funkyrobot

The best modern scouts base their assessments 50% eye test and 50% stats. Heard it on a football podcast last year (not involving Coady fyi.)

I think our best defender is Big Harry Souttar from an old school defender perspective.

That is true - in that sense our canteen staff are a true representative of our wonderful team of nopace merchants - Vesty, Faes, Podcast Coady, BDCR and Ayew.

They obviously aren’t Everton fans if they are throwing concourse shade

You could easily do it with a shared extra phone handset. Use an old smart phone just to have the season ticket with a pay as you go sim and pass code access to wallet.

We should never have sold Jeffrey Schlupp. A utility player that could play defence, midfield and attack.

Coulibaly looks perfect for a wing back role, move Justin to the left wing back and play Coady, Okoli and one other CB in a back 3. Ndidi, Soumare, Bilal central mid and a combo of Vardy with Mavididi or Buonanotte up front. Ayew and Winks logical sub options if the game needs closing out.

This should be our tactic. Mads gives the ball to Od Ed on the edge of our own area and let him work his ‘Edouard magic™️’

I think I can comment for all of us in stating total and utter relief that we’ve somehow in this transfer window kept hold of our Lord and Saviour, ladies and gentlemen I give you ‘King’ Odsonne Edouard.

Tbf to the club, they’ve switched the tunnel sign back to the 22/23 one.

3.5 years seems reasonable for a 64 year old, only 31 years without a club too AND he’s one of our own. No brainer.

Birmingham is probably the capital of podcasts or the capital of team bantz or something, it’s drawing Coady back in and presumably Dawso hates his podcasts, hates bantz and so the swap will do them both good.

Big loss to the bantz/podcast aspect of the squad if we lose The Con Man. Seriously I still think we should try a back 3 with him in the middle, that’s where he got his England recognition and where he was at his best at Wolves. Dawso is a grittier defender but he’s ancient.

He would’ve increasingly become an option as RVN realises that Ayew and BDCR aren’t the answer. On top of that, he clearly isn’t going to get the Fatawu replacement that he was expecting in the transfer window. With one player in and 3 members out we are clearly weaker than before the window.

Can’t believe how many Lcfc fans are applauding a move that further weakens our squad. If Cardiff think he’s good enough to be a major player in staving off relegation there then at the very least he could play a key role here even if it was as a sub with 30 mins to go. We are absolutely awful and yet we have used the January transfer to weaken our squad. Cannon, Hamza and now Alves, all better than some of the wasters we have here who have already demonstrated that they are NOT going to keep us up either with ability or even effort/fight.

I don’t think it’s that cut or dry. Cardiff are in a mess, playing badly, getting spanked and in a relegation fight. It’s not going to be easy for him to turn that around. That’s exactly what Cardiff fans will be expecting of him. We would’ve been better loaning them BDCR and giving Alves minutes here without the pressure of expectation he’ll have at Cardiff.

I’m not saying the leagues are comparable, I’m saying that there are plenty of defenders in the premier league that wouldn’t look out of place in The Championship - all of ours for a start and plenty of other teams have players in their teams who might find the championship not quite the walk in the park you make it out to be. If Alves had a game in the premier league he wouldn’t be up against a world class defender week in week out, sometimes he’d be up against a defender who just happen to be fortunate to be playing at the highest level because of luck or promotion.

Branthwaite is not world class mate😂. He might develop to be towards that level in the future but at the moment he definitely isn’t. Nor is Tarkowski, nor is Mykolenko nor is a giant centre half in O’Brien playing as a makeshift right back (who btw pocketed BDCR.) There’s plenty of average defenders in the PL.

😂I wouldn’t call the Everton defence world class for a start. Plenty of average players in the PL, we’ve got a squad full of them!

I don’t trust the people that make the decisions as over the last few years they’ve got the majority wrong tbh. I’m not sure loaning out Alves to a team in disarray that just got stuffed 7-0 is going to help his development much more than playing him for his parent club also in disarray! I guess instead of taking a punt on youth, we’ll just keep playing old Jordan Ayew, dribbling backwards, falling over and giving up on tracking back.

I’d rather Alves got experience at the highest level possible and be ready for next year irrespective of what league we are in.

I don’t trust the judgement of Cooper and I’m losing all trust in RVN’s judgement too. Cooper thought Skipp, BDCR, Ayew, Edouard had the quality and that’s visibly not the case. RVN sticks with some of those despite being let down by their ability and their effort! Enzo didn’t play him because we had a better squad available in The Championship than we do now (thanks Rudkin) and because he was still recovering from his knee.

I’d genuinely rather be relegated with Alves, playing in the first team than be relegated playing with Ayew, BDCR etc. Those two definitely aren’t going to save us, so why keep repeating this embarrassment week in and week out. Play some of the kids like Alves, like Monga.

But when those players are failing and no signings are being made, it makes little sense to rid ourselves of a potential game changer. As I say, Cardiff are willing to take a punt on him helping fight relegation. We’d rather not even give him a go. For me he would’ve been in the first 11 against Man U in the cup. It’s blatantly obvious that Ayew, McAteer, BDCR aren’t going to keep us up. None have the ability to beat a man. Alves has that ability.

In an interview RVN stated that he sees Alves as a winger (I don’t agree) so he’s competing for game time with Mavididi, Ayew, BDCR and K-Mac rather than the number 10’s. Although I think he’s naturally more of a 10 I’d still rather have Alves in that option of four wingers at the expense of one of the latter 3 I’ve listed!