The_Rorab

Surely we need to start loaning out more of our players. We have Stolarczyk and Brunt at 21 Flynn and McAteer are 20 Those 4 imo HAVE to be getting senior league football at their ages really. Then you've got the likes of Marcal-Madivadua, Braybrooke, Maswanhise, of whom any would probably do well to show what they can do in league football, and loaning out the oldest and more experienced youngsters would allow us to promote the likes of Popov and Alves etc to the U21s. Regardless of the transfer issues we've had we need to keep developing and allowing the best/oldest young players to follow the same path as KDH, Wright etc unless we're planning to give them actual gametime in the first team this season. With potential issues down the line of cutting costs, we need to make sure we're doing the utmost to develop our academy players and whilst that can be done at the club to an extent, I do feel like we need to be more proactive in loaning out than we have been so far this season.

I don't think we should be panicking, I do think we still have the core of a squad good enough to compete towards the European places. I'd be a lot more satisfied though if I actually believed Rodgers was gonna use the limited summer transfers as a reason to give more chances to the likes of the best youngsters coming through.

Main things I'd say from the 1st half so far - Vestergaard just doesn't ever look comfortable defending, and Amartey looks suspect when put under pressure on the ball. Luke Thomas just seems uncomfortable and seems to make errors of judgement or quality in attack. Praet and Tielemans are the brightest sparks in terms of actually getting quality balls forward. Iheanacho getting in good positions but also poor decisions/quality in the final third. Early on we were just passing along the back 3, playing a ball into midfield which would immediately go back to the CB who'd played it out and then it would go across the back 3 the other way on loop but that seems to have been rectified a bit as the game's gone on. All in all though I think we've been decent going forward and not too troubled at the back.

So when Rodgers said a few youngsters could be involved towards the end of the season the emphasis was on the word could huh Honestly this lineup won't tell us anything. We'll either play well in which case it'll show that they can sometimes emulate looking like actual players when it doesn't count for anything or we'll utterly embarrass ourselves by being worse than a team already relegated in 20th. Would have been nice to see if any squad players or youth players might be capable of doing something for us going into next season rather than just playing a player that literally won't be here next season. Can't wrap my head around that choice at all.

I do believe U21s are exempt from PL squad registration, though I don't think that would help 21 year old Wright or 23 year old Hirst any. Though to be frank, even if Wright could feature for us somehow before the season end, do I think Rodgers would at any point willingly choose to rotate one of Tielemans and KDH in the middle?

I mean. Last I checked Wright was currently 21 so I'd be surprised if he was 23 this year!

It's simple. He's a quality player, one of the best in the team on ability when everyone is playing to potential. He's also showed almost none of that ability in recent months and I'd rather see basically any other option given a chance at the moment instead of playing him every single minute of every single game. That doesn't mean he's a bad player by any stretch, he's just in abysmal form.

I think Youri is a brilliant player, but one who just doesn't have the drive for the club anymore and knows that he won't be here soon. He's been a wonderful servant of the club, been brilliant in our success and definitely deserves to go down as one of our best players of this era. However, football doesn't really have much time for sentiment, and imo he shouldn't be playing every game for us anymore, assuming it is all but decided that he's off. He has shown a much higher current level of ability than say Hamza, or Soumare, or any of our academy players sure, but he hasn't shown the actual capability to put in those performances for quite some time now. Given that he's likely off I think we should be using the period of games where we have to rotate to keep players fresh anyway, and where the league is somewhat less important given how unlikely we are to get into a European place to start planning for life after Youri and figuring out where the players in his position stand right now, even if they haven't shown comparable previous ability to Youri at his best. And let's face it, the current incarnation of Youri isn't anywhere near his best and maybe not playing every game could help save him for when we need him most. I'd be giving chances to the likes of Hamza, Soumare, hell even Braybrooke or whoever else is impressing in the U23 side, because you never know in football who can suddenly take an opportunity by the scruff of the neck a la Iheanacho, and if he's not playing well at all and also is gone, then there's not really a huge upside to him playing every single match. I think we'll definitely miss him when he's gone, but his current level of performance isn't much to be missed and it would be sensible to see if there's anyone currently at the club who can provide a new dimension before having to spend big money. (Though we probably still might have to to adequately replace him)

I think it's readily apparent that a small minority of people have a weird agenda against him. He's fine, likely not our best option when all players are available, but we can't play our best players every game with how congested our fixture list is, and he's definitely shown in flashes that he can be good enough for that role in the team. He was bad today undoubtedly, as were a lot of the other players and definitely isn't the finished article yet, but at 20 has time to get there. He might not, but on the basis of his games so far, he definitely could. We definitely have bigger fish to fry in terms of squad composition than trying to upgrade on his position as backup LB. He's definitely still a work in progress as you'd expect of his age, but calling him rubbish and saying he'll never make it here is a ridiculously reactionary take. Criticising his deficiencies and poor form is fair enough - I've done so in this post somewhat, but some of the hyperbole peddled against him is mad.

