honeybradger

Stansfield was a massive overpay by Birmingham. It's well known among league one fans and even most Birmingham fans would agree.

So why is a player who is generally equivalent to Kelman (who bottom of the table QPR sold to bottom of the table charlton) considered good enough for promotion hopefuls Leicester? For me Kone fails the eye test, he looks like he is going to be affected more than most good league one players when moving to a higher level due to having less space available to him and less mistakes to capitalise off of. I will reiterate again, Evans is a major talent that we are very lucky to have on our hands. Why risk losing him for a striker who on the face of it is clumsy, slow and non-clinical? Is it just because we need to feel safe that we have a new 'established' striker even if he's not very good? Why not roll the dice and give Evans a chance to piece it all together rather than knock him down the ladder for a known player who doesnt seem to be very good?

Not true, he was outscored by Kelman and Stansfield last season.

Don't think so. Him not being in the squad for the last friendly certainly won't have helped. Us not securing Evans and putting our trust in him will be one of the biggest mistakes in recent memory, which is significant given the number of horrible mistakes we have made in the last half a decade. He will go to the top, whether it is with us or without us. Regarding Kone he was outscored by Charlier Kelman last season in league one who has been sold by QPR for this upcoming season. Shows the performance level Kone is at currently considering his counterpart isn't good enough currently for QPR. Not very high!

Im just not that convinced that Kone is as good as is being made out on here. I think rotating in Jake Evans with Ayew and Daka with the aim of making him our long term first choice striker is a bold decision but also the right decision. He certainly has a far higher ceiling than Kone.

First championship season where he gets more than 10 goals and now he's suddenly a guaranteed goalscorer at this level and 100% improves us. As a midfielder he is incredibly limited, he's not a strong passer, ball carrier or good defensively. See his stats compared to bouba soumare's: If we sign him we would be fully hanging our hat on his new found goal threat, when there is every possibility that he returns to type and gets 6 goals 3 assists next season if he signs for us whilst offering very little in the middle of the park. Burnley know that he's nowhere near good enough for them long term, that's why they've let him leave. If we sign him on high wages at 29 this has all the hallmarks of yet another Rudkin disaster signing. Remember the Coady, Winks and BCDR signings were all touted as 'reasonable' on here at the time and look how they ended up.

I feel like he's the kind of player that would do well in Serie A

Monga forced his way in to the starting XI on merit this pre season. As much as i like mavididi monga has been magical. If he's now being held back at arms length and will only get substitution minutes behind the senior players then that's no reflection on him but it's a reflection of the typical cowardice of managers who dont want to bench the senior pros irrespective of performance. Monga has shown he doesnt need to be eased in, he's already our best left winger. You can apply this logic to all the academy players I mentioned, they all deserved more than they got this last pre season game on merit. If this is the approach Cifuentes will apply to them going into the season i will be disappointed, on this basis dont be surprised if Alves is dropped out of the squad for Bcdr when he's back fit.

Evans is too raw but Daka and Mcateer arent? Would be a major loss if we lose him to another club. If we didn't have Monga he would be our biggest talent in our academy.

I am worried that Nelson isn't starting, Monga isn't starting, Alves isn't coming off the bench and Evans isn't even involved. Feels like the youngsters are going to held at arms length for yet another season which would be the wrong decision.

Based on status among fans maybe but as a football player he wasnt good enough to be in this conversation.

This is good news. Rudkin, please for the love of anything please do not sign Michael Keane, Ben Mee or Craig Dawson as a replacement. We have enough centrebacks without Coady.

Yet a newly promoted Bundesliga side turned over a recently relegated PL side. Very much reminded me of the Everton 4-0 with how static our defence was.

The fans who turn on academy graduates quickly are usually not the same ones who wanted them in the team in the first place. Who cares if academy graduates don't live up to expectations? They never cost us a transfer fee.

Monga is more technically gifted but Sterling has more pace. Monga more reminds me of young Jadon Sancho.

That's the point I was making though. Belgium are high in the FIFA rankings but that is purely down to a few standout individuals and are weak in multiple positions compared to where they are as a team. Belgium is considered the 8th best national team but does Wout Faes even get into a single PL side? The 3 promoted are the only ones he has an argument for. Similarly i dont think he gets into most of the teams in the top 5 leagues. Yes Faes plays for the 8th best national team but that isnt a good representative of his individual quality as it is simply because Belgium are bereft of good options in his position. The belgium national team is an absolute anomaly in respect to the gap in quality between the team overall and their weaker players.

