Dr Jinx

5 minutes ago, Lush Vlad said:

Yeah, I think VVD would look amazing in any team in the world. Certainly not much of a drop off. He is outrageous at one on one defending, a beast in the air, calm

under pressure and can ping passes about for fun. 
 

It’s probably recency bias and I think I pay more attention to other teams than I did when I was young. As I was always massively biased towards NUFC and often pissed half-watching in the pub. But I think he is the best centre back I’ve seen in the PL. I know Terry and Rio will win more and have the longevity, Vidic was a more out and out defender etc. But I just love watching VVD play. 
 

Sorry to hijack the thread!

Rio is probably the closest in terms of style to a VVD but I’d rather have a Terry or a Vidic.

Or actually going back a bit further, none were as good as Jaap Stam or Tony Adams

7 minutes ago, HTT II said:

I think a genuine world class player like VVD at Man Utd wouldn’t look half the player, he’d still perform and would elevate others to a higher level because he’s that good, but ultimately unless there are more like him in the team with his talent, mentality and desire to perform consistently, he would start to make errors and not look so good, that wouldn’t be on him though IMO. 

I agree but there’s few teams out there that have talent that can compare to someone like that, he’s going to be making mistakes at a whole bunch of clubs and essentially, well hypothetically, if he’s making regular errors, he’s not the same player all of a sudden, he’s not invincible, he gets slagged off by the pundits and the confidence drops.

We can see that with Harry Maguire, who is a beast of a player. He’s let mistakes into his game because he’s playing in a crap underperforming team and over a 2 year period, his stock has dropped significantly because of this.

Move him to City or Chelsea and he’s a different player imho.

Every single one of them have negative points, you take VVD out of Liverpool and stick him in Man Utd defence and he’ll look half the player all of a sudden.

It’s about playing style, how they compliment those around them etc.

Bringing in Botman and Carlos is a massive risk because nobody has any idea how they will play together, communicate etc. That goes for whoever we bring in.

What we know though is what we currently have we cannot continue with which is why a gamble is perfectly fine in this instance.

Whacked out of it on goofballs this lad

1 minute ago, RS said:

Get the feeling they are weighing up whether to admit we’re down and plan for next season or them going balls out to try and stay up.  Must be hard to go for the latter with a current team that’s 90% dog shit. 

 

 

 

The issue with just giving up on this season, which is ludicrous by the way, we're a win from being out of the bottom 3.. well the issue is building a side to get out of the championship and then having to rebuild again the following season.

They have to go for broke, they'll get most of the transfer money back when these players leave in the summer if it's a worst case scenario.

1 minute ago, SUPERTOON said:

I’ve got reservations about Carlos and if he will be able to adapt to this league tbh, but seemingly it’s him and surely can’t be any worse than what we currently have.

I think big Joe will help him settle quickly if it happens and pass on instruction if there's a language barrier.

He seems a player who likes to go in hard on tackles, i'd be worried he'd be "too up for it" in his first few games, we literally cannot afford any slip ups in our winnable games

He's obviously still capable of moments of brilliance but he rides his luck, losing the ball in the middle of the field has led to far too many scoring opportunities for whoever we're playing.

As is the case with most of the team, he's hobbling around the pitch from about 70 minutes and looks like he's running on fumes.

If we were in a position to, i'd rest him for a few games, work on his fitness and conditioning as he's one of the very few that will be in the team after we upgrade it.

It's been killing us all season, since the first game against West Ham, they overran us in the last 25 minutes and we've barely improved. Like what the fuck did Steve Bruce have them doing in the pre season?

Dumb reports saying we've had a bid accepted for Eden Hazard

Yep that would be the ultimate move to ensure we’re the most hated club on the planet, have someone with a known heart condition play for us and die on the pitch as we narrowly avoid relegation.

Despite his cool exterior he likes to be loved and it shows in his success’ or failures.

It’s a bit simple to say he’s yesterdays man or that his ship has sailed. To say that about him would be to say that about other managers of his ilk, like Carlo Ancelotti for example.. who also did shit at Everton but is running away with La Liga.

It’s the same as players, some settle in a particular club where it just works out where it wouldn’t somewhere else.