We're basically just upmarket Blackpool 2010/11. Which isn't quite what I'd hoped we'd go on to be after the two 5th placed finishes.

If your concept of optimism is 9 points from a possible 36, I'd hate to know what pessimism looks like!

Yes, the defence by large, were. Considering that our defensive issues are incredibly clearly a systematic issue and not a personnel issue given we've tried a myriad of combinations including 3ATB and a flat back 4 and been garbage with all of them. So yes, defensively we were all over the place. Amartey was part of that defence. As was Evans. And Soyuncu. As has been Vestergaard. Continuing to specifically single out Amartey for our bad form is pretty pointless and misses the mark entirely. He's not a world-beater, he's probably not by ability anything other than our 4th best CB at the club. But he's not this massive weakness and the worst CB to ever exist as you seem to want to make him out to be, and the more you bang the same entirely biased drum, the more you'll get people overexaggerating his ability and overlooking any faults because of your incredibly overexaggerated take on him because they rightly feel that you're making disingenuous arguments to specifically single him out.

If we take exactly our last 38 Premier League games and pretend that that makes a season's worth of form, what we would get from that is 62 points; which last year would have seen us finish 7th/8th, and is in fact the points total we got when we finished 5th 2 seasons ago. Rather more concerning is that the initial 19 games starting from last season contains only 3 losses and accounts for 38/62 points, whereas in our most recent 19, we have lost JUST under 50% of those games with 9 losses and 24 points - if we were to remain on pace for 24 points from the next 18 games, we would finish on 48 points, which is usually in the region of 12th/13th and usually occupied by teams looking over their shoulders towards the relegation spots rather than Europe. Now this actually doesn't necessarily mean anything. Teams don't just homogenously continue with identical form, and we're unlikely to have the exact same points haul as the last 19 games, and it is also just a somewhat random amount of games to look at when I started with the full 38, and we've definitely had injury issues but I do think it shows a worrying trend that has definitely lasted a while now. We are definitely not playing like a team pushing for any kind of European football based on form and haven't been really for half a season's worth of games. What that means for Rodgers isn't really for me to say. I would very much like him to turn us around from this and I still think he should be backed to do so - however I can definitely see an argument that if we're still peddling lower midtable form by January that Top might have a decision to make if the requirement for the club is to push for European places.

This is a wild hill to choose to die on, but you go for it my guy KDH hasn't been in and around the first team really until this season, whether that's because he wasn't super highly rated before his standout loans is largely irrelevant really - some players thrive when given more opportunities out of youth football and KDH seemed to have done that on loans and now being kept around the squad. Hamza was certainly more highly rated coming through the academy - see the Barca links at one point, and had games a while back where he looked great - however in 75 games he has never really staked a claim for a starting berth and I don't think there are many people who would disagree that that's the right decision based on watching him over the course of many years. Which isn't to say he's a bad player, just one that doesn't seem to quite be able to live up to his touted potential. For all we know, KDH may never push on in the same way, he may not ever really thrive here and may move on without having much of an impact - he hasn't exactly been electric this season, definitely. However, it's unarguable that he has had 3 starts and one sub appearance this season - and that's definitely not nearly enough to form a fully-fledged opinion on him and call him rubbish as you seem desperate to do. Not every player will instantly find their niche in the team or play a blinder as soon as they come in - see Nacho for a recent example - so the fact you seem to want to slag KDH off after 3 games is honestly quite mental given the precedence of other players at the club.

Didn't this also happen with Conor Tee and I think it was Herve Pepe-Ngoma a while back where they won academy player of the year and then promptly got released like a year later?

And how would you know KDH is plenty good enough to play in the Prem without his stellar loan spell for Luton?

Sorry what? Which players have progressed to the level required to play regular first team football without having at least one loan spell to play consistent league football and show they have something about them? Harvey progressed from MK Dons to Barnsley to West Brom to our first team progressing through each loan spell, Hamza had 2 spells at Burton, Chilwell went to Huddersfield and proved himself to be a capable player, even Schlupp at Brentford and Liam Moore at Bradford a while back. Sure, not every loan is the correct move, but I'd bet money that loaning out Thomas to spend a season in the Championship would do a lot for his development. Albeit as possibly our 2nd best left back maybe we need him more than we can afford to loan him out at present and he does seem to be competent already enough to play second choice, but I can't understand why you would deride the loan system when it has clearly shown to be very useful in developing our younger players whereas I can't even name a player to come through our academy and play regularly for us who hasn't had some sort of loan spell.

