cityfanlee23

Our team is more than good enough to get promoted as it is. We’ve spent 75% of the season talking about “how the hell did we get relegated with these players” Our bench players would get into most of the championship teams. Our squad could maybe do with a bit of balancing, but overall there’s no excuses for not being promoted.

Yeah there’s definitely multiple factors involved but I think the point really is that our incredible goals conceded record has been slightly flattered this season. We probably should have conceded more goals if the opponents were not so wasteful. We also have been incredibly wasteful in attack. Missing so many easy chances as well as not attacking when clear options are available.

We only had such a good defensive record because of the poor level of championship attacks. Pretty much every match this season we have got away with making massive errors and been let off by poor finishing. Our defensive record has been massively deceiving relative to our performances defensively.

I know we have a mentality issue in a lot of players, but it is really getting a bit silly the sheer amount of people that have given Enzo this god status. Whenever we win he’s a genius and when we lose it’s a player mentality issue. Hes obviously done a great job but we have put in way too many absolute stinkers this season, fortunately we have the quality in the team to win a lot of them and we often are a 2nd half team. I think we will win today, but the performance is nowhere near good enough from everyone involved.

I’m an idiot, opened the wrong tab.

I like the look of Japhet Tanganga, currently on loan at Milwall from Spurs, primarily a CB but he can play at RB too, seems quite comfortable on the ball, he’s strong and fast and defensively looks quite solid. He put in a hell of a performance against City a couple of seasons ago but has been a bit stale there, One to keep an eye on for the rest of the season, his season didnt start well, he was on loan at Augsburg and got injured before the season started then couldn’t break into the team on his return, came back and was loaned out to Milwall and he’s finding his feet very quickly there, been one of their best players in his 6 appearances so far. Early days but looks like he could be a late bloomer.

Has he posted the meme yet???? YOU JUST GOT

Players look like they are up for it but the quality isn’t really there for both sides, Bournemouth probably edged the second half in the end but fortunately they were poor in the final 3rd. Not much to make of this game really, perfect opportunity to test our formation against premier league opposition, but at the same time can understand resting players.

I hope so, it’s always a risk bringing through young players at the top level so hopefully him and some of the others can get game time in the coming months as we need all the cover we can get next season if we go up. Plus it’s bloody exciting when you’ve got a young gem on your hands, sounds like he’s got the potential to go places if we develop him right

How was Nelson? Sounds like another very good performance, hopefully we have a gem on our hands here!

Didn’t see the match but I get the feeling from these posts we played well? 😂

Perfect opportunity to see where we are at, sadly my gut instinct on this is that we are going to get rolled over quite comfortably. Hope I’m wrong

That's fine, but nothing has happened yet, it's media speculation, don't understand why we are attacking someone over something that they haven't done. Plenty of things to shout at him for without this, but anyway, it's not going to stop people needlessly doing it so not sure why I hooked myself on commenting

What's he got to do with it though? If the club needs the money we can't reject it. We don't even know if there is an official bid yet, media has put a figure on a players head and people are attacking Rudkin for it.

And just to add, are people really trying to use this to attack Rudkin with?

Mixed emotions here, he's having a great season after a slow start, but I still personally think he's overrated by our fans and needs to step up further to make it as a top premier league player, it could happen as he's definitely shown he's shown improvement under Enzo and should continue to improve, so I think selling him now would be a very silly decision without an immediate replacement, but £30m is a decent sum. The other part of this equation that I can't shake from my head at present is the amount of fans that think it would be devastating to sell him, KDH has been great, but our squad even without him should be winning this league, the fact so many seem to think losing him now would derail our season really doesn't sound like confidence in the Squad/Enzo is high. Sure KDH would be a big loss, but so big it would derail an 8 point/13GD lead over southampton? Either way, I can't see him being sold without a replacement.

Completely agree with this, definitely a very good player in there, nothing flashy, but at the right club under the right manager he's a 7/10 player most weeks. Unfortunately just didn't work out here.

There is definitely going to be clubs picking up relatively cheap gems from Chelsea, they've spent so much money on their scatter gun transfer strategy there must be so many unhappy players there questioning their future.

