talkofthetownsend

michael duberry? did i miss something?

played for a draw...got a draw. good result all told. motm jt. absolutely immense. disappointed by how negative we were, it felt like we had no intention of winning that game, but i'm a fan not a manager.

tbh by the time he left i don't think we could have kept him. he'd become frustrated at the club and nothing we could have done would have changed anything. the real question is why we bought him then refused to play him for 2 years. make no mistake, how he was treated in those 2 years are what cost us that player...not what came afterward.

i don't now if it's indicative of his game in general, but in the 2 games against us last season he worked incredibly hard defensively.

mikel isn't club or association trained.

we're well short of that and it ain't changing. terry is the only club trained... lamps, cole, cahill and berty are the association trained. we'll just leave 3 spaces like we always do. moses (or whoever) in or out doesn't change anything. for the prem i don't think lukaku, oscar or mvg count toward the squad yet as they are 21 or under.

in terms of "proven quality" then i would assume moses would be the player most at risk from the arrival of willian. the thing that worries me most is that most of the attacking mids we have like to play in the centre or on the left. kdb & possibly mata are the only real options on the right...altho i am sure willian & hazard could move to that side...possibly schurlle too...but i don't think it's a favoured position for any of them. have to say i don't know why we are spending that sort of money on a player in a position in which we are stacked. i don't see us spending big on willian and a striker...not without some money coming in. kinda hope i'm wrong cos up front is where we need an injection of quality the most imo.

if i were a betting man i'd bet on us lining up exactly like we did against real in pre-season...possibly with torres in place of lukaku.

the thing i liked about our "attacking 3" in the hull game was how good the balance was. when we had the ball oscar & hazard were interchanging in the forward areas while kdb was dropping off, backing up the midfield (allowing lamps & ramires to break into the box) and looking to playmake from the deeper areas. they all put in a shift defensively too. it's just one game but that's how you want the balance to be all the time. hope they all keep it up.

that was what i took from it... it seems to be what he was saying: "I want to give him that responsibility and ambition, for the kid to be better and better and to express himself on the pitch match after match...he is working very, very hard. I’m very happy with the kid." i'm amazed that people have taken this as a dig at hazard's defensive play; for such an attacking player, he works incredibly hard defensively. i didn't expect that from him when he arrived but he has consistently put in a shift since he got here. i'd be amazed if jose was unhappy with that aspect of his game.

tbh if we play with mvg & ramires as the midfield 2 and oscar as the "no 10" dropping into the midfield then i don't think we are getting outworked or out-hustled by anyone in that area. anyone in the prem anyway. that is an incredibly dynamic trio. our current alternatives in the middle don't have that workrate, but they have different qualities; if we adopt a "horses for courses" approach we should be ok in most games.

selling him for less than we got him for...and not getting a genuine top class replacement...that would be bad business...and the list of replacements i would consider acceptable is very short indeed. selling him & going with what we have, or just adding another unknown emelano kid as a replacement, would be madness. if we were able to get varane for the same money as luiz would be fetching (as has been suggested by some of the less reputable media outlets) then i would consider that acceptable, in fact, i would consider that desirable. that's fantasy football though, and extremely unlikely.

he hinted at it while fatty actually did it, saw the problems involved & didn't do it again (the last time it happened iirc was against moneterrey where we got absolutely slaughtered down that side until the minute mata went off). i am sure that jose views playing mata on the right as a possibility, just as i am sure that he will notice the problems it causes when he does it.

i need no reminding. the point still stands. with mata on the right we were far too open down that flank. also true of when he played on the left under avb. the reason fatty played oscar wide right was because he can put in a defensive shift & mata can't. then i hope we buy one. i don't think it is a coincidence that whenever a fullback has played behind mata, they have ended up in shocking form.

the problem with mata on the right under rdm was that it left us incredibly exposed down that flank. that's the reason the guy who followed rdm hardly ever played him there...or in any wide role.

i hope this move comes off. more english players should move abroad and experience new cultures & styles of play. it can only make them better, more rounded players. it would definitely be good for josh, although whether it would be so good for him that he could eventually be a first teamer here is obviously up for debate.

they aren't really "duplicate players" tho. they use the same space but they have very different strengths & weaknesses. oscar and hazard also like to use the same spaces and last season the odd man out was torres; who was forced into wide/deep areas and looked lost a lot of the time. if the plan is to have a fluid interchangeable front 3/4 then we could do a lot worse than rooney. he gets through a lot of work (something mata really doesn't do as well) & he is adept at dropping into deep/wide spaces and linking up play (unlike torres). i would definitely rather the ball fall to rooney on the right wing, or on the edge of the box with a cluster of players in front on him, than any of our current strikers. you do raise a good point (that a lot of our best players want to use the same space rooney does) but, if we play like we did last season, i would rather have someone who could do that well rather than torres. on the other hand we do have lukaku (& ba) who can be more of the traditional targetman type striker...but imo a lot of ba's struggles last year were to do with the fact that oscar/mata/hazard don't really want to play with a targetman or poacher. they want a striker who can drop off or go wide & swap positions with the players behind him, creating space rather than occupying it. all of the attacking midfield 3 are effectively no.10's. imo a striker who could have joined in with that interchange would have improved us last season. i suppose it depends on how jose wants us to play, rooney will never be able to be a "drogba" type cf & if we want that we should look elsewhere...possibly even at players we already have. we could even have a situation where we start off doing what i'm describing (a fluid front 4) & if thats not working throw on lukaku & have a more battering ram type presence. nothing wrong with having different options. tbh the only problem i have with rooney is that he has acted like a prat when playing against us...but i forgave ballack when he signed so i guess i could get over it.

he is fine with the ball at his feet. composed, excellent touch and very hard to knock off the ball. you are right that he can be unambitious tho, and generally is for us (altho not so much for nigeria), being satisfied playing simple balls and cycling possession in deep areas. he is not good at all at the defensive side of his role tho. i can't think of many defensive midfielders worse at the defensive side of the game than him. far too easily bypassed in almost every way...dribbled past, passed through, letting runners go...it's not good enough for a player in that position at a club as big as ours imo. de rossi is better at both sides of the role tho...a better defender, more mobile and a more progressive passer (and he is an occasional goal threat which mikel will never be) . he would be an upgrade for sure. but it is looking increasingly unlikely he will come.

there is no such thing as a handball that isn't deliberate. if it's not deliberate, it's not a handball.

i wouldn't call 45 minutes or so (in total) spread across 6 games a "run in the first team". he did ok in a few of those little cameos too. your argument may be right...feruz may be too slight for first team football right now (tbh i haven't seen much of him so i don't know)...but that is a horrible example to back up your point.

luiz is definitely part of our strongest 11...but that isn't true at all. we've had clean sheets recently with him playing midfield & him not in the team at all. swansea, sparta, norwich, boro, brentford ottomh...there are probably a few more. back end of last season we kept clean sheets against barca & arsenal while he was injured.

he had a good 30 minutes against united then was fairly poor against steaua & extremely underwhelming yesterday. i don't think that makes him "one of the better players" at all.

cahill isn't slow for a cb & he definitely isn't poor on the ball for a cb. he is flawed but not in those ways.