They’ve certainly seen something in Carlton Morris than we didn’t. Since joining in January he has featured in 11 games, 3 as a starter, scoring 4 goals and getting 2 assists. When you see that he is averaging 43 minutes per game those figures are even more impressive. He is already their 3rd op scorer. I really wanted him to work here but perhaps our system didn’t fit his style of play, glad to see him doing well now he’s got his move.
For me, I think this is more evidence of the academy really working - when you think of the top academies worldwide, they all regularly produce players who are very close to good enough or actually good enough for their training club, but timing, luck or injuries just don’t work out for them and they end up successful elsewhere. For the academy club, though, that’s ok because there will be a couple of others even better.
Morris always had potential and may well have made it with us had we retained Alex Neil, as he would have suited his style of play as a target man holding up the ball and laying it off for others. Barnsley use a 3-4-3 formation which suits him as he's shown. I'm really pleased that he's finally found the right club and his success is helping us as well.
Yes, good for him - and his new club. Anything to help stop the balletic drama queens at 'Swan Lake' Swansea from cheating their way back up. Go Carlton and you Tykes!
Pleasing to see that Giannoulis is now our third highest rated player on WhoScored, just behind Buendia and Hanley at 7.1. As the Ashton interview stressed it's our defensive improvement which has raised us above 2 years ago and that's even more evident in the current run since he joined. That's even more impressive considering how he has also contributed to our attacking abilities.
Looks like we need to get Gibson & Giannoulis signed up permanently. A Skipp signing would be a large bonus, but unlikely to happen. Quintilla may not stay as he appears out of favour at the moment? Byram seems to have some way to go before he can step up to play first team football especially in PL. Last 5 games of season are: home Bournemouth, home Watford, away QPR, home Reading and away Barnsley four teams of the present top seven. Hopefully we won’t need to get many points to get promoted.
In fairness I'd be more worried if I was one of those teams needing points in the run in and seeing Norwich on the fixture list.
I think we may be either on 90 or certainly one win away from it by then. On current form 14 points from six games is well within our capability.
If our remaining results are in the same ratio as our current completed fixtures, W 66%, D 20%, L 14%, we would finish on 100 (or 99, depending on decimal placing ) points for the season.
Watford are away to us and Brentford and home to Millwall and Swansesa in their last 4 games. Not sure why posters are making them as favourites for 2nd place. They may struggle for third place with that run in.
I think thos games in hand are dangerous though. They cannot really expect more than 4 points from two games, plus it creates fixture congestion for them. I would rather be Brentford or Watford right now - bird in the hand and all that
Brentford have suffered a big blow with the loss of Rico Henry to a hamstring injury. He's expected to be out for another 5 weeks or so. Their ability to maintain their challenge for automatic depends on how they overcome that loss. The lacklustre feel about their recent performance against us was indicative of how much Henry (and DaSilva, who was also absent through injury) contributes to the Bees attacking verve and tempo.
For what it's worth, here's our points from the reverse fixtures of those we have left: Wednesday (2-1 win at home) Forest (2-1 win at home) Blackburn (2-1 win away) Preston (2-2 home) Huddersfield (1-0 away win) Derby (1-0 home defeat) Bournemouth (1-0 away defeat) Watford (1-0 away defeat) QPR (1-1 at home) Reading (2-1 away win) Barnsley (1-0 home win) So from our remaining 11 games, we got 20 points in the reverse fixtures. And there's several teams there who aren't in the same form as earlier in the season.
But if we still need a point/points from that final game, either two of the chasing pack have both had miraculous runs or we've had worse than mid-table form for the previous ten games.