honeybradger

Kristiansen and Justin at fullback, Choudhury at DM alongside Winks. He's better than all of them in any of those respective positions, hopefully it was just giving the rest of the team minutes.

Stop trying to force the Stinky Winky nickname 🤣. No one else is using that, it belongs in a school playground.

Yeah, i agree. Alves, Nelson and Baybrooke are arguably more talented than the generation before them of Barnes, Chilwell and Dewsbury Hall who we sold for over £100mil. If managed properly they should go on to being good PL players but based on the pre season so far it doesn't look like they're being given a sniff. I guess we have to see first hand how he manages them, it will be a black mark on his record here if none of them make it with us.

I think he managed all of those I mentioned at club level, mostly on loan at Swansea. The only two starting players from Swansea's academy that broke through when Cooper was there are Cabango and Cullen from what I can see. It's different giving players a chance in the championship than in the PL though.

He has a good record with picking up players from his u17 winners team and taking them to the next level in senior football such as Gibbs White, Guehi, Bhrewster and Gallagher.

Personally after looking at him he's less comparable as a player to someone like Vardy and more similar to someone like Maddison. His goal scoring record even last season would be fairly unimpressive if he was a pure box striker but he looks more like a 10 to me.

Akgun got 8 goals 9 assists in the Turkish league 2 seasons before he joined us and he wasn't even starter quality in the championship. If we're looking at the PL he had definitely fallen from his best even with Crystal Palace.

He's not the same player that was destroying us every time we faced him. There's a reason his team are sending him out on loan after a year, he's on the decline. It's like if another team signed Ndidi and were expecting to sign one of the best midfielders in the PL, he's not that player anymore.

Is it possible that we see this guy as our attacking midfielder? All the videos of him are him linking up in midfield and on the wing. There is the worry that maybe he doesnt have the strikers instinct to make the right runs and score goals, which seems to be backed up by him not scoring much in Greece. He seems to have a good scoring record in the Europa league though. Still he looks like a good player.

If Cooper is only going to use Ndidi as an attacking midfielder our sole priority should be Mandela Keita or someone similar. Our midfield is by far the worst part of this team.

He's played quite a few professional games and the fans who had watched him previously all said that he has good physical attributes but lacks a defensive brain and has some stray passing, which is what we're seeing in pre season. Sadly that's not going to change overnight, I dont think he's a bad defender, he's the type that's good in the right system but then so are all our other defenders. Realistically we could have stuck it out with Faes and Vestergaard and I think we wouldn't be any worse off, and we've spent too much money on Okoli for him to just be more of the same.

What does he expect when he's started a choudhury/soumare, Winks, Ndidi midfield for half our friendlies with Ndidi in the 10 role? Ricardo not being a starter and inverting into centre back as well. I could stomach us going down if it felt we were building towards something and giving our young talents a run out, but they're not even getting minutes in pre season, we've used most of our budget on a centre back we didnt need and we're loaning/signing on a free a bunch of plays who dont look good enough to keep us up on the face of it. He's complaining about not having enough signings but the signings he's made Okoli and Cordova Reid arent performing better than those already at the club and I'll be surprised if a washed Zaha and Bouananotte is going to make a difference. I was actually quite excited by him as a manager before the friendlies because he has a decent record with English youth but it seems like he's more willing to play experienced players who will only ever be not good enough than inexperienced players who might not be good enough right now but can develop into good players.

I am less annoyed at the player and more annoyed that we seem to have spaffed the majority of our transfer budget on a centre back who doesnt seem to improve our defence. The fault lies with our ownership and scouts for this one.

Zaha would just be a continuation of us targeting the wrong profile of player. An over the hill left winger is not what we need, we need a creative spark in midfield.

Meanwhile we have Ben Nelson sitting in reserves who likely will go on to be a centre back than Bassey and will also leave after not being given a chance.

It's not just the tactics but it's our movement in the transfer market. Cordova Reid and Okoli have not improved us and we're signing 19 year old Buonannote to play over the 19 year old CAMs we already have at the club in Golding and Alves. Absolutely piss poor.

Not very good.

This Mendy guy looks quite good, we should sign him.

But he has eXPerIenCe so he needs to start over Alves.

you cannot convince me that Golding would not provide more quality to this team than what we are seeing in Lens right now.

https://x.com/JackWhitman_7/status/1822250160920965191 more quality from Golding in this clip than we have seen all pre season.

Is this our last friendly? We're seriously wheeling out an Ndidi, Winks, Choudhury midfield? This is supposed to be us testing the starting lineup for next week and it's not looking good. With Ricardo on the bench as well I wouldn't expect Cooper to be here very long sadly.

Hopefully this is our Akgun replacement rather than our Dewsbury Hall replacement, otherwise we are going to be in a lot of trouble next season.

The issue is not just that he's past it, he's also got a huge ego which is never a good mix. He will expect to play regular minutes but if he performs like he has in Turkey then he will get benched and cause problems in the dressing room. Hopefully this doesnt happen.

£140,000 a week. Net is after tax.