honeybradger

I disagree, I may be wrong but I think if we sign Kone then that's Evans done here and he's not signing a new contract. Youth usually only get given chances when there are more gaps in the squad, not less of them. With Evans not even making the bench for us in our last friendly he will probably take that as a sign that he is not going to get signifant championship gametime and he's only going to be further from the first team if we sign Kone. This coming season is the perfect time to integrate Evans as a regular first teamer. We dont need Kone, who has a decent chance of not even coming good, and even if he comes good it would be at the cost of a far better striker talent in the form of Evans. Therefore my preference would be that we dont make this transfer, im tired of our managers not backing young players then signing worse senior players. Last season it was Cooper not backing Alves then signing Cordova Reid, now it's Cifuentes not backing Evans and signing Kone.

Vuskovic is ridiculous on the ball for a centreback but also very shaky defensively. Probably good enough for us in the championship but might as well stick with Okoli or Aluko in a pairing with Nelson as they're good enough anyways.

I meant patience from the club and manager for a sub par championship season will have reduced rather than patience from the fans. We're no longer a club that looks at players qualities and application past their struggles on the pitch in the same way that Pearson and Walsh did with Vardy back then. We saw how Fatawu and Mavididi were discarded at the start of last season despite their previous campaign for example. Also when Vardy signed we weren't favourites to go up, now we are. The expectations from the club for Kone would be that we're signing a player who will be one of the best strikers in the league next season, there's not as much room for an adjustment season.

For reference here's Toney at Peterborough. To be fair he scored a lot from sloppy defending from the opposition as well. For me the one clear difference between him and Kone is the quality of finishing. Most of the finishes from Toney were incredible whereas I was only particularly impressed by one of Kone's goals.

You could easily be the correct one out of the two of us. Haaland scores a lot just from being in the right place at the right time so Kone could do the same. Just my two cents on the matter from watching a few clips on him.

It's not just 'vibes' though is it. It's looking at his goals and making my own opinion on whether he would translate well to championship level. Seeing how he scores, where he scores, should the defender have done better and would they do better at Championship level. A lot of his goals are the result of sloppy defending from the opposition which should raise questions about how he would perform against better defenders. His touch is also loose, there are a few goals from last season where if the defender was a bit faster they would have made the tackle before he was able to get the shot off. His shooting also seems a bit sloppy, often times just hitting it at the goalkeeper and getting fortunate with a rebound. He is also slow which doesnt help with making the step up. Maybe im completely wrong and he's sharp enough to catch Championship defenders off guard, it is clearly a strength of his. I do think you always have to worry with a striker who relies on defenders making mistakes making the step up. In comparison I think Jake Evans has a very strong set off foundational skills which with experience will allow him to trouble defenders at any level. He is comfortable with the ball at his feet, fast, strong, can finish with both feet, can take players on, has good power on his shots, is intelligent with linking up with the players around him and making the right runs. Again I could very well be wrong but this is just my opinion so feel free to take it with a grain of salt.

Vardy knocked a championship side out of the FA cup whilst playing for a non league side. Has Kone achieved something of that calibre in his career so far? Also considering we are signing Kone for right now could we afford him having a season like Vardy in 12/13? Will we have as much patience for a player getting to grips with a higher level as we did back then? As we all know Vardy was very close to not making it work here in those early years. To me Kone looks very rough, he looks like he struggles to keep control of the ball and we already have a striker like that in Daka. Perhaps he does have raw talent which allows him to perform to a good level in League 1 with little experience but will that translate well to a higher level where the players have both raw talent and experience? He seems to thrive off of loose balls and mistakes/sloppy defending from the opposition, which he will benefit much less from at championship level. He is also quite slow whereas both Vardy and Antonio were rapid which made them harder to deal with for defenders at any level. Kone's lack of pace is likely to hinder him from making the jump up.

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