cityfanlee23

Has he run yet?

Okay I’ve revised my January wishlist. We need a minimum of 4 defenders.

I fear you are probably right, but always willing to give players a chance under new management, we will likely have to go 6+ weeks (half way into January) before we would likely sign a new DM so my gut instinct is Soumare will play there.

Mine relies on a few variables, IF Ruud plays a defensive midfielder, I think it will be Soumare, and think he will improve massively with a proper role, if it's Ndidi playing in that role, it will be him. Sangare was a very important role in his PSV system, I think Soumare is the closest we have to that.

If it means dropping JJ, yes, especially if his plan is to invert either JJ or Kristiansen. Don’t get me wrong I don’t think Hamza is cut out for it either at this level, but I don’t think Hamza is going to cost us a goal a game whilst we wait for Ricardo to return.

I agree with you, but I think Soumare is closer to the Sangare role than Ndidi is, I’m just assuming he is going to want to replicate what he had at PSV.

So I haven’t quite kept up the last 2-3 days since it was basically confirmed it was Ruud by everyone, can someone explain to me why our new manager hasn’t had 2-3 days to train the team and take us into Brentford tomorrow? Just Leicester stuff or?

Credit to those pointing out that Hamza could be playing right back and tucking into midfield. That makes far more sense than my daft idea of making JJ do it (because kristiansen literally fled to Italy to avoid doing it) I’d be happy to see JJ given a rest and for hamza to step in too.

Yeah you could be right on that, but that’s only in possession and sitting in CM would mean Justin is probably closer to his position than he usually is where he was often hovering around the opposition box or further forward under cooper where he constantly got exposed on the break. I’m just not sure he would fancy kristiensen to be tucking into midfield since he was pretty vocal to Enzo that he couldn’t do that job and wanted to go out on loan to avoid it.. others pointed out Hamza coming in and that probably makes much more sense.

I'm probably completely wrong but this is how I imagine we will setup, I think Justin will be asked to invert into midfield and Kristiansen will become the left sided CB in a back 3. I have a funny feeling Soumare will feature heavily in RVN's plans, he fits the Sangare role that he had at PSV of being a defensive minded midfielder who can also be quite comfortable on the ball. If all players were fit, I'd guess Ricardo would be at RB inverting to CM, Winks will very much suit RVN and would replace Ndidi, and El Khannouss may be dropped, Buonanotte taking his spot and Fatawu stepping in to right wing. I won't be surprised at all if the Soumare call is wrong and Ndidi returns to his old CDM role, the attacking experiment worked fine in the Championship, but going forward Ndidi has been caught out too often this season.

Even if we defend poorly for a while, if Ruud can actually tell the players to attack, we will improve MASSIVELY. Literally every time we got to 75 mins and were losing and started to attack, we improved.

I did read somewhere a couple of days ago that the club are confident the new manager can be backed in January, need to find the link, but atleast we will be able to sign atleast 1x 500k player

@StriderHiryu Do your thing!

A positive gamble that all of us can get behind. Love this, Get in there Ruud, fire some rockets at this squad and get them fighting for the badge again.

IT'S HAPPENING!! IT'S HAPPENING!!! 97cfc857-24ad-4c32-aac3-3673fc232e50.mp4

Best mate is a Wednesday fan so I follow them pretty closely (our group chat is named Super Danny Rohl) The job Rohl has done there has been phenomenal, they definitely had a new manager bounce when he came in, and his form last season would have had Wednesday comfortably mid table with a League 1 squad, their owner makes our board look like masterminds and you can pretty much know who Wednesday have signed days before it happens based on the owners son following the new signings on instagram before it's announced. He was given a budget of about £5m and signed about 10 players (Ben Hamer was one of them funnily enough) This season they've struggled for a bit of consistency but had a big player turnaround in summer and overall I think Danny Rohl is going to be a top top manager in future, I'd love to see him managing us, but I'm a bit wary on the timing and whether now is the right time, if we had a points deduction I'd snap your arm off for him, but I'd worry he needs more time.

@mods what can I report this for?

As long as he doesn’t upset BDCR and Bouba we should be good. In all seriousness we do need someone to come in and show some rockets. We need a leader who is going to demand respect and Ruud does that. I also do think player power is quite strong at this club, it seems like Top often lends an ear to players a bit too often for my liking. It can work in some respects such as with Cooper since it seems to have pushed Top into making a change that we can all see is necessary, but every time someone gets sacked around here it sounds like the players have had a strong role in it happening, which fundamentally I hate. The balance of power at the club has seemed a bit toxic/skewed towards players since Pearson left. It’s about time we had a warrior in charge who isn’t afraid to bash some heads together and put up a barrier between the board and the changing room.

This wouldn't surprise me especially in the early days where Ronaldo was a showboat, Keane was brutal with him, I will say though having watched today the interview he did with Gary Neville from a year ago, Neville and him openly discuss how he managed the transition from being a completely goal driven player who went mental if he wasn't supplied goals (and they spoke about his attitude then) to now where he has to manage a group of players, and to his credit Ruud did acknowledge that he has changed that side of him when going into coaching and management and now understands the bigger picture and says he much more enjoys the focus on the collective compared to his playing days where he would scream at anyone who made the wrong decision if he was near goal.

Yep Schmidt should be a top priority, he won't even be a thought unfortunately.

https://www.footballcoin.io/blog/ruud-van-nistelrooy-tactics/#:~:text=Van Nistelrooy prefers central defenders,central defenders as wide players.

Left back, Right back, Defensive Midfielder (if the new manager doesn't revert Nididi back to a destroyer style CDM, I know Ruud likes to play a 433, at PSV he used Sangare in that role) and I'd love to say Striker, unless new manager can see something in Edouard.

I will say I'm half way through this on my other monitor, and I keep stopping what I'm doing to listen to him. He comes across well here, they spend most of the time talking about United but he also talks about his low points and the importance of players getting psychologists etc. Posting the link again for others, cheers @AKCJ

I hope he can bring someone like Fletcher from United in to help the midfielders.

Ruud is definitely a risk, but let's be honest, it's a far smaller risk/better gamble than continuing with Cooper.