Sure, but youth players go out on loan. A season or two here and there is the norm. A third season out on loan may have been one too many, I accept that, but it was Ralph who allowed him to go out for that third season, rather than keep him at the club to have a proper look at him. EDIT: Also, you have to remember, that Fulham also had Decordova-Reid, Loftus-Cheek, Lemina, Zambo-Anguissa, among others for the CM position, so it wan't like Reed was going to be guaranteed a starting place week in-week out there either.
I agree with you here. But Romeu had been hit or miss in the previous season and only really re-discovered his top form the start of this campaign. Also, relying on just two CMs for a whole season is playing with fire. We got so lucky that JWP is made of adamantium, because we could have been truly screwed if he'd got injured at some point. Diallo was the Reed replacement, and just wasn't reliable enough. He wasn't even our first choice replacement, as we failed to sign Sangare. Was just a bit of a mess imo, and the result maybe of over-confidence from the previous campaign's high finish. Maybe Reed was just a victim of our success.
Think that Reed was a little bit of a late bloomer, and by the time he bloomed our decision-makers (who made some questionable decisions!) had largely decided that he wasn't good enough. Where we lost that chance, IMO, is after he did well for Norwich in the Championship (who reportedly wanted him on a permanent deal), and he couldn't get so much as a look in, with those minutes instead going to...Lemina, his future loan partner. Which was understandable from one standpoint -- we'd paid a fair bit of money for Lemina -- but in retrospect probably wasn't the right play, as within a year we'd decided that Lemina also wasn't good enough.
Yes, selling a player who ended up getting relegated was an awful error of judgement. Reed wouldn't have magically solved all our problems. And while he would have been a useful squad player he wanted regular first team football which he wasn't ever getting at Saints. Don't see the issue with us selling him at all.
You're completely ignoring the fact that Diallo was outstanding in the first half of the season before he got injured. Then he was out for a couple of months and came back into a team that were struggling. You can't expect a 22 year old in his first PL season to turn things around on his own. But some of the passes Diallo played forward were fantastic. IMO, I'd much rather have Diallo in the squad than Reed. Reed would have done a job for us this season just gone but only because Romeu and Diallo suffered serious injuries.
I thought the general consensus was that Reed wasn’t good enough? He had a good long spell around the first team didn’t he? Just because another PL club wants to sign him it doesn’t mean we were wrong to let him go.
Regardless of whether Ralph did or didn't want Reed, his hands were probably tied and we were likely forced into selling him because we couldn't get rid of the players we actually wanted to sell. We needed to get some money from somewhere and Reed was an obvious sale.
I didn't realise players get relegated. I thought it was clubs. Are you saying that no decent player ever played for a club that was relegated? Okay... Also, Diallo was not outstanding at all. He was decent for a handful of games, but not a lot more. No way was he doing anything that Reed would not have been capable of. Most of the games I watched him in, his passing was atrocious, and he needed far too long on the ball. Was a weak link. CM was our weakness this season, because Ralph assumed two Premier-league quality CMs would be enough. It wasn't, and we were completely awful second half of the season. Not saying Reed would "magically solve all our problems", so let's not belittle each others' opinions with bollocks statements like that. But, Reed would have provided a VERY BADLY NEEDED option this season. Would even have allowed JWP to play further forward. And this isn't hindsight, this was foresight. It was obviously a bad move at the time. Anyway, been through this with Schad and SaintinNZ (and we managed to keep the discussion decent). Not going through it again.
Better than Reed has ever shown for Saints. It really wasn't a bad move to sell Reed. He never showed why it was worth keeping him. Yes he would have been a badly needed option this season, but just because he would have been an extra body in a position that was badly stretched and not because of his qualities as a footballer. Reed cannot play defence splitting passes that Diallo played - Reed is simply a lesser version of Romeu. If Jankewitz hadn't got himself sent off after 60 odd seconds against United we wouldn't be talking about this IMO. He has the talent to force his way into Ralph's plans but his attitude has let him down.
