Then we shouldn’t have sold Cucho, regardless of whether he wanted to go or not. The club showed in the summer that they were weak in the face of player power
I agree. However if you have a player who quite simply doesn't want to be here, then what can you do? "Forcing" him to see out his contract just doesn't fly in this day and age. The only reason Pedro is still playing for us is because he's not kicked up a fuss. If he wanted to go to Newcastle in January then the club would have sold him, no doubt about it. We put all our eggs in the Davis basket, and it's massively backfired. The colossal waste that was Bayo and Manaj just compounded our fate.
I agree with this. Last season was a total nightmare but he was one of few bright spots. His two goals at Southampton were well executed, and overall he never had a bad game. I understand why we let him go, but again I agree we could of fought to keep him a little harder. Championship would of been a great platform for him to score a lot of goals and really make a name for us. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but there is not a chance he would of been as bad as Bayo, Manaj and Davis.
Yes, it’s the PL but Caicedo publicly showed he wanted out of Brighton…yet he’s just signed a new deal. Reality is there have been plenty of players who have wanted out of recently relegated PL clubs but have been told they are staying - and they’ve knuckled down and got on with it. I just think the whole argument about ‘he wanted out so we were powerless’ is overstated. The club held the power. And had a striker on the books who would have been very capable of getting goals to get us back up. And we were happy to sell him. Really makes me question the desire to get back up.
I guess the club were powerless to keep him in the situation we were in, but say if we'd got a decent sum for Sarr as soon as the season ended, do you think we'd have told Cucho to stay?
Defence is ok. Bachman is ok at this level. Midfield don't have an identity. Unless it's 2 DM who never burst forward (oh for doucoure). Pedro might be a decent goalscorer if he wasn't always running into midfield. It's a cheap get out to have skills and touches in an area where it will never really hurt the opposition. It hides an average player. Sarr is pathetic. Sema is a workhorse and both of them deliver balls into the area but don't enter it enough. An area where goal shy Davis is a lone forward surrounded by defenders trying to do more than his feet are capable. When we play well we only look adequate. When we don't play well we are a hot mess.
Bilic’s comments post-game about his own abilities are damning. Does Bilic have any concerns that the players may not be right behind him? “I see them every day and they are with me. Are they following what me and my staff tell them? Yeah, definitely,” he said. “We are a good group of people, and they are listening to the plan and sticking to the plan. They want to do it.” Sorry - but if what we are currently watching is his idea of a ‘plan’, then he needs sacking immediately.
Don't think JP is hiding, I think he's just desperately trying to get into the game as we do a shoddy job of getting the ball up to him up the pitch
Giving the captaincy to Joao Pedro was the last positive thing Bilic has done. And then he spent a couple of weeks bigging up the choice publicly and how JP had grown into the role. So stands to reason that Bilic reverted back to Cathcart yesterday without any reason.
I think we would have ended up shooting ourselves in the foot denying him a move. I presume a big reason we end up signing these promising lads from SA is that we wouldn't stand in their way if an opportunity comes up.
Yesterday there was a big bust up after a foul near our penalty area second half. Cathcart ran in the complete opposite direction to the ref and players arguing, back to his RB spot. Didn't say a word. Pedro and Choudhury were the one who got involved and spoke to the ref.
Well it's obvious to everyone that the system isn't working. Personally I'd like to see us go 3-5-2 with Sarr and Pedro the front two. Asprilla as the playmaker. Hamza, louza central with Sema and Gaspar wb's. The others pick themselves.
The problem is we can’t play 3 at the back because we don’t have enough CB’s now Sierralta is out for the season. with our injury record, it would only be a matter of time before Kaba is in the starting line up.
I’m the biggest critic of the club, but I tended to think we sold Cucho, more than anything, because we needed cash and we couldn’t be sure who would be leaving, so we just had to take transfer fees where we could. Then I remember we shelled out £5m on mega dud Bayo and that actually then doesn’t make any sense at all.
In fairness, that deal came after Cucho left IIRC...though perhaps we shunted Cucho out the door in the knowledge that we wanted to grease the Bayats' palms...
Was always going to be 0-0 Preston don't even try and score and are happy with 0-0 draws and I believe yesterday was their 9th 0-0 draw in the league this season. When you relate this to our impotent frontline then it was always going to be a struggle. I thought Hoedt and Porteus were good at the back and the former has a class crossfield ping. Asprilla looked brilliant when he come on and probably should have got an assist when he put Davis in for his obligatory weekly miss. Think Slaven needs to figure out who is the deeper midfielder Choudhury or Louza. Louza looked to be playing too deep, yes he may need to come back to start the play but when we have done that and have possession he needs to be further up to influence the gam. Massive games coming up!
Can someone refresh my memory because during the last promotion season when Trondre were huffing and puffing and slicing shots high and wide, TD got injured and Gray got benched . What happened thereafter ? I.e. what was the new forward line ?
Sarr turned up which helped . Think Gray did manage to get a few . It was our defence that really won us promotion.
It was more down to a change in formation and attitude, hosted by WTE he rallyed the players' and we changed the system to 4-3-3 which suited the players' we had at the time. Hughes played as a number 10 behind Sarr and Pedro, with Chalobah having the season of his life in the new formation. Serrealta was a rock at the back and along side a half decent Cathcart and even Masina was good. Sarr scored most of our goals towards the end of the season (his two at Reading were very good), but when Gosling scored our winner at Norwich it more or less gaurenteed our promotion. Right now, we have a better side player to player, but have no unity that we showed under Xisco. Deeney getting injured was a major part of it too.
The most annoying part is that a bang average 10-14 goal championship striker would have catapulted us into the mix with Sheff and Boro .
It's really quite hard to work out how we scored the requisite amount of goals to get up that season - this is our entire scoring table: As has been said, it really, really was that clean sheet record that did it. ROCK AND ROOOOLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!
Whatever happened to Stipe Perica ? 1 in 16 ? Made for the current team . Trondre were Haaland in comparison !!
Just noticed that Dan Gosling is included oddly out-of-sequence, with the claim that he scored an unlikely 4 goals! I believe the explanation is that he scored 4 goals across the season; 2 for us, and 2 for Muff in the first half, before his move.
Having watched the highlights of Saturdays game on Sunday afternoon I thought we were unlucky not to score on quite a few occasions. Therefore I'm thinking that our luck has got to change very soon, and that once it does the flood gates will open and we will go on a winning streak all the way to the playoffs. I have not given up yet so lets get behind the boys and help crack the bad luck run we have been on for most of this season.
It was certainly stupifyingly dull, frustrating and incredibly boring, watching paint dry would've been more enjoyable.
It's been a largely painful season, with more lows than highs, the main exception being the 4-0 against L#ton. Losing 4-0 at Swansea and the feeble 5-0 on "aggregate" defeats against Millwall spring to mind.
Hughes was the deepest of the midfielders, it was Cleverley or Zinckernagel who was the furthest forward, JP was the main man up top, he wasn't overly prolific (in fact he scored the last of his 9 goals that season away at Blackburn in about February or March time I think), but the system allowed us more control in midfield (Hughes hardly played before that, and Chalobah really came to the fore after a steady if unspectacular start to the season) and JP up top, while he did tire a bit towards the end of the season, was more of a handful for opposition defenders than Trondre