Giovanni Reyna is linked with a loan move to Forest at the moment, 21 year old attacking midfielder who can play on both wings but primarily plays in the Maddison role, has a big future ahead of him but struggling for game time at Dortmund, I'm sort of hoping Forest do get him on loan, as it looks like Marseille could be trying to Hijack a permanent deal and I'd like to see him available still in summer. Dortmund are rumored to only want £15m for him at the moment. He has not really lived up to the potential but under the right manager he could still be a top-class player.

Yeah Gray is going to cost a fair bit I'd expect. Regarding Philogene, the vice-chairman of Hull City confirmed that Villa have a fixed fee of £15m as first refusal, but only if the 2 clubs are in the same division, so providing Hull don't get promoted this season, we could potentially get him for say £20m, since Hull know if they get promoted they will lose him for £15m to Villa if he continues to play well, so I'd expect anything over a £15m bid they would accept if they fail to go up. I doubt Villa would bid more than £15m for him if Hull fail to get promotion. It’s actually quite a strange deal for both sides, if Hull go up they will likely lose their best player for £15m, if they don’t go up they have an incentive to sell, which would then force Villa to potentially have to pay more money than the fixed fee they have in their contract clause, which I’d doubt they want to do. Plus the fact Philogene said in an interview he had to leave Villa to progress his career, so there’s potential that he doesn’t want to return anyway. So unless a wild bidding war breaks out for him, Hull have an incentive to sell and Villa will look stupid if they sign their own player back for more than their agreed fee.

One that really interests me is Simone Pafundi, was given his Italy debut by Mancini in 2022 aged 16 and was talked about as being one of italys brightest young players, game time at Udinese has been almost non existant with 10 professional appearances in 3 seasons. AFAICS United wanted to sign him from Udinese but because of Brexit rules they are unable to (When Brexit officially happened, English clubs were effectively banned from signing foreign players that are under the age of 18 from EU countries) So Pafundi has now signed a deal with Swiss Super League club FC Lausanne-Sport (Owned by Ineos) My assumption here is that will give United a loophole to sign him at a later date given Switzerland are not part of the EU or EEA, but my knowledge on those rules is very lacking. Given where United are currently, give it 12 months and they may have a new manager with a completely new direction and Pafundi could become available, he looks a serious talent, and Mancini gave him one of the Italy national teams slots that they award to their most promising youth players, so Mancini must rate him too.

Definitely not "unheard of" but there are multiple players in the Championship who are too good for this league and will 100% be in the top flights of europe in the next 2-3 years. Jonathan Rowe - Norwich Jaden Philogene - Hull Gabriel Sara - Norwich Jack Clarke - Sunderland Milan Van Ewijk - Coventry Taylor Harwood-Bellis - Man City (Loan at Southampton) Archie Gray - Leeds

He’s going to get absolutely mopped up in the premier league.

I’d love to see Enzo adopt something closer to what Thiago Motta is doing at Bologna, he is massively impressing me at the moment and has developed a hybrid system that you wouldn’t think would be as fluid as it is. bologna have the highest possession in the Serie A but they also adopt a high press. Motta has credited 3 different managers with 3 very different styles as his inspiration, Joachim Lowe’s 2014 Germany when defending, Bielsa’s style regarding team positioning and trusting eachother and Luciano Spaletti for the attacking phase. Motta also has quite an interesting way of looking at the pitch as a whole, setting up with a 4231 but he actually calls his system as 2-7-2 as he looks at the formation vertically rather than horizontally. 2 players on the left, 7 players in the spine, 2 players on the right, he considers the goalkeeper his “first midfielder”, really refreshing take on modern football. I’d take Motta quite happily if Enzo doesn’t work out long term. Enzo doesn’t seem to be learning unfortunately, things need to change as at present it’s hard to tell whether we are where we are because of the tactics or because we have one of the best teams in the league, probably a mixture of both but I doubt this would be working with lesser players, some credit obviously has to go to him for turning the ship so quickly and getting results, but we are making the same errors we made in the first matches of the season and it’s really quite frustrating.

Damn, that’s very sad, always liked Sven