It's worth pointing out that Southampton played Toby as a DMF when he was on loan there, although we're not that desperate Yet...
Again, he has the constituent parts of a good player in that position. I'd not want to go with Winksy and Skippy in the second leg at Chelsea and we need more than just Eric Dier to come in, if were losing Mousa I and Moussa II is out for a while. I'm not sure that we're far off playing one of Toby/Juan Foyth as a midfielder, at least as a substitution for one of our remaining 3 options. Losing HK makes it tough to drop Dele deeper, unless we're going to start Fernando Llorente or The Parrott?
If we play the 442 diamond a Llorente/Moura pairing makes sense...until you remember that Moura's coming off an injury. Or that said pairing would be less effective than if it were Son/Llorente up top. If we're looking to play with a pivot, or at least what remains of one, surely that would mean George Marsh and Tashan Oakley-Boothe would be bench options at the very least?
TOB seems to have not kicked on as hoped from a year or two ago and has definitively been overtaken by Skippy. I've also seen it suggested by people who follow the Academy closely that George Marsh isn't expected to make it with us. If that's true we are into current senior squad players playing there. I've no idea what's best but, this season, any over reliance on a player has resulted in an injury. The Sissoko injury was coming...
That's odd, most of the talk I've seen about Marsh suggests Poch rates him for his tackling (although most MMA coaches don't rate his grapple defence, given how easily Adam Lallana put him in a chokehold last season...) From what I can gather, TO-B's not kicking on this season has a lot to do with him being in the same boat with our U23s that Sissoko was with our first team in the last couple of seasons, because with Shashoua and Edwards out on loan he's been deployed as a makeshift winger as he can take the ball past opponents while his natural position in the pivot is given to two of Skipp, Marsh, Dylan Duncan or Jamie Bowden - so, typically, he's got a better chance of playing in his preferred position in the first team at the moment than the youth squads
I saw TOB in the UEL and apart from a couple of not great tackles, especially against Milan, he didn't look a patch on the player on the pre-season tour 2017. He wasn't playing noticeably wide but I don't see much more than short highlights of any games and that positional move would explain the 'drift' of someone who had looked very good previously. My cousin's mate, who was part of the 1882 movement likes Marsh and his application but thinks that he has a ceiling below Skipp and Winks and will make a career away from us. I'm claiming no expertise. I doubted Harry Kane's future with us and still rate Josh Onomah.
The pattern with our youth team has been the same for years: the players with a lot of hype fail to make the grade, while the players without the hype do Off the top of my head the former includes Caulker, Townsend, Carroll, Pritchard, Bostock, Coulibaly, Adam Smith, Veljkovic, Luongo, Griffiths, while the latter includes Kane, Winks, Bentaleb, Mason, and KWP. The sad part is that Oliver Skipp looks like the first youth teamer to live up to the hype since Ledders - and that's a lot of players inbetween who didn't.
Apparently he once said he’d happily play for £1 a week! So there’s not a lot to lose. Although levy will probably look at that £4 a month and feel it’s too much.
A couple of decent signings there, but we’re hardly “active”. I’m certainly not going to be getting my hopes up.
2013 - Lewis Holtby 2012 - Louis Saha, Ryan Nelson, Iago Falque, Bruno Uvini 2011 - Bongani Khumalo, Steven Pienaar 2010 - Younes Kaboul 2009 - Jermaine Defoe, Wilson Palacios, Carlo Cudicini, Pascal Chimbonda, Robbie Keane 2008 - Chris Gunter, Jonathan Woodgate, Alan Hutton, Gilberto You'd think we were managed by a wheeler dealer in the 2009-12 January windows...