Wout Faes is the latest Belgian to have him being an international player used as to why he is actually good. I remember it being used as a reason that Praet should play over Maddison and now Praet is back in the Belgian league. Belgium is a small country with a s shallow talent pool that happened to produce a few exceptional talents over the last decade that raised the level of their entire team. Just because their star players are good does not mean Faes is good, he has little competition for his position. Faes's career will go the same way as Praet, back to the Belgian league once he has left us

Yh I hadn't watched the first game yesterday at the time of making this comment and I watched it today and Soumare was really bad. It is worth noting that the quality of the pitch was terrible though, pretty much everyone apart from El Khannouss and Nelson struggled to get anything done that game

Alves is still exciting and has the potential to develop into a solid PL player. Monga is just another level though, he might already be a PL ready player at 16?

I was saying that saying Vardy isn't a good tackler is bonkers considering how important his tackling was for us in his early days. His ability to win the ball in the opposition half was immense. The objective of tackling is to win the ball back and he did that time and time again, therefore he is a good tackler. I wasnt advocating playing El Khannouss as a defensive midfielder but you can play in the pivot without being a defensive midfielder. You can have an 8 and a 6 in the pivot or even two 8s like Barcelona do with De Jong and Pedri or Bayern had with Goretzka and Kimmich.

My whole point is that Khannouss is currently a square peg in a round hole at attacking midfielder. He is a natural 8 who should be predominantly based in our half and venture into the opposition half rather than be pinned as our furthest forward midfielder. He is a much better tackler than Tielemans was for us who successfully played in the pivot when we won the FA cup, much better tackler than Winks as well who currently plays the pivot for us. If you compare tackling ability to Ngolo Kante as a benchmark then there are no natural tacklers apart from Ngolo Kante. When I see El Khannouss play i see a Tielemans replacement, not a Maddison one. His best moments for us last season were receiving the ball in our half and progressing the ball up the pitch. When he is in the opposition half he often struggles to open up the opposition defence, his final pass isn't always great and his shooting is inconsistent. We need to play to his strengths by playing him deeper where his ability to dictate play can shine and minimise his time outside the opponents box where he often struggles to make things happen. Yes, he's not going to be elite at protecting the backline but as I've said we have had success in the championship and the PL playing players who are worse defensively than El Khannouss.

They are a bundesliga side, they will be competing against the likes of Dortmund, Bayern, Leverkusen etc next season. They're better than most we will face in the championship. Think of a team around Everton's level.

Bilal is a strong tackler, I dont quite understand your point about tackling not being one of his strengths, you cant just say that without backing it up. The stats and the eye test all say the opposite. The point about Vardy is bonkers as well, in his younger years he was the best defensive forward in the league, you cant win as many tackles as he did without being a good tackler. Being able to tell if someone is a good tackler is simple: 1. being mobile enough to close the opposition down. 2. Positioning yourself to make the tackle. 3. Being able to win the tackle once you commit. El Khannnous is more than capable of all 3. I cant see how it's acceptable to have Winks and Skipp in the deeper roles who arent mobile, cant position themselves properly to tackle and in Winks's case loses the tackle more often than not it he goes for it. In terms of El Khannouss taking too many risks with the ball in the pivot he is an intelligent player and will understand the difference in playing in front of his own defense as compared to the opposition's. Particularly as he has played deeper many times before. It's not like you are comparing El Khannouss to Rodri or prime Matic, he will be able to play that role to a higher standard than Winks, Skipp, Soumare or Ndidi. Think of Tielemans for us, El Khannouss should be playing that role but we keep on trying to play him like a Maddison which he isn't.

Whatever it is Harry Winks and Oliver Skipp arent in it. As much as our fans dont want to admit it after ragging on them for years but Soumare and Ndidi are better. There's a reason that was our starting midfield last season in the PL despite it not bringing results. I think at the very least we need to play El Khannouss deeper with one of Alves or Page in front of him. Personally i would partner El Khannous with Page and play Alves ahead of him but that's not a popular opinion on here. For me we need to get as many of the better players on the pitch as possible.

If he was £5mil there would still be a consensus on here that he's not good enough. If he was cheaper you just wouldnt have the hipsters like yourself saying that the reason people criticise him is because of his transfer fee. Otherwise the reaction to him would be the same. He's not good enough at foofball, plain and simple.