honeybradger

When I watched the game I honestly didn't think Winks was any better than Soumare but it's hard to keep track of players whilst watching. I just find it interesting to see the abuse Soumare receives in comparison to the 'Winks is still our best midfielder despite him actively disrespecting the club' mentality. I struggle to put my finger on what Winks actually does that makes him have better PR despite not tracking runners properly, strolling around, not making tackles etc. similar to what Soumare gets dogs abuse for. If I had to get rid of one of the two it would be Winks all day long (ideally both).

Is there somewhere to watch the match back in full? I remember Winks being anonymous but if he did actually do something worthwhile then I stand corrected. I think the fact that we were quite comfortably overran in midfield speaks for itself though and that wasnt just the fault of Soumare and El Khannouss.

All of this talk of 'best midfielder'. Rubbish. He was awful against Preston who finished 20th in the championship last season. He only played well coming on in the second half against a Sheffield Wednesday side that had zero match fitness after no pre season. Their first team were dropping like flies and cramping up and their bench had no quality. It was less Winks being good and more Wednesday putting in one of the worst second half performances we will face in the coming years. In the last year for us I can only remember two good games for us, when he came on as a substitute against Southampton and when he came on against Wednesday. He's genuinely not very good.

Fatawu surely has nothing to prove for us. Just came back from an ACL and clearly cares about the club. The only thing you can criticise him for is trying too hard and losing his head sometimes. Still he's one of the few that can keep his head held high.

How do we know this? Surely no youth player turns down first team minutes if offered them irrespective of the position. If he saw a pathway to the first team at centreback im sure he would have taken it. I think it was likely that he was unsettled by being moved to centreback in the u23s by Thomas but wouldnt have minded had it lead to him playing in the cups and ending up as 3rd choice centre back for us.

He left because he wasn't getting game time. If we had played him at centre back in the cups he would have likely accepted, it would be silly for him not to. At the time we were playing Fuchs and Morgan at centrebacks in the cups instead of him who were on their last legs here. He was also around when Luke Thomas broke into the first XI at left back, at the time I rated Bassey higher but was pleasantly surprised with how Thomas performed. So he wasnt competing with Chilwell, he was competing with Thomas at left back at the end of the season. Not to forget that disastrous Ryan Bennett loan where we could have used Bassey instead. So there were plenty of opportunities to give Bassey gametime, we just never did it.

Danny ward has 40 caps for Wales and 40 PL games yet you wouldnt say he was ever a PL level goalie. I just dont think Vestergaard ever had a season where he was a solid Premier League player. He might have played at that level 100 times but he never belonged there.

I'll be honest I respect that you like Vestergaard and it's hard to argue with the appearance stats but he's shite im sorry to say. The fact that Southampton managed to turn their season around in 19/20 from the 9-0 by dropping him shows how tragic of a player he really is. Him and Faes are two of the worst defenders to ever play at Premier league level and that's not a hyperbole, definitely not PL level and never was.

Im not hinging my hopes on Monga. He could start next week and have a poor game and my opinion of him would not change. Im just saying that he is part of our best XI and by Cifuentes not starting him he's not giving us the best chance of winning games. 'Sensible' decisions have been killing this club for years now, it was 'sensible' last summer to bring in PL experience, it was 'sensible' the summer before that to bring in Coady and Winks on PL wages as not getting promotion would cost more, it was 'sensible' the year before that to play Ward over Iversen because of experience, it was 'sensible' to let the rot continue under Rodgers as he delivered two top 5 finishes and an FA cup. Im tired of mind numbing 'sensible' decisions being made at this club, we need to start making decisions that actually put the club on the right path again, decisions that actually make sense. A good start would be to commit to a proper rebuild around the youth and start giving minutes on merit rather than seniority.

Actually watch the game. Monga is the only player we have who is performing in our current situation. Fatawu on the other hand who everyone would undeniably start lost his head the other day, which he does regularly. Writing Monga off because of his age is silly to me, he's clearly ready right now and might actually already be too good for us. I prefer to evaluate players on how they perform on the pitch rather than their age, Monga is the most mature player we have out of the lot of them. The way he went to pick up the ball after scoring speaks volumes. I am not Monga so no i wouldnt have done well under the pressure at 16, but if we had a big game i would back Monga to perform more than I would petulant senior players like Winks, Vestergaard, Faes. I think you wouldnt start Lamine Yamal if he was here to be honest simply because of his age.

I agree with your statement, Bassey and Faes are in the same bracket, players who couldnt break through but went and made a career for themselves elsewhere. Bassey obviously doing so much more successfully than Faes as he has actually done well at multiple clubs. Monga, Nelson, Evans, Alves, Aluko are talent wise in the tier above Bassey. If Bassey can be successful at Rangers and at Fulham in the PL then the aforementioned can be PL level players if backed properly. Backing Faes, Ayew, Mcateer, Vestergaard ahead of PL level talents doesnt make sense to me, they will only ever be championship level players and the crop of talents we have now can be so much more. Why not play them?

He has 2 assists in 1.5 championship games for us. The decision to take him off the other day and keep Ayew on was very strange. He's still one of our best players so should have stayed on unless he has fully had his head turned.

It's just football. I can absolutely expect our best player to be starting in the league for us, it's not like Monga would combust just because he's 16. Should have started vs Wednesday, gotten 20-30 mins against Huddersfield then started yesterday. I was also just refuting your claim that's he's given time to youth players, he hasnt really.