Am I the only one who sees the utility in us having both Mendy and Choudhury? Mendy is better for games in which we won't be physically dominated and in which he can play a more cog in the system role of keeping possession ticking over and playing a bit more controlled. Hamza is better when we need to match a team's physicality and offer something different in his combative playstyle with more energy and running. Both are inferior to Ndidi but both offer a different way of contributing to the team and I think having both isn't a bad thing. I don't necessarily think either are really ever going to be first team players here but we need a squad of players and for what they give they are both serviceable options who can occasionally put in great performances.

I do appreciate that tbf, but I think for me a lot of it boils down to the notion that we've brought a very decent chunk of players through, and whilst Beaglehole does likely deserve some credit for that, I don't think you can say it was specifically him as the catalyst for doing so; it was likely a number of different youth coaches and the academy setup in general to thank for that. Which isn't to say he shouldn't get any plaudits for his part in it, but I find it unlikely he was the only contributing factor. On the other hand, the abject playstyle of his team is something directly under his control. I don't think you can necessarily blame him for the fact we're struggling this season, the U18s are as well and that's not his jurisdiction for example. but the way we play at the moment is dire, and as the U23 manager it is him picking said tactics. It's also as far as I can tell exactly him picking who to play for the U23s and who to progress from the lower age groups, and albeit this season has been markedly better, he has in the past, as widely noted, ignored technical players for more physical ones when choosing players to move up the ranks. I'd be happy for him to stay were he to change his focus towards changing how the unders play in line with the first team, and to his credit we are now loaning out more of our players, and as of right now there are far more players under 20/21 in the U21 lineups, which a lot of us have been crying out for for ages. Right now though, I feel as if we could do better and I feel as if that's not an unpopular feeling, despite the highs of recent prospect - and I can only judge him on the things he is directly in charge of, which I feel could be better.

I appreciate that historically we've brought through a decent chunk of players in your Barnes, Chilwell, Hamza and potentially KDH, not to mention in recent memory Schlupp and Kingy - but I don't think you can blindly ignore the horrific style of football that the U23s have been playing, the reports of Beaglehole refusing players loans in order to win the PL2 a while back, and other such rumblings just due to past successes. Whether that's enough to say Beaglehole should be replaced is maybe up for debate, but I think it's fairly clear that we should be doing better in certain areas of the academy, especially with regards to playing style, given how the first team play. We have been loaning players out a bit more this year than we had been and our average age of the U23 lineups have had fewer players in the 22-23 year old range with no future at the club as we did when we were playing the likes of Callum Elder, George Thomas and so on which I think is positive progress, but again I think the U23 team needs more changes to get more out of it, regardless of who is in charge of that. There's definitely been enough rumours about players being too technical and not physical enough for Beaglehole and therefore not transitioning through the U23 team on his say-so, as well as the PL2 rumours both of which don't exactly shine Beaglehole in a great light, so I can fully understand the desire to get someone new in with fresh and more contemporary ideas.

Based on them having won 10 games this season and being in 7th with a loss here, I'm gonna go with a probably not?

I've heard Beaglehole has him locked in his basement until he agrees to stop passing along the floor and wanting silly things like regular football in the U23s

I'm willing to bet the same subsection of people would be absolutely lampooning Rodgers after the match for not rotating them if say Castagne or Ndidi were to have played and subsequently got injured again! There are certainly words like disgrace and cancerous being thrown around which entirely beggar belief We'll see how the team plays, there can definitely be certain question asked of Rodgers in individual selection if we have an abject game, but at the very least it will ensure we likely don't suffer long-term consequences to the heavy schedule of games. Hopefully it'll be enough to get a result today

I think it's pretty clear from your previous calling Mendy a League One player at best, and your disregard for any positive performances he might have put in this season and laser-focus on any mistakes or bad performances, and ignoring any other people's points that you're not concerned with evaluating your opinion on Mendy so much as just declaring him rubbish and that's that. Which is your prerogative of course, but it means that a conversation about it is pretty useless. Mendy isn't a world-beater, that's obvious, but without him, with Hamza's lack of positional discipline, as you can see most other fans and even Brendan Rodgers seemingly agree that without Mendy we'd be a lot worse off. Which isn't even to disparage Hamza who I really hope can push on this season, but Hamza just doesn't play the same role for us that we need Mendy or Ndidi to play. He's certainly not a League One player that's for sure, and deserves a lot more credit than you're willing to give or listen to.

Chituru Odunze has apparently been called up to the US national team for their next 2 games!