honeybradger

That's why I mentioned him, very much looks like the same profile of player to me.

No one will buy Woyo or Kristiansen though. Justin was one of our weaker players last time we were down anyway. I have high hopes for Aluko, big fan of the way he likes to drive with the ball.

He does look good tbf although I would rather we just play Page. Hopefully he is the player that Casadei should have been rather than another Casadei.

Why replace him? We have far too many fullbacks as it is. At the end of the day we need a complete restructuring of our wages. Almost every senior player we have should be on half the wages they are on and they can all point to each other to justify their wages. They wouldnt get the money theyre on here anywhere else though. If we can clear the decks we can get a full reset on our wage structure where the first team on average are on £30k a week rather than £60k a week.

Wrexham are the perfect club to sell to to offload our fringe players. They've just come into a lot of money and are trying to establish themselves at this level so will be willing to overpay for the bench players of the league favourites. It's a perfect opportunity for us, we won't get this kind of money for our players elsewhere. Even getting a fee at all for Coady was ridiculously good. Getting any sort of money for Choudhury with the wages he is on would also be good.

Credit to everything he has done in his career so far. He went from struggling on loan in league 2 to playing a part in a championship winning side and has even scored in the Premier League. That being said for his sake and ours I think we should part ways. He needs to build his career at a midtable championship side where he is a regular starter. Currently he's not the level we need and is getting abuse here which is not what we want for either of us.

Good sale for us. £5mil in the last year of his contract is good business. With Ricardo, Aluko and Coulibaly we will be alright at right back without him. Will hopefully allow Joseph to get a chance later in the season as well.

Fans could see there was something wrong with Winks in the games he played before he got frozen out. He wasnt applying himself, kept pulling out of challenges, kept making stray passes to the opposition and was generally playing really badly. The last game Winks played was that 4-0 against Everton, it was clear Winks needed a push to try and get his performances to u-turn. Ruud tried to do that by telling him to stay locally, Winks didn't go along with it, Ruud froze him out. It's completely reasonable from Van Nistelrooy, he couldn't continue playing Winks in the form he was in at the time, it needed a change or for him to be dropped. I dont care if there's any nuance to the story, maybe Van Nistelrooy said some things that didn't need to be said but the point still stands that Winks desperately needed to get into gear at the time.

I remember complaining about Dennis Praet as well, makes me think about how good we had it (although we had higher expectations back then that Praet was not cut out for). Praet had a similar ability to hide from the ball as Skipp but at least when he got the ball he had the technical ability to do something with it!

5 years ago he was in the Championship team of the season. If youre going off past performances Choudhury played consistent minutes with us when we finished top 5 twice. Soumare beat PSG to a League title. Bobby Reid had one season where he scored 18 in the championship. Justin had a run of games where he was arguably our best player whilst we were in the top 4 in the PL. Luke Thomas started and won an FA cup final. Harry Winks had a good performance in the champions league against real madrid. Daka played in the championsh league. Things change, sometimes a player's resume looks better than the actual player, sometimes players' abilities drop off a cliff. Currently Skipp is miles off it and then some, it's very unlikely that he will turn it around this season. He has faced two of the easier opponents he will face all season and was/should have been hooked at half time in both of them.

Here's my head cannon. They sold Dewsbury Hall for £30mil. They considered Skipp to be a similar level of player to Dewsbury Hall who also had experience at a top 6 side. They all gave themselves a pat on the back for meeting PSR for selling Dewsbury Hall whilst, in their mind, improving upon him by buying a PL experienced player in the same position for a lower fee. They even gave him Dewsbury Hall's number to drive it home that he is his replacement/upgrade. Sadly for them and us Skipp is nowhere near an adequate replacement for Dewsbury Hall and giving Skipp the Nr 22 looks ridiculous in hindsight considering the gap in ability between the two.

What does a confident and in form Skipp with the fans fully backing him even look like for us? He's currently playing at a mid table league one level and we need him to be a top championship midfielder. He would need a significant improvement in performance to even reach mid table championship level let alone where we want to be. The better solution is probably just to bench him, not even worth the effort to get him into form.

In a team full of bad performers Thomas was ok the other day. Not sure why some are going after him.

If you perform it's OK, it's that simple really. The whole spat with Van Nistelrooy happened as a consequence of that stinker Winks dropped against Everton, some further commitment was needed to get him up to standard.

He was putting in half arsed performances before the whole spat with Van Nistelrooy. The whole reason that the falling out happened was that Winks was serving up dogmuck every time he stepped on the pitch for us, with it all coming to a head with that God awful Everton performance. Van Nistelrooy believed his performances were down to him travelling long distances for games. If Winks was actually holding his own at PL level (or in the cup vs QPR) I dont think RVN or anyone would have cared about him commuting. It was because Winks was so abysmal and half arsed for us at the time that Van Nistelrooy asked for some commitment from him and he didn't give that to him, which is why he was rightfully frozen out.

What opportunities has Alves had for us? Don't think he has had many.

Monga and Page look exceptional for their age tbf. Don't think it's a black mark against Alves that they outperformed him on this occasion. Many of our senior players dont match up to the level of Monga and Page either.

Have we regressed further from last season under Cooper and Van Nistelrooy?

Evans is gone most likely. Hopefully not as he's one of the best talents we've produced in my opinion.

Fair play, making the journey to huddersfield on a Wednesday is not for the faint hearted!

I'd have him starting in the league as well with El Khannouss playing box to box but it's very unlikely to happen with him not making the bench currently. At least if he gets some starts for us in the cup under his belt he can impress and hopefully put himself in contention for the matchday squad or even a starting position.

Rodgers - He was young and then injured Dean Smith - Injured Maresca - Injured until the last games of the season Cooper - Played Choudhury at CAM in pre season ahead of him and brought in BCDR instead of him. Cooper's opinion on Alves is invalid because of those reasons. RVN - Already on loan when he came in. Cifuentes - Concerning lack of trust in Alves in the last pre season game and first game of the season but it's early on in his time here. Hopefully he gives him a fair shot.

It's good that he's talking about Alves which is better than pretending he doesnt exist (Cooper). Still he needs to back it up by starting him tonight, otherwise it's just words.

I for one am still happy to see the back of him. Hasn't looked bothered for us for a long time, one half doesnt change that. Especially when that half was against a team with no pre season whose first team players were dropping like flies.

12mil for Okoli would be excellent business from our end.