Needs to be starting in the league as he's currently our best player. It's more than development and 'giving time' with Monga it's also about promotion, we are reducing our chances of going up by not starting him in the championship. If he cant play 90 minutes twice a week (he hasnt played 90 minutes once in his senior career) then he should be playing in the league not the cup. Apart from Monga we haven't seen any youth players play in the championship.

Probably would go Aluko and Choudhury/Justin 🤷‍♂️, you dont need to be comfortable in possession as a midfielder to help out defensively. I think we need to accept that we dont have a functional starting XI no matter how you set it up, i would just personally like to see as many good players in the starting XI that also have a desire to be here.

You're debating with an imaginary person. I certainly didn't say what you think im saying.

Last I saw Casado wasnt a starter anymore? Our defenders will never be as good as Barcelona's but they dont have to be as we're at a lower level. From what I've seen of Aluko he has the athleticism to help cover midfield deficiencies and if we dropped Vestergaard for Nelson we would have a lot fewer gaps in defence with the added mobility. Nelson was certainly brilliant at this level at the end of last season 🤷‍♂️

Not what I said at all. Just saying you dont necessarily need a defensive midfielder to play well as long as the players are committed and have quality for the level theyre at which El Khannouss and Page are/do.

It gets run through with or without Winks. We have no defensive midfielder, so I dont think we have a more defensively solid midfield available. It's not like we have defensive solidity with Soumare and/or Skipp either. Maybe Choudhury? Barcelona won la liga with a Pedri, Olmo, De Jong midfield, sometimes you dont need a defensive minded midfielder as long as the players are organised and good enough.

Players like Winks, Vestergaard, Faes who dont want to be here do not in fact provide a stable environment for youngsters to flourish. It's the opposite in fact, disruptive players disrupt the others around them. It's like when you were in school and there would be that one kid that would misbehave and disrupt the class, it tends to lead to the whole class falling into disarray. Once that kid is removed all the other kids tend to fall into line as they are not inherently disruptive. If we are not careful the young players will pick up that disregard for the club from those three players. Midfield would be: Alves Khannouss Page With the new Portuguese guy potentially coming in for Alves. Maybe we're stronger with Winks instead of Page but I'm just so sick of seeing Winks sulking around. It shows how far we've fallen that we're referring to Vestergaard and Faes as the only remaining 'quality' in the team, they are bombscare defenders even at this level.

If he keeps playing or even allowing them to remain in the general vicinity of the squad then I worry about his judgement is all I would say. Maybe 1 out of 3 can stay involved but no more. As a squad we need to be a unit where everyone's got each other's back, not where you have players who are clearly disgruntled and strop off down the tunnel nor players throwing blame around after every goal.

It's pretty clear that those three are problematic. Vestergaard has been frozen out under multiple managers. Winks was unbothered for most of last season, got frozen out, didn't celebrate last week and walked down the tunnel instead of coming to the fans today. Faes has wanted out for ages, even announcing his intention to make a departure earlier this year which has failed hilariously (or not so hilariously depending on how much you want him gone). He also has a penchant for blaming his teammates for his own mistakes. The makings of any good manager is how they weed out these sorts of players and build a squad with a proper competitive, focused mentality.

As my comment above, we started 3 unestablished academy players in the league cup with Page coming off the bench to replace Alves and only 2 unestablished academy players being on the pitch when we conceded. It's entirely unfair that the blame for the loss is being placed at their feet when they made up a minority of the side. How about the rest of the team who also let us down? Mcateer was really poor that game, far worse than Alves and yet he is still favoured by Cifuentes. In respect to your statement saying we would have lost against Wednesday if we integrated more youth i strongly disagree. From what i saw we won because Wednesday fell apart and were horrible in the second half, I genuinely think that Huddersfield is tougher opposition currently. You seem to be assuming that Wednesday was the tougher game because their in a higher league but they are a complete mess, we would have been more comfortable against Wednesday with more youth involvement, not less.

We started with 3 non-established academy players against Huddersfield and brought 1 off the bench. Two of those, Monga and Page, played well and if everyone else played to the same level we would have won. Only 2 non-established academy players were on the pitch when we conceded the goals. As usual the non-established players get blamed by our fanbase whilst the established pros get endless chances. You think you are being 'reasonable' by backing the senior pros and blaming the loss on the academy players but you are actually being entirely irrational. You are part of the problem, too much support for the senior players who constantly let us down, too little support for our academy players who have talent and actually give a sh*t. Players like Faes, Skipp, Winks, Okoli etc are not high level academy products. They couldn't make it at their own clubs so they had to make the step down to us or found their way here. There's a reason theyre with us in the championship in their peak years. Faes for example couldn't break through at Anderlecht, he went to Excelsior where he was terrible, went to Reims where he was OK but a bit of a bombscare then somehow found a £15mil move to us, not a successful academy prospect who broke through on merit by any means. I wouldnt be surprised if at the same age almost all of our starlets are Premier League players. Calvin Bassey for example is an ex academy player who is less talented than Nelson or Aluko but is comfortable at that level. I remember I was one of the only people on here pushing for Bassey to stay at the time as well.

You completely ignored the comment I quoted? The commenter said that Nelson had 'played himself out of contention for months' hence why I said he had been written off.