The College Dropout

Tonali’s never been great on the ball. But he’s been bad on it recently. He needs to slow us down and find a pass and does the opposite time and again.

Poor start to the half.

But also… we have no plan to play like this. So I get it.

Times like these we need to try and bring the ball down and play bit. Move everyone up the pitch. change of shape here from Palace?

Didn’t look like it to me

Tonali is great at old school Italian shithousing. Mateta waaa the wrong side of him and he engineered a foul that wasn’t

Yeh. We don’t have any players in the top 10 successful dribblers. The wide players for both teams aren’t great 1v1. Pino is meant to be a cute playmaker passing type I think.

The spare man in Misfield needs to count.

The CB is meant to be tight on the player.

Let off the hook there. Bad from Joelinton and Bruno.

Yeh Wissa does need better offside awareness

This a scrappy game man

Why doesn’t anyone else try that Schar and Joelinton run and pass? If they either doesn’t play nobody attempts it.

Lad they’ve brought on cost for a fair whack for a young lad

Thiaw so good there

In general play they are basically the same player but Elanga is faster.

Sale + option for buyback

Surprised more clubs don’t prioritise position/area specific development. Lyon had a policy of developing attacking players. Benzema, HBA and co because they sold for the biggest amounts. That requires an attacking manager too. Brighton don’t tend to develop attacking players so well fo example. Their slower footballing style tends to favour GK, defenders and midfielders to be sold because they prove they can control a game and build from the back. The only proper attacking manager they’ve had is De Zerbi and he had Mitoma looking like a £70m wide attacker. They got good money for JP but he was never prolific.

I don’t agree. The results and clean sheets would suggest otherwise. Agree with this. If everyone was fully fit and we had a cup final tomorow I would personally start Schar and Burn. It’s certified. As good as Thiaw has been individually he has not been part of a solid back 5 consistently. With the injuries we have he’ll have the opportunity to prove himself. Atm I think Schar and Burn have certain leadership, character, determination traits as a partnership that makes them our best pair. Botman definitely hasn’t been better than Burn. Burn has been a rock for the last 18 months.

We put that release clause in there for a reason. And it was the right thing to do. All speculation around Bruno ended when it expired and has largely been quiet since. Or we would’ve sold him, solved all PSR issues and would have money to buy a replacement. That was well managed by Ashworth. Even if we sold Joelinton for £35m in the summer it would’ve meant keeping Anderson who is now a £70m homegrown player atleast and a starter for the next 5-10 years. In the last 2 years we’ve arguably signed 1 player that has improved the team having spent £250m on players mostly at peak value. The team that won us the league cup and qualified for the CL was built entirely by the Staveley Ashworth era which has ended. we’ve pivoted hard from the approach that has brought us success which is damaging us on the pitch now and is likely to cause us issues in the seasons to come financially and on the pitch.

I like Wissa as a player. But his injury has likely meant the entire transfer has backfired based on the logic shared. It’s not a smart approach.

Btw I also said the league cup and CL qualification justified Joelinton’s contract and the sales. But I still think it was poor long term planning. And then we’ve done it again with inferior players and almost certainly not qualifying for the CL. I don’t think a club In Our position can continue to make such decisions and I expect we’ll pivot now. But we’ll see.

By your logic Elanga needs to win us a trophy to justify the transfer. ok - I agree with that. Sounds like a poor transfer approach but you’re right. If he wins us a trophy it justifies his lack of ability and resale potential.

I’m judging the entirety of our transfer approach not just Wissa. I’ve already said this - 1 maybe 2 is fine. We have 3 or 4 like this which makes the bulk of our recent spend. When you have £50m of amortised value and £200m in spend like this you do need CL football, deep CL runs or close. Evidently we aren’t going to qualify for the CL. Again it’s about profile and risk. Tonali being 23 an a high reputation player means that he’s missed an entire season where we didn’t qualify for Europe but 2 years later we would sell him for more then we bought him. Even if he failed we would get decent money for him. Do you get it now? It’s about profiles and risks. Yes Ashworth planned to sell Joelinton as plan B for PSR, plan A was selling Bruno with the release clause. He had a proper PSR exit strategy. As soon as he left Staveley have Joelinton the contract and closed that door. Similarly Villa sold Douglas Luiz for PSR for £50m. Replaced him with Tielemans. Also got Onana as part of PSR shenanigans. It’s just a smart approach.

Which CB has he been better than since his return?