King Kante

Cocaine is a hell of a drug.

Haha, £100m? Brighton will get £150m out of Todd if he has one good season.

Yep. Need that FFP money and he is the easiest one to shift.

Not going to complain about today. Preston threw the kitchen sink at us in the first half, we still held them at bay. In the second we dismantled them. First time this season, I can say we delt with a game maturely - albeit against a Champo side in bad form.

Should have squared. He had a complete open goal.

At this point I am starting to think the reason why TB has gone slightly incognito is because he has decided to run the fitness conditioning down at Cobham.

Wow, another few weeks. I think we should just keep Santos with the squad, too many injuries in the area.

I am not a massive fan of just looking at stats in isolation but those aerial duels stats are worrying. On of the reasons why it can be hard to judge a CB from other leagues is there ability to deal with aerial balls, so it seems he only has a small sample size on this in Portugal - which is to be expected - but does a add an element of risk. Personally, I really like the kid from what I have actually seen but the stats would give me pause for thought - even if the rest of the stats are what I was expecting from what I have seen. Hoping the scouting team look at his aerial duels to see if it is due to the nature of the league he is playing in, or if he avoids them.

Silva is potentially a top player. However, he'll have a lot of options so I can't see him agreeing to a 7 year contract and our wage structure.

Looks like Maatsen is on his way to Dortmund. I also suspect Broja and Trev will be up for sale towards the end of the window as well if we can find a buyer and Trev gets fit. Broja may survive if we do not get another CF or Poch doesn't have enough faith in moving Palmer/Nkunku to the F9 role when required.

I think we are largely agreed on his ability. I think where we differ is on resale. For me, ability wise he is below both Colwill and Badi. The problem those two have had is a bad injury and being played LB - for me I haven't understood why we haven't gone 3atb at times - especially later in games - but that is for a different thread. Badi for me is a rough diamond who needs to cut silly mistakes out of his game, but overall I think he has the talent to a competent CB at a high level - it will be up to him to iron some of his mistakes out. In addition, Silva is much better than him, although he is most likely gone in the summer unfortunately - personally I would love him to pick up a player/coach role but I am not sure if he even sees himself as a coach as knows he probably can get a good number of years of playing in another league still. I also rate Trev above Disasi but I am not entirely sure what is going on with him in terms of injury and where the club see him in regard of FFP. As for Fofana, it is anyone's guess what we will get out of him when he returns. I think where we differ on Disasi is when we can resell. Personally, I think the sooner the better simply because of the length of his contract. Once we get Badi up to speed, and one out of two LB's that can stay fit, I see him dropping to the bench and not being seen much. After that, we could fall into a situation where he'll still have a ridiculously long contract and no-one going near the wages he is on. Thus, my desire to sell is more of a financial one, as I do recognise that he can be trusted to a degree and with our injuries, his habit of staying fit is a massive bonus. This is one problem, the other is the complete lack of game management in CM. Personally, in CM I am all for a loan of an experienced player that can guide the young ones at times. They don't need to be a world beater, just someone who can calm things down at times when the going gets tough.

I also want to see a Badi and Colwill partnership at some point. I think that partnership has a lot of potential, even if it is likely to be raw in terms of game management. With Disasi, I will give him credit for getting on with the job and playing where required, however I just do not see any real quality with him. His habit of ball watching on crosses sends me crazy. From what I have seen, his level is that of a - at best - CB4 for a team wanting CL football.

Yeah, I think we should look to move him on asap as he is average/poor in most areas of his game. Important to try and get rid before it becomes completely apprant.

Yeah, I don't see any real qualityin him either. Cannot wait to get Lavia back.

Modern day FB/WB's have to do more running these days, and definitely have to accelerate more often than defensive midfielders on average - sure there are games or circumstances where a DM needs to do this but it isn't as often as the wide areas get streched a lot more. As for bone structure, I am not too sure why you find this so ridiculous. In almost every sport it is an aspect that determines what a person can do. If you've got a dense bone structure for instance, you're always going to be in a weight class or two above another fighter in boxing, even if your muscle mass/fat mass is the same as an average bone density fighter. In American Football if you have low bone density you get placed into roles where you're going to avoid contact. Whereas, if you are heavy set, you get placed in the roles with more contact as typically they do not have as many fast twich fibers. As for an example at Chelsea. I will give you one. Cech got his head injury- according to reports at the time partly due to being a triplet which meant his skull had a lower bone density than most others. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/Chelsea/3566586/Chelsea-goalkeeper-Petr-Cech-admits-life-threatening-head-injury-changed-his-outlook-on-life-Football.html?WT.mc_id=605456&source=MiddleColumnPuff This is one article that references this, I also read a medical article on the injury at the time, which went into more detail, but ai cannot find it. It was also a reason why he ended up in his hat full time, rather than until the skull fully healed. So, yeah, bone density plays a feature in sport.

