honeybradger

Almost sold and was awful last friendly. Not sure why you are bothered about not getting to watch him one last time.

Who played in the game from earlier that you would have preferred to see in the team? Only McFarlane and Aluko would be first choice. This is just the state of what our first XI looks like minus Alves.

I think what I said is kind and balanced in comparison to what Millwall fans are saying about him i.e. worst player they have ever seen. Definitely did not go to any extremes.

I would have liked to see Alves play left wing for us this season if Mavididi leaves. Don't think he is as effective on the right and the CAM position is currently overstocked.

According to the fans of the team who most recently watched him he's very green at the moment. If he's currently rubbish at championship level that doesn't mean he is going to step down to league one level and instantly make an impact. If he is class at league one level then fair enough it's a good transfer but to me it seems like we are taking a risk here. It's just strange to me that we appear willing to take a risk on other teams youth players but not our own.

The difference is that Watson is not our player long term so we dont get any benefit from developing him up to standard. Feels like another Casadei where our fans are raving about him when he signs but he ends up looking very raw.

Seeing a lot of "not ready for men's football" from Millwall fans.

I also like when he said the stats showed we should have won games. When? There were barely any games that season where we outplayed the opponent. Players with the mentality of Begovic are exactly what is wrong with the club. Completely and utterly deluded. We went down because we had a parasitic team of experienced journeymen that weren't bothered about whether we won or lost as long as they collected their pay check. Blaming it on the young players, who frankly barely played, is ridiculous. If by young players he meant Jordan James and Fatawu who did play regularly then he is even more deluded as they are the only players who showed up at all.

There has been zero noise about BDCR leaving. It's likely he will still be with us next season. 2 players for each position means 22 first team players with an 18 man match day squad. That means 4 players miss out, based on last season Page is likely to be one of those 4. You just can't add squad bloat like Cullen and expect academy players to get a chance. Football doesn't work like that, there's only so many minutes to go around.

So what is he? A striker or a 10? If he's a box crashing 10 we already signed Chaplin and still have BDCR on our books. Not forgetting he would be blocking Page from the team. If he's a striker he's only good in support of another striker. Either way something is not adding up.

Same way you wouldnt consider Choudhury, Nelson and Thomas as academy talents. If you're an established player then you're no longer a "talent" you're just part of the first team. Alves and Braybrooke aren't clearly established with us for various reasons but they're a level above the rest of the squad. So it's just common sense that they play for us rather than giving them the opportunity to impress. The point I'm making is we're not giving any young players a chance to prove themselves and make that step up. Before the obvious comments of "it's a long season, let's see where we are by Christmas" the same was said last season.

What part of the logic is incorrect. We simply do not have room in the 18 man match day squad to play academy players. Cullen Mavididi Chaplin Alves Skipp Braybrooke Thomas Nelson Okoli Aluko McCarthy Bench: Stolarczyk Choudhury Faes Mcfarlane BDCR Adebayo Page I don't consider the likes of Alves and Braybrooke as academy talent really as their involvement in the first team is long overdue and they are both clearly our best players. No room on the bench for the likes of Evans, Hutchinson, Otchere, Carr, Joseph in a season when we are in league one is actually shocking. Our squad is beyond bloated. People were worried we were going to have to play the academy this season as well.

The reality is that we won't play the young players. It will be the same as last year with Chaplin instead of Jordan James, Cullen instead of Ayew, Braybrooke instead of Winks, Alves instead of Fatawu, Aluko instead of Ricardo and Adebayo instead of Daka. The rest of the squad will still be built up by Skipp, Okoli, Faes, Thomas, Choudhury, Nelson, Mavididi, BDCR, Coulibaly, Okoli. Same old same old really, no room for Hutchinson, Evans, Otchere, Carr, Joseph, Neale, Gray to have a breakthrough season here. At a push Page might pick up his first season over 1000 minutes considering we haven't yet replaced Aaron Ramsey/Mukasa. If we sign one more midfielder or forward on top of Adebayo then expect Page to get 500 minutes over the season and sent back to the u21s again.

I would have no issues if he was genuinely good like Ballard or a good attacking midfielder, wherever Cullen actually plays. As it stands I don't think he is a better player than Evans, Hutchinson, Page or Braybrooke. Therefore he is just a blocker.

Not on the decline, apart from a purple patch he has always been rubbish according to Swansea fans. When fans say you can't rely on academy players because some will turn out to be rubbish they mean players like Cullen.

He's either blocking Braybrooke, Page, Alves or Evans, Hutchinson, Otchere. If he does end up playing midfield you can't have Chaplin, Cullen, Braybrooke and Page all in the same team. 1 or 2 will have to sit on the bench as a best case scenario. Either way even if he was not blocking someone, the description from the Swansea fan is there: non entity as a player.

We already have Chaplin taking Page's position. Now we have added another player in that role. With 7 players on the bench Page will be struggling to even get into the match day squad at this rate.

Apparently he's a pointing/throwing up his arms specialist. Someone for Wout to get along with.

I'm not so sure that's the case, Priske and Walta were two signings last season that looked great on paper but didn't translate to the championship. Maybe they will perform next season once they have adjusted to moving leagues.

I think after August Priske's struggles at Birmingham you have to seriously question when a player puts up numbers in Sweden. 10 goals in 15 looks good but it's at a level in the Swedish second tier that is probably equivalent to the National league or lower.

Was posted in the training clips before the malaga match and was on the bench. Did a nice Zidane turn on Choudhury and Chaplin. I just think we have too many centre backs at the moment and he won't feature unless we get rid of 2-3 of them.

I can see Braybrooke alone getting 10 goal contributions this season if he plays the same role he has been in pre season. His final ball has been excellent and has also been making good runs behind the defenders, although he's not the most confident in front of goal. Something along the lines of 3 goals 8 assists is definitely achievable. In terms of Chaplin he has been a passenger so far, even Hutchinson and Evans who most on here would say they have been unimpressed by and aren't ready have shown more. I would be surprised if he ends up being the 10 goal contribution player you say we need. More likely it will be one of the academy players that steps up, assuming they are given the opportunity.

If youre going purely off goals and assists then we would be better off with BDCR than Chaplin based on last season. As we saw with Skipp, who was previously in the championship team of the season, 3 years is a long time in football and track records mean very little if the player has not been performing recently. Furthermore, the best goal scorers in league 1 usually don't come with a track record of goal scoring at that level. Dom Ballard and Jayden Wareham were both unproven goalscorers before last season, same with Charlier Kellman and Richard Kone. Picking teams based off of track records rather than performances won't end well.

That would show that we have not learned a thing. He should have to earn his way into the starting XI like the rest of the players. Not been convinced by him yet.

What has Chaplin done so far to indicate that he deserves to be in the starting XI?