It seems to be a misconception about how much you need to break into the top 6. Look at Huddersfield for an example, a top holding midfielder in O’Brien and a goal scoring and providing wide player in Toffolo taken away and they were in a relegation battle. Season prior those 2 and 9 other hard working experienced championship players with a set way of playing, THIRD! Luton another one, a top holding midfielder in Nakamba and a top striker in Morris, THIRD! We’ll struggle to compete with those at the top, but the current squad really isn’t a million miles away. Top 6 quality? Who knows, we’ve not really seen this squad of players fully fit, albeit that’s very rarely the case in the real world but after watching most of them enough on individual occasions, can anyone really argue that a side with Oscar/Tetteh leading the line, Traore in behind with a midfield of Tufan/Slater partnering Seri with a rock solid defence with the experience of Christie up and down. Reliable Ingram too. Add to that a proper left back and a bit more proven quality out wide (which are the reported targets at present) it’s hard to not be optimistic about our chances this season.
Load of ****e. We need a ball winner for the midfield, hoping a fully fit Tufan becomes that, more than a keeper
No but I’d put my life on him scoring a penalty, that is if we ever get one and of course he’s on the pitch… when the planets are aligned maybe lol
He is quite strong at barging people off the ball at times. But on the other hand I'm not sure he's enough of a battler to be trusted in that role. He often gives up or goes down looking for a foul and leaves the rest of the team having to get back and recover. Doing that high up the pitch is bad enough, but I can't see LR trusting him to play deep because of that stuff particularly. The other thing is that his best asset is probably his finishing, so if he's on the pitch you want him in and around the area whenever possible.
He’s a box to box by trade but yeah you’re probably right on trust, he does look very trim so we’ll see where he’s deployed in pre season because that’s his natural position and can make those late runs in that role
I just watched Acuns press conference with youtube auto-translate struggling along. Nothing too interesting, some key bits: · Learnt a lot last year, this year they're trying to apply that knowledge better to be succesful · Tried to sign a young talented player from Turkey, but the player didn’t want to come as can’t speak English · 2/3 Turkish talents that we are talking to, but some conditions still need to be met · Acun said one of his biggest advantages is signing players from the Turkish league as the players have trust in him. Was how he was able to convince Ozan/Sinik. Sinik had 5 other offers, Vincent Kompany told Acun he would’ve signed him if wasn’t for him. · Recently spent 2 days together with a player and his father in Turkey. Player says he wants to come, Liam very excited about him.
I think it's always worth remembering that Acun's role involves talking us up and making us sound as big as possible, and he's very good at it. When he talks to a Turkish audience about transfers or other specifics it's probably best to take everything with a pinch of salt because we know it borders on fantasy at times. Talk of us signing Güler for example.
The link to the player and his father sounds like Twine. If I recall rightly that was the same story last year about Twine + his dad spending time with Acun in Istanbul.
That one about Sinik is particularly hilarious. Why should players trust Acun when Sinik came in, barely played, and was loaned back? And the links to Burnley are hilarious.
Just before this he talked about a player he agreed a 3 year deal with last year before changing his mind in strange circumstances, that sounded like Twine to me. I’m sure he said this player is better than the one we missed out on last year, but YouTube would translate some sentences but not others.