I hope you're right. I'm starting to worry about the indiscipline in the U23 squad. Valery, Slattery, Janko, Obafemi. Seems like too much promising talent has turned rotten of late. Anyway, at least I managed to stop all the tea-lady puns.
Reed was 25 when we sold him and obviously looking for first team football. He had just been a regular player in a promotion winning team so seems very logical he would’ve wanted to return there rather than be a squad player at Saints. I don’t really see what we could’ve done last summer to persuade him to stay, plus he was one of the few players who actually had some interest in him that we could sell and raise some funds. I disagree that Diallo was the Reed replacement, we didn’t need to replace Reed as he hasn’t been a player in our squad since Koeman really.
Indeed. Diallo was brought in as cover for Romeu/JWP as we had sold Hojbjerg. He’s one for the future, same age as Nathan Tella.
It'll be interesting to see what Diallo is like in three years time, when he'll be the same age as Reed too.
The discussion has gone off-track. It was never about whether Diallo might someday be a good footballer or not.
Are people talking about the same Harrison Reed who couldn’t always get in the midfield of a side that got relegated with a whimper? Sometimes behind Lemina and his legendary work ethic? (Looks like 70% starts) A side that showed almost no fight and bottled it big time when they had a real chance of staying up? That Reed? The man playing in the midfield of a team who played lots of pretty passes round the park with no cutting edge? And insufficient steel (that’s right in midfield as well as defence) to bail them out for lack of goals? The guy who seemed like he was left out of some key games (at least when I switched on motd) despite being a known quantity for Fulham having starred in their promotion campaign? That is his level Leeds will be signing him as a very competent back up. Which is what he would have been for us. Albeit not at much of one as he wouldn’t have had a year and 26 PL starts under his belt. His best case scenario going there would be an injury to a starter centre midfielder (or maybe two) and then really put a marker down. It is not guaranteed Of course I could be wrong and it could just be all the players surrounding him and he could really shine with better players at Leeds. But there is currently no evidence for that . And not (in my opinion) enough evidence for some of the hand-wringing on here about it
That's pretty unfair. Yeah, he started 70% of their games; he also missed 6 matches with injury. Thus, the knock against him is that...he didn't start 7 matches all season, with three of those coming immediately following returns from injury, and a further two in the second/third game of multi-game weeks. We can argue whether Reed is a quality Premier League starter, but he was a mainstay with Fulham when healthy. He played more minutes for them than Danny Ings did for us, but I don't think you'll see anyone arguing that Ings wasn't important.
Hence why I included all the other point about how Fulham played - either with him in the team or not I admit to not researching the injury record just that it wasn’t mentioned per my recollection when I noted he wasn’t playing on match of the day. But Fulham are small so perhaps they didn’t bother with the usual “Lemina is in for injured Reed” But if you leave aside that point where I am clearly wrong - what about the actual impact - or lack thereof - of the midfield he played in? Because I was wrong on the first point that invalidates all the rest? Or is the refusal to engage with those points for another reason?
The thing to consider is that Harry as with Matty before him was probably asked what he wanted to do given that he was unlikely to be first choice here and he made the choice of first team football in a team where he had established himself with some success. I'm delighted that two local lads that started here are making their way elsewhere and that we got a decent return on them.
I don't find pointing to Fulham's record to be particularly compelling, no. The Newcastle side that got relegated had Gini Wijnaldum and Moussa Sissoko in midfield. Did getting relegated mean that they weren't Premier League standard? Clearly not; Wijnaldum has been a really important part of Liverpool, and is now off to PSG, while Sissoko played significant minutes for Spurs (though his knees are gradually turning into soup now). Good players do get relegated. The issue here is not that Reed is or will ever be a superstar. The issue is that, if you're a club that claims to be all about your Academy, and to have to operate cautiously owing to financial parameters, and you have a player on your payroll for five years without ever really giving them a run, and they go on to be a useful-or-better Premier League player, you ****ed up! That's the antithesis of what you're meant to be doing, especially if during that time you've spent more than 5x the fee you received for that player seeking others to do the same job.
