Clusterfuck! pretty much impossible to build good depth at this level. We had a squad of players capable of being that if needed. But we got rid of them all…
I'm very aware a lot of my posts lately come across as "Look at me I was right" and I really don't mean them to be, but I did say at the time a better recruitment strategy would have been to strengthen the first XI and have our previous best XI gradually drop to the bench as depth options. Of course people will say 'well Honeyman didn't want that' but we really don't know precisely what he was offered and what role he was told he'd play. I struggle to believe we have the most selfish/lazy/greedy (pick your adjective as required) players in the league who aren't happy to fight for their position and only play 2/3rds of the season (through rotation, injury, suspension, etc.) instead of the full season. I think if we had approached it correctly we could have transitioned the squad much more naturally and ironically been performing better this season.
I really don't see the reason to panic. We'll have a quality gaffer in within a few weeks and once we get to January, we'll be bringing in plenty of defenders
Will we? Where did you see that confirmed by Acun? I thought we were close to the FFP limit so do we plan to sell some players first?
We tried to bring Kouassi in on DD and then someone else when he turned us down so there's clearly something still available. They'll also definitely be shifting players on too
Initially in a 3-5-2 they would both play, but we reverted to 4-3-3 and that worked so he kept it that way. It’s hard to know without knowing exactly what the tactical plans of Shota were (which were anybody’s guess), but Tetteh started out wide in the beginning and presumably would have carried on there had he not got injured.
"Something" doesn't equate to "plenty of defenders". I think we need to have learnt from the summer that signing a sheer volume of players isn't the answer. We only need 1-2 defenders and a CDM or two to shore up our defence. I just don't quite get how you're stating things so absolutely when you have as much of an idea as the rest of us, then using that to criticise others for being critical.
If the plan was to play them together then the transfers make even less sense as we brought in no depth up front as we've now found out with Tetteh out injured. If Oscar goes down we are royally ****ed. I always thought the plan was for Oscar to start flanked by Sinik and Ally and Tetteh to be an option off the bench for him.
Well they offered Kouassi about €17k a week according to reports. That would bring in an extremely good defender, plus there's a whole host of players who will no doubt be moved on to free up more funds.
I don't think we will sell "a whole host of players" that would equate to material funds (as I think it'll be Scott, Cannon, Smith, etc. who are on peanuts) but I guess we'll see.
I’d agree if he played for a top international side but he plays for Iran. Without checking I assume they don’t qualify for a World Cup that often. It’s not inconceivable that this could be the only one he gets chance to play in for his whole career.
Yeah to be fair I checked and although they’ve only qualified for 6 they’ve qualified for the last 3 in a row. Plus as you say with the added teams they should be there fairly often.
Some of us were asking questions about signing all these random players that we can’t even fit in a match day squad let alone build a team from, but getting batted down by the excitement. What is this mindset people keep talking about that we just need to make it to January? We are not going to be strengthening. We are not signing a load more players. We already have several senior players on the books at the club who have been left unregistered from the squad because we have too many. It’s a complete and utter shambles.
There is no way in the World a bloke is gonna say no to playing in a World Cup because his club have not seen the best of him. If he is fit he will play for Iran. Its like asking a guy to turn down a nailed on blowie from Kelly Brook to stay in the pub and play darts cos the team are one short!
