Pellegrino is WAY too cautious to start both of them over the senior players, I doubt that he will even start one of them, but i'm hoping that he will prove me wrong on Saturday.
Stretching things a little, one might suggest that Sims has all the attributes we have lacked since Mane left. He needs the opportunity to prove himself, although as I have pointed out on another thread, he has shown a lot of promise in the recent cameos.
There is room for Sims' pace, directness and trickery plus Hesketh's vision, skill and intelligence but as I said before picking both of them is a leap of faith that Pellegrino doesn't possess. I hope that I an wrong but I think that he will continue to use Sims as an impact sub. I would see Sims as a Redmond/Boufal relacement and Hesketh as a Tadic replacement.
Such a measured view St Badger. So much pressure is going to be on this lads shoulders. He has shown glimpses of promise and I hope he delivers, but I’m not sure yet he is as close to the finished article as some think.
No, not yet the finished article, but unless he gets more game time the chances of making that step up will lessen over time. I was just picking up on VM’s comment - “Two footed, has pace, has acceleration, can dribble, can shoot, can cross“, all the attributes that Mane has, just lacking in game time and experience. If it was a choice between him and Redmond, for Saturday, it would, IMO, be good to start with Sims, especially with it being at SMS where the crowd support for Redmond is lacking. Was it against Everton, last season, when Sims ran the ball 50/60 yards with Everton players being left in his wake. It would be good to see if he can repeat that and get people on their feet, as he did then. I think his inclusion would give the crowd a lift. He’s one of our own.
I would say both have an edge over Redmond purely by having good football brains, Boufal is different, he is a talent but needs to learn playing simple football is often the best way to go
You can’t see it too often really! But it illustrates an important point about Josh, in that he offers a fantastic means of hitting sides on the counter.
Yes it was in the home game v Everton. He started and set up Austin's goal within the first minute, and then towards the end went on a run almost the full length of the pitch
Don’t get me wrong, I have high hopes for him and I agree that any of these lads need game time, but I fear little patience.
I don't think you need to lose any sleep over that with our current manager. They won't be on the pitch long enough for the fans to lose patience with them.
A better performance than I remembered. I like that he doesn’t just hug the line and gets involved more centrally and gets into good shooting positions.
Basically exactly the type of player Pellegrino wants. It's worth noting that although he hadn't been a super risk taker he did give Sims a cameo after he had only played 45m of youth team football this season and also give obafemi one while he was effictively still in the u18's team. So he may well be willing to take a risk to get that fast counter attacker he clearly wants.
The thing I took away is that he is quicker than I thought, maybe because he is small, but he has never seemed pacey
Sims has the potential to make us forget about the Promes transfer fiasco ( i'm not comparing Sims with Promes btw).