The College Dropout

The Saudi stuff is definitely not like the China thing. The mid table could be gutted

Thanks for sharing. Particularly the cultural element at the end. That style of football suits ballers.

‘People’ don’t watch the PL to see Bournemouth vs Brighton either. The big clubs will be fine. But some top players at middling clubs like Wolves might take the money.

All of those were before January, no? Teams clocked that move and Almirons output slowed. I’ve grown to like Almiron. His pressing is the gold standard,he makes good runs. But he’s limited technically and that will always limit his ceiling. He has to run around the ball to control it a particular way with his left. There’s a limit to the type of attack you can build around Almiron because the lad is limited. Contrast that with Isak. The ceiling is so high because the lad can do so much.

Tonali isn’t that type of player. Even Liverpool had Firmino in their pomp.

This shouldn’t be funny but it is

It wasn’t an oversimplification. You meant it. And now you’re trying to make it sound relevant. Our wide players don’t have the quality to do that. Almiron is technically limited. So while he has good movement and pace, he’s dependent on Bruno and Trips finding him with excellent passes that give him time and space. On the left Joe’s combine well but sometimes there’s a lack of ideas and creativity. Can’t speak too much on Gordon, he also seems to like a give and go, uses both feet but doesn’t have ‘his moves’. From our 4, there’s not anyone that demands the ball like a Diaz, Grealish, Saka, Mitoma etc.

Someone that would be excellent at 5 aside. Touch, dribbling, balance, agility, quick feet, ability to strike a ball, spotting and executing clever passes, technique, ability to use weaker foot and range of striking techniques. Just raw footballing ability. I was really hoping we were going to add more ballers to the squad in the window to play with Isak, Bruno and ASM. At the highest level you need players with that cuteness to win you a game. Howe and the leadership have earned my trust. But I look at our wide options and think - smart managers will be able to stop these lot from playing. Barnes at least, if he can continue to get to his spots he will finish and score goals. What elite teams and players have offences built on 1-2s?

The Barnes thing. We’ll need to see him play 20 games. And everyone will understand the points some are trying to raise about all-round game.

My thing is. Almiron. Barnes. Gordon. Joelinton. It’s all very physical (and Barnes can really finish). None of these are ballers. Nothing cute. 1v1 against a fullback I don’t have much hope. I hope Barnes can become a 15+ goalscorer.

Aye. It’s going to be unfair on the lad too. There’s going to be games where Barnes gets slaughtered for going missing and not doing very much.

Hate this for me.

Aye. We’ve spent all this money to only have 2 genuine ballers in the squad (Bruno & Isak). A very physical team. Im a Pep-ball critic. But I do like how he likes his wife players with a lot of footballing ability. They may not always get freedom to express it but Foden, Mahrez, Grealish, Bilva all love getting the ball to feet and working magic. Would all be wicked at 5 a side. If we sell Maxi and bring in Barnes, we lose a lot of ability to feet in wide areas. Not a lot 1v1.

Players also need to be willing.

trying to look sexy…

Ex Pro’s are annoying. Most of them d-ride the biggest club they played for no matter how their time went. Jenas acts like a Spurs man. He’s from Nottingham and should support them more and had more success with us. Before the fish bowl comments Jenas got more stick than nearly every other under performing CM we’ve had bar Parker.

Football and society in general are a lot more accepting of people like Bowyer, Woodgate and Bellamy than the likes of Bramble and Dyer. Bowyer in particular wasn’t even good for us but got considerably less criticism than Dyer. Even after football. Those lads have all coached at a higher level than a lot of the more heralded black footballers. I remember reading Woodgate was an awful professional. Bowyer and Bellamy have a couple incidents of violence to their name. You can add Barton to that list. Horrible person. Average footballer. Was much more popular than many of his more talented peers. I just know it was Bowyer that bit the man in the cheek in that infamous assault. And all those ‘bling’ nicknames were tinged with racism. There’s that one quote from Klopp about his first interaction with Mane is also heavily tinged in bias. He took one look at him and made several ascertains about his personality without knowing him at all.

What’s this about Titus now? Cucked someone from this board?

Aye and that’s really not good enough. All of our rivals and even Brighton would’ve been able to keep shape with a couple CM injuries. We wouldn’t. I expect us to cover the holes in the squad this summer. But it’s not true that the club management haven’t left us light in the past. If they don’t think the players or value are available they won’t sign players to fill out the squad.

Not consistent enough aye. Titus could read the game imo. But he would lose concentration often and get easily rattled. But it was in his locker to have a worldie performance it just the clangers were never far away. I don’t credit Woodgate for Titus good performances.

We play 3 central midfielders and had 4 senior central midfielders in the squad post January. And we often started all 4. 2 injuries and we would’ve been playing an untested 19 yo and someone that’s not a CM at CM. That was a gigantic risk.

They let him down in January and got away with it. I’m not overly worried but we’ve been left thin before.

You’re mad. Bramble by himself had all the physical and technical attributes to be a great defender and could pull a top performance out the bag.

FFP is awful.

He’s at Real.