Transfer Rumours Transfer Rumours - Summer 2018

Yeah he'll score goals but I don't think he'll ever be prolific like some think he could be.


You're suggesting basing our entire style of play going forward around him, would he score enough for that to be worth it? Not so sure myself.

 

Getting to the byline and playing through passes is nothing radical and new TLL, most teams do it, but we stopped doing it last season and lumped it in from deep after fannying about for about five minutes before.

Gabbi had his best scoring run for us when Puel had our wide players and fullbacks getting to the byline...

 

Also I think most of our players are suited to that style anyway. It's why I keep putting Gabbi as my first choice striker.

 

You make the best use out of the tools at your disposal, no point in playing Gabbi if you are just going to feed him high balls all the time IMO.

 

I don’t think Gabbi’s initial run comes from a sufficient test point. It was sthe nothing like 4 games and the the major inconsistency developed.

 

From memory, Hughes subbed Gabbi off at HT of his first league game, and he was hardly seen again afterwards.

Over the course of the season he may well force his way into the side (and I hope he does), but I don't see him suddenly jumping the queue to begin the season as a starting striker for Hughes.

 

11 goals is his best return for a season btw if anyone was wondering, only hit double figures on one other occasion.

 

Although, if he was playing alongside or slightly behind a target man then the high ball becomes another option. I’d love to see him and Sam together for that reason.

 

Any news on Clasie and Reed? Stay or go?

 

Would be Clasie if Les Reed went...

 

If you Reed between the lines, Les is going nowhere........

 

But then, I suspect, that the classy three new recruits ~ Armstrong, Mo, Vestergaard would still be playing their football in 2018/19 elsewhere.
Careful what you wish for!

 

Prove it

 

Indeed. He has goal numbers similar to Shane Long over a decent career length and yet the idea he's a Lineker/Owen/Inzaghi type still lingers.

I mean, sure, he could start banging them in but he's never done it before so I'm not sure we should bank on it. He also makes perhaps the least all-round contribution of any of our strikers so he doesn't really have that going for him either.

 

Ultimately it is down to the style that Sparky wants to play and which players fit that style the best. Gabbi never fitted Pellegrino's style because the build up was laboured and slow and too rigid, fearful of getting caught by a counter attack. I believe that Sparky will want to commit more players forward earlier and play more football around the box than Pellegrino's teams, but we will have to wait and see. I'm very hopeful of getting more entertained and excited than last season for sure.

 

Difficult to imagine the entertainmant levels being worse than last season? I've been watching Saints for many years, but there were games last year that I really struggled with.

 

It’s not just about the striker. It’s about the players providing the correct service.
They spend enough time on the training ground to know each striker’s preferred service, ie cut back from the bye line, through the channels, low crosses to foot, high crosses etc, they just need to provide the right one to the right person, regularly enough for them to put the chances away.
In all honesty, I don’t care who scores so long as we score more than our opponents.
I want to see midfielders arriving in the area, at the right time, to give us more options for the final ball. It has seemed, over the last couple of seasons that we either have four players arriving in a straight line, with no one hanging back and making late runs into the box for cut backs, or everyone hangs back with just one player in the box to aim for.
I want to see wide players making diagonal runs through defences to distract centre backs and maybe create space for the central striker, and create an overload of players on one side against their full backs.
I don’t want to see safety first, stay in formation football, when we are in possession.
Where’s my tablets?

 

I didn't like this for the content , football stuff . I liked it because the Avata

 

Avatars is back . Are you watching Archers ?

 

.................and then didn't score for a very very Looooooong time. Wish he'd been called Short instead