Now I'm referrng to the 'good' United, you know Manchester United, not the White ****e! I'm also referring to a post on another thread where someone quoted 'you'll win nowt with kids' followed by a reply 'look at Beckham, Giggs, Scholes, Sharpe..etc...' Now the difference between SAF and NP is that SAF went and bought this mercurial genius for next to Fu kall, called Eric Cantona to educate his boys. (now the less said about the team who sold him for a million the better, but it makes me smile everytime I think about this ) NP on the other hand has been and found Paul McKenna and Adelebola to educate our Man U boys...... Now that's the difference! Does this tell us anything ? Other than moneys tight and times are hard?
I think it tells us he isnt too good at spotting good forwards. Mclean, Simpson and Adebolla. I just do not get why we went out and got Mckenna and Adestrolla on free's then a few days before the season starts he is willing to spend 850k on a centre half? If that money was always available why didnt he get a better quality centre mid or forward? If it was only just made available, again why waste it on a centre half when you have just purchased two and made one of them captain? Goals win games, we needed a goal scoring forward, so we sign a decrepit non goal scoring one. It is bizarre.
We did go out and spend £2.5m on Matty Fryatt and Aaron Mclaen in January. Who else in the NPC has splashed that much cash on forwards this year.? A punt on Le Fondre is a good shout - however we are sorely missing a real leader on the pitch at the moment in midfield.
It's all a bit of a worry at present. My seagull in-laws are very happy at present. October 15th looks even more of a worry.....
Taking a punt is exactly the problem. We need proven Championship footballers in their prime to progress, not promising youngsters or never-has-beens as we have enough of them.
But who is there out there? There is literally no-one unless you class Matt Mills who went for 5M, it shows how ridiculous the prices are.
There's hundreds of players in the championship between say 23 and 28, and keepers you can go upto about 32 for that, we just need to look hard enough for them.
The only team in this league that can buy proven players is Leicester. 'Proven' basically means 'the best in their position' to some people. The players we have are fine, we were very unlucky to get beat 4-1 last night and even then I wasn't particularly surprised by it. We played well bar a couple of defensive/goalkeeping/refereeing errors and on another day we could have won that. The only one small thing that worried me from that game was that our strikers are still missing the target but we have 5 of them with different strengths, and they can't all be ****e. Most other side's fans would want someone like Fryatt when they talk about 'proven' players, we should be grateful for the players we do have.
I thought McLean did well last night. I know he's not prolific, but if he's given a run of games and makes goals for other players I wont complain. Apparently NP doesn't rate Simpson, but imo he needs more game time. I think he is a good player at this level if given the chance. As regards Dele, everybody last season was screaming for a big CF to hold the ball up as a different option. We've now signed one in Dele. I thought some of his hold up play and touches against Blackpool were good. Playing it down the channels to him as we did against Leeds is not gonna work (it didn't help that the Bellend pitch was clearly made of quick sand preventing Dele from running). I've also seen comments today that it is no use playing good possession football/triangles as it doesn't win games. To a degree I agree. But keeping possession and making the opposition chase the ball helps tire them out and also can result in them losing concentration. At times last night we had good possession and were making TWS chase the ball. What we could not do is sustain that possession. Imo I think that you also need to be able to change the tempo of the game. Use the possession football/triangles to draw the opposition out and create space, then speed up the play to stop them getting every man behind the ball (which TWS managed nearly all night last night when we were attacking). What I'm trying to say though is that, painful as it was last night, I could take some positives in the way we were trying to play - good possession football making the home team chase the ball, and the number of chances that we created. Obviously there were a lot of negatives from last night too but they can be rectified (hopefully!!). Still, if it were easy I'd be a football club manager I suppose.
One thing I would say on this is Matty and Aaron haven't started together yet this season, Aarons been looking very sharp and Fryatt won us the game five days ago although this has been forgotten it seems already. Lets see them together and a more atttacking approach, that's what we are crying out for.
bit of an unfair comparison , Fergie had already bought experience in players like Irwin , McClair , Bruce , Hughes' return , Schmicheal , Pallister i think was in his mid 20s , and a young Dion Dublin didnt exactly get prolific at Man U