We need to change his position. I was banging on in the Summer that he simply isn't built to be a WB/RB long-term because of his heavy build and bone structure. If he plays there he is always going to be injured. Should've been moved to DM a while back. Additionally, I do not think he should be sold, he just needs to start being handled properly.

Badman will be a quality CB imo. He has pretty much everything in his locker. His only problem at the moment is naivety at times, but I suspect that will go over time- if not he will be a player who is good/very good with an occasional rick with his passing in tight areas/not being able to guide the line when we get stretched. Him and Palmer are the only two signings we've had since TB has come in and thought, these are good value signings. As for Caicedo, I wouldn't say he really had a great game, rather a game where he had a lot of freedom because the opposition gave him a lot of space and he did what was required. Might be a little harsh, but SU gave him the freedom of the pitch from where I was sitting when he was on the ball. Off the ball Gallagher again outran him and made more valuable turnovers.

Good post and agree. The squad is midtable in its' current iteration. People thinking it is the manager are delusional. Pretty much any other manager - bar a Pep or Klopp - would have us in a similar position.

🤣. If we had a manager like Dyche and playing 5atb you would be the first on here complaining about the lack of progressive football. For me, we can sack Poch and sign pretty much any other manager- bar Pep or someone similar- and be in exactly the same position. The fact of the matter is our squad is simply a development squad who are going to always lose against a side of motivated men who do not press up against us. The fact of the matter is that we have no leaders or players that can game manage in our team. On top of this, we have brought in player worse than the players than they replaced. Mount, Havetz, Jorgi and Alonso (all whipping boys of years past) are miles ahead of the versions we sold than the likes of Cuca, Madueke, Caicedo and Jackson. For sure the later may become better in time, but that means a number of seasons being average (midtable). Problem is people thought that replacing them with whoever was flavour of the month was the solution, without taking a step back to think of the madness of it all.

He probably wants to bring some adults into the side and not just rely on kids.

The squad quality is midtable, when people understand this, they won’t be so disappointed. As for Europe, our only chance is to win the Carabao or FA Cup.

Hard to tell to be honest, owing to our squad being so young, it could be they just don't have enough game management experience to execute what he is telling them.

My biggest problem with Caicedo is his positional awareness. I am fortunate to have my season ticket up in a very good position in the East Upper, so I am able to keep an eye on position and formations a lot - previously I was in the MHL were it is a lot harder to see the patterns. What strikes me about Caicedo are two things. 1) Is that he is incredibly prone to chasing the ball and giving no regard to what is around and behind him. This then leaves gaps that Enzo or James (when he is playing) have to rush into to not leave us exposed to counters - although this then leaves gaps elsewhere, hence why we keep conceding goals on the counter. 2) Is the amount of help he needs from Enzo and the defensive line to pick up his position. I kid you not, Enzo, Silva and James, spend a vast amounts of time shouting and pointing to him when we are out of possession to fill his position as he has picked up an odd position on the field or started rushing out for no reason. I would honestly say, someone is doing this to him every 2-5 minutes depending on what the opposition are doing. One piece of analysis I saw on him that kind of outlined what I am saying is the MotD analysis of the City game. They pointed out how on the third goal he left Silva in acres of space chasing the ball for no reason. He did that throughout that game. Another example in that game of his ball chasing was before there pen, where he wiped out James as he didn't seem aware that James had the better position to attack/clear the ball.

I suspect this will be a loss or a draw. We don't play well against low blocks and counter attacks and that is exactly how I expect ETH to set Utd up.

He played well against Brighton in the spurts he had. However, he has got to look to get involved more and not be so passive off the ball. Still a major development project atm.