to kick it.
First, to have a mental map of who's playing where, we started the game with a lineup of:
Vicario
Porro-Romero-Danso-Udogie
Sarr-Bentancur
Kudus-Bergvall-Johnson
RKM
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Porro-Romero-Danso-Udogie
Sarr-Bentancur
Kudus-Bergvall-Johnson
RKM
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Newcastle, like everybody and his dog these days, use a strict man marking scheme in a high press situation. I see a clear 8v8 in these two screenshots merged together.
Normally, teams bring this many players inside their own half to initiate a sequence of short passes where they try to play their way out of trouble.
We instead do it for this:
Seems clear to me that everything was hinging on Kudus getting the ball glued to his feet with a good first touch before rolling it to either Bentancur or Sarr for the recipient to initiate a quick break. Something like these:
I can appreciate the appeal of a strategy while not necessarily buying it myself. The appeal for Frank is obvious to me here:
- To bypass the midfield. Zero risk of losing the ball right on the edge of your box or something
- To manage to get the ball to either RKM or Bergvall in one of the ways outlined above, and to create a 3v3 in rather open space with minimal effort.
All the strategies in the game entail risk and reward. There's no avoiding the trade-offs altogether.
For him, #2 is the high reward that managers that get their teams to take the huge [and rather unnecessary] risk of playing out from the back are trying to obtain. Well, if you can simply get to a very similar end point with way less effort and risk in the way described above, why would you not take it? Who cares how ugly it might appear on TV screen?
Sounds valid, in the sense that the conclusion logically follows from the premise. Is the premise actually true though? Does it actually eliminate the risk while also retaining a decent upside that can be obtained at least some of the time?
Not really. See below.
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Another goalkick 30 seconds later. The cameraman does us a huge favour with this camera angle that reaffirms the initial observations regarding the team shape and the general strategy: Another 8v8 inside our own half, and a 2v2 up front where Kudus and Johnson are isolated with their respective defenders.
Let's see what happens:
The same outcome: We easily lose the ball for Newcastle to possibly launch a quick attack themselves. The double-edged nature of this strategy, like all strategies as I said, becomes apparent. Frank is not avoiding the risk altogether by refusing to play out from the back with short passes; he cannot. He's rather kicking the can down the road.
Allowing these two 3 minutes into a game is not very safe is it?
Frank tried to solve this conundrum during the next 15 minutes or so with a few small adjustments before giving up completely and sending everybody forward.
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My takeaways:- Can this be improved / perfected? Sure. Get a winger who can wrestle and carry the ball as well as Kudus does while also having a first touch and technique that's superior to the latter's, and you would see more instances of the ball sticking up front. Get a target man with similar qualities, and they would take turns being on the receiving end of these passes.Whether or not this should be perfected is a whole different discussion that probably warrants a seperate post.
- Can Frank really, truly change one day ? I don't see it. Not only this current football, but also the fact that Brentford under Andrews have been one of the most direct teams in the league in every statistical category that measures the directness of a team's passing strongly testify against it. The way I see it, Frank's footballing brain is hardwired to assess risks and rewards of possession play in the way outlined above where long balls will always have the edge over shorter passes.
- What are the implications of all these for the future? We'll most likely bumble along the mid-table / bottom-half by winning the every second or the third game, and the highly anticipated returns of some of the absentees won't actually make a significant difference. Whether or not Frank would get another season on the back of this would depend on how influential Vinai actually is, since we keep getting leaks of how he stood by Arteta in darkest hour or whatever. If Frank was not Levy's guy, he could very well be Vinai's to emulate the so called Arteta model on a smaller scale. I'm far from convinced that his goose is already cooked, and that they're waiting til the summer for more managers to become available.
Locatelli’s miles better than either of them. Juventus would take the right money for him. It’s just the case of would he be willing to come here. Italians don’t usually like moving outwith Italy if they can avoid it. And it’s a similar story with Latin boys that grow up dreaming of playing for Madrid and Barca, if an Italian kid ends up at Juve or one of the Milan teams, they usually have to be dragged out kicking and screaming.
You are going to be so well rested but have terrible bed sores unless SpaggyGirl turns you over regularly.
Cue jokes about I’ve had a few girls turn me over
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