Rafa works here, he gets the place and he knows how to polish a turd. Eddie also gets the place here and I think for the most part people are behind him but he doesn’t have the experience that Rafa does, for what the consortium are looking in several places for to solve a puzzle, they need only look in one place when it comes to Rafa.

Now I’m not for a minute saying we need to ditch Eddie Howe, he’s not had enough time and I think the signings we’re going to make will transform the side but I’m worried about his defensive side of management, even bringing in top class defenders, they’ll still need instruction to be a cohesive unit.

Looking at our fixtures, the winnable games are running out quickly..

Consultant.. the length of that is whatever the club wants it to be.

Perhaps they spoke with him and then the guy from Brighton and realised quickly not to waste time there.

Anyones guess. Not necessarily a bad thing though

2 hours ago, Yelevats said:

Eddie Howe used the words “dust ourselves down” in his post match interview ???

It’s the chair in the managers office, like Fr. Stack catching hairy hand syndrome off Jack.

This may be conspiracy stuff but wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if certain players are conspiring to keep us down, they’re here for their contract and as much £££ as they can get from the club.

This takeover is nothing but a threat to these people as there will be very few clubs that would take them who can offer even anything remotely like what they are on here.

Laacelles in particular, this could be the end of the gravy train for him. He’s not even that old.

I’ve never seen him so slow. Did he have covid or something?

Yep big week, think Botman is over as far as this window is concerned but we should just go all out for the next best, the Serb at Fiorentina and Carlos.

Bring in two box to box midfielders and let Joe play DM from now on.

The manager needs to be absolutely ruthless now. Getting behind these serial losers is a one way ticket to the champo

The team created nothing of note for him, left feeding off scraps but he made a nuisance of himself and made the ball stick a bit further up.

We need pace up front to go alongside him, ASM looks like he’s about to break down after 70 mins in every game and Fraser just runs around like a Jack Russell chasing a ball.

We were always going to be a mess until he got bodies in. The club didn’t do enough in the transfer market last week, we need defenders and a midfield or we’re down, simple as.

The only thing I’ll say about Howe today, the second Lascelles looked like he was running in glue and their wingers were stretching us, he should have made that change. They sensed a weakness and went after it, he changed nothing at the back to compensate.

That should be his last game for us. If that didn’t convince the new management/owners to go all out to get who they want, then there’s a problem.

What an absolute gutless performance. Running around like he was stuck in a bog. Lunging around the place to try and cover his poor positioning.

Those criticising Trippier on the match thread were so wrong, he was literally trying to play 2 roles in the side today and was more convincing in the air than our “captain”

Lascelles man, what the fuck was that

Just now, Holloway said:

How often does Shelvey get done for pace on a one v one chase man, I thought he had found half a yard but nah,has he fuck

It’s always the same, he has one or two games where he looks like he’s turning a corner and then retreats back to what he knows.

The lot of them have been a disgrace, can’t blame Trippier or Wood yet but Joelinton doing good things bringing the ball forward yet cannot finish any number of chances he gets.

ASM has been terrible and needs dropping. Murphy on for him please. Switch Fraser out to the left.

The midfield and defence are known quantities at this point and been discussed to death, all we can hope for is that they don’t make a fuck up that leads to a goal and that we nick one from somewhere.

The look of someone preoccupied..

Was looking at the training pictures earlier, Willock looks absolutely depressed in every single one of them.

Wonder if he's been frozen out by teammates, something just not right there at all.

Can you imagine how much better almost every other player in the team could look if we had a competent midfield?

More patient controlled attacks, protection for our defence.. comfortably in possession of the ball in the midfield.

We can do none of those things at present because we don't have the pace, physicality or intelligence.

Ludovic Blas could be decent, doesn't seem to have crazy pace but knows how to use his body to get ahead of people, would be fouled repeatedly in this league.

Right side of midfield is a problem area for sure.

When Liverpool signed VVD for 75 million there were some raised eyebrows, but now when you see how that team of excellent players looks like with and without him in the team…

75 million looks cheap.

The question over Botman is if he would have the same effect? Or would splashing a similar amount of money over 2 players add up to the same effect?

Botman and Carlos are both left footed players iirc?