honeybradger

This justification of spending a pile of money on poor players because it may earn us £100mil in Prem money does not make sense to me. Sunderland did the same and it left them with a team of deadwood they couldn't shift and ended up crashing into league one. Unsurprisingly we are more likely to stay up if we spend our money on good players. The only reason you are trying to justify it is that these transfers are being made by the club you support. If it was Norwich who signed Okoli, Skipp, Cordova Reid and Ayew for £40mil we would all be wondering what on earth they were doing. We would all be saying they would be going straight back down and would be questioning how they are going to shift all these players when they do so. The only reason we cannot admit that we are making some major mistakes in the transfer market is because we don't want a core part of our lives to be a source of negativity, whereas with another club we can brush it off as another team doing awful business who won't be a threat.

I am not sure what game you watched on Monday if you think Cordova Reid will reliably provide a 7/10 performance when called upon. We will be lucky to see a 7/10 performance from him in his next 5 games.

Yes we got a decent result on Monday but our transfer movement has been poor. 6 mil on a 33 year old Ayew would top off one of our worst transfer windows in terms of player quality for the level we require and the amount we've spent on them. We will be relying on players already at the club before the summer to keep us up.

Not like we can get away with playing Soumare against the top 6 either, he was honking. I think we would have been much better off with Ricardo and even might have had a chance to go on and win the game.

What happened to that Mahina kid there was all that hype over a few years ago?

He played in midfield for us plenty of times last season and was better than Soumare and Choudhury have been there. There were quite a few games with Ricardo in midfield and Choudhury at right back even.

Surely we could have subbed in Ricardo instead of Soumare though. Having him as an unused option on the bench doesnt feel right.

I mean Ricardo is 30 now and has been consistently excellent for us when played apart from the 4-2 at Bournemouth in his first season. We should be maximising his playing time (whilst avoiding overplaying him due to injuries) whilst we can. We haven't had many players better than him in our history, it's such a shame to not use him when he's finally fit.

To be fair Vardy doesnt do much to break the mold of boring TV interviews.

Mcateer is probably a good example of how the loan system can fail young players. Went on loan to a league 2 side and hardly played. Stayed with us the following season and got far more minutes playing for the best side in the championship and that's despite him being injured for a decent spell. Now it looks like he's going to be one of the first options off the bench for a PL side. Loans arent the fix all for young players like they are made out to be, in Mcateer's case they could very well have ruined him had Maresca not given him a chance. I say keep him and let him adjust to the Prem.

I can see him potentially go into coaching. There have been a few remarks from our managers by how high his football IQ is. Also the way he progressed himself as a player and worked on his flaws could potentially translate well into him improving other players.

He's a lot better than Barnes at everything except for scoring goals. He can actually take players on and pulls more than his weight defensively, which you couldn't say about Barnes.

Son has lost his ability to take on players due to his old age. That wont have been the reason JJ played.

Wasnt a very easy chance though. Goalkeeper was well positioned and gambled correctly when he shot. Only thing he could have done is go near post which is a lot harder.

There is not a single position on the pitch that Soumare plays better than Ricardo (unless Soumare is secretly an excellent goalkeeper).

Honestly save yourself some heartbreak now and accept that we arent staying up. We're not even competitive at this level anymore.

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.