honeybradger

At least our £13mil centre back signing isn't having a clanger

Is that not what pivots are usually made up of though? Usually you don't have 2 sixes. The main point i was trying to make was that there wasn't an expectation for Dewsbury Hall to provide goals and assists in our system because his role was winning the ball and moving the ball up the pitch so his numbers in the PL arent important.

Started in the pivot a lot for us. His role was definitely more as hardworking ball winner who progressed the ball up the pitch than an attacking midfielder with a license to make runs into the box and create chances in most games for us.

Dewsbury Hall has a similar number of defensive contributions per game in the PL as Skipp does. He was definitely playing a defensive role for us in the PL covering for Tielemans and Maddison.

The gap between the leagues is big enough that a player might not be able to do things as consistently in the PL as in the Jupiter league, it's not big enough that one player can play a fundamentally different game in one league than they can in the other. If Skipp played in the Jupiter league he wouldn't suddenly be able to match Keita's ball playing ability because the league is weaker, he would be able do the what he already does more consistently.

KDH has 4500 PL minutes, Skipp has 3800 PL minutes. Dewsbury Hall did not play as an attacking midfielder for us in the PL he played in the pivot.

In my opinion football ability is far more important than experience. Ayew has been a premier league regular for a decade but that doesnt make him better option than Mahrez was when we signed him from Ligue 2 for example. Objectively Skipp has less ability than Keita and for the record he's got less premier league experience than Dewsbury Hall, who a section of our fans hesitate to call premier league proven, so arguably he's not even a "battle hardened premier league player".

Yes he is better. Keita is comfortable on the ball and can pass through the lines, Skipp is uncomfortable on the ball and often opts to pass sideways instead of taking a risk. Keita is also the superior player defensively.

Surely Antwerp would have snapped our hands off if we offered the £20+5 mil we paid for Skipp for Keita.

And yet he was a class above our midfielders in the game against Lens. Shows how far we have fallen in recent years.

This would be a reasonable post if we weren't paying a top 6 quality player price for him. Brighton signed Wieffer for a smidge more. Skipp would have been a decent signing for around £10mil, for £25mil it's an unjustifiable transfer and I despair that so many are saying that this is reasonable. The state of modern English football where fans have been brainwashed by the big 6 spending £60mil on every player that £25mil on a below average Prem midfielder is reasonable, pound for pound this is in the same ballpark as Maguire to United for £80mil. At the end of the day it will be us fans that suffer from this frivolous spending as the club suffers from further FFP and financial issues.

Or more likely we still go down with him and we get a points deduction and transfer embargo in the championship for breaking FFP due to breaking the bank to sign him.

The way I'm choosing to see it is that we're £20mil of bad business closer to Rudkin being shown the door.

I wish there was another Rudkin type DoF in Europe. He would be gagging to sign all our dross that we cant seem to shift if he was at another club.

Half of Spurs fans that I can see are celebrating like it's Christmas, the other half are saying "he's a Spurs supporter like us who managed to live our dream" like he's a competition winner. Ill take the opinions of the majority over your one mate thanks.

Skipp also isnt PL level. Will be a good player for us next season in the Championship though

This is stinking business, some of the worst we have ever done. The guy is a pretty weak passer of the ball which isnt good enough for £20mil.

That's what's rumoured in this thread, might be different who knows.

£14mil on Oliver Skipp, we might genuinely be the worst run club in the league.

Honestly I just cant see how we're going to even be close to staying up this season. Especially if we're targeting Skipp.

Cooper has barely played Ndidi in the DM role. Can he still play that position at a high level? I'm not so sure. Winks isnt a DM, if we're not in possession and we're not pressing as a unit (which we arent under Cooper) he doesnt offer much. He's only useful when we are in possession. Hamza is Hamza, he struggles to make a forward pass. Someone like Mandela Keita would be transformative for our team, we need someone who is comfortable on the ball and also combative in midfield.

DM is definitely a priority, you could see the quality we've lost there when Papy Mendy bossed our Winks/Choudhury midfield in the Lens game. If Ndidi cant rediscover his form/Cooper doesnt play him there then it has to be one of our main positions to target, Choudhury wont cut it for us as a starter and Winks doesnt have the defensive ability we need in that position for next season.

He wouldn't be allowed to play against Spurs anyway.

I prefer this approach, if we aren't going to have complete meltdown this season then he needs to try and reduce the negativity and try the best with the players he had. I think if Rodger had done the same in 22/23 we would have stayed up.

Hopefully the reason that this didnt go through was that his agent was stalling for a permanent transfer elsewhere rather than us taking too long on the details.