Hell yeah, and at the very worse will be okay until January. He could even excel. I'd have enough confidence in Tella/Arma and Mara though to step up.
Bit much to think that an untested youth player could replace Che in our team. Che is by far the best striker we have in terms of all round play, and goalscoring (not that theres much competition there). I want us to sign Piroe or similar, sell Tall Paul (seems very likely) and AArmstrong (seems unlikely, sadly). A strike force of Che, Piroe, Mara and Ballard sounds a hell of a lot better to me then AArmstrong, Mara and Ballard. Maybe Mara will kick on this season at a lower level and start scoring regularly. Maybe AArmstrong will rediscover his ability to take a 100 shots a game and score lots of goals as a result like the one season he did that before. And maybe Ballard will find the step up to first team football easy. But theres a whole lot of maybes in there.
Dom Ballard is nowhere near ready for a full season of Championship football. He's about two years behind Mara in his development, and about 5 years behind Che. If anything Ballard needs to go on loan to a League One team. Luckily Che seems reasonably happy at the club, and if SR want him to stay, I think he will. If not then Mara, Tella, Sulemana, and Adarma, before Ballard.
Ballard is a talent, no doubt about it. I want to see him get given chances this season, and I think we will and he will smash it. But it's a big ask to ask him to step up and replace Adams as our focal point.
I completely disagree that he's nowhere near ready. I'm not saying we should be relying on him as our main striker but he's a definite option for us. I fully expect us to sell Che and I'd like us to sign a new striker. But the likes of Ballard and Doyle should be given more opportunities to break into the first team.
It’s a tricky one because whilst I’m sure we want to give these players chances, the main aim this year has to be promotion and using players with barely any experience at first team football at all is a huge risk. Especially when you’d think we could sign someone like Piroe/Akpom who have proven they can score at this level. Ironically it probably would’ve been easier to give players like Doyle and Ballard chances if we’d stayed up as our only aim in the PL is to avoid relegation, which means we don’t have to be trying to win virtually every game like we will be this season.
Every manager says the same, to be fair. The proof is in the pudding. For me it's vital we keep Che as he is the one player I am fully confident would bag 20+ in the Champ. Ballard looked lost against Brighton, and its such an important job for someone so inexperienced. I'd be bringing him on in games we have a comfortable lead, and that's it.
Brighton is a bit different to Sheffield Wednesday, or Norwich or QPR. If Martin thinks he's ready to play, I'm happy to trust his judgement. At the end of the day he's the one who watches him train.
Yeah and the Championship is a significant step up from the Premier League 2. Far more so in fact. I'm not saying Ballard won't come good. But I just can't see it being as soon as this season.
Whatever happened to the days of Steve Moran?, who scored with his first touch as an 18 year old and proceeded to tear up the league in the next season with 18 goals in 30 starts. A player's development can depend on his talent, look at Shearer, Bale and Luke Shaw who were ready made for the first team in their teens.
It can happen. Lavia is probably another recent example with us, and Tino and Broja before him. Not from our academy of course but from academy level to the first team and making an impact. Generally speaking you need to be physically developed as well as have the skill though and from what I've seen of Ballard, he's still quite lightweight. Every single Saints fan would love him to come in and do well, but it would be foolish to start the season with that presumption and as a result not enough other quality in that position.
Yeah, obviously it's not impossible. Sheringham, Giggs and Zlatan played until they were forty. Doesn't mean every footballer will be able to though.
I very much agree. But it could also be argued that last summer (and arguably the summer before that too), we started the season with strikers who we already know aren't good enough. So in that sense, starting the season with a striker who may or may not be good enough would at least be less foolish than previously! (More seriously though, I'm very much with you.)
I don't agree with this, I think the pressure to get results is far higher in the PL as we generally aren't more than a couple of bad results away from worrying about relegation, or in a fantasy world dreaming of Europe. Plus the gap from PL2 to PL is massive and less so in the EFL Somewhat depends on the targets we set ourselves and RM My main aim this season is to actually enjoy watching Saints, there's been little enough of that recently I'd be happy with us rebuilding for the future being entertaining, winning some games and being near those play-off spaces I think a proper rebuild is going to take more than a season, there's a lot to fix, and that's preferable to being desperate to go up at a higher risk of dropping back again immediately I think focussing only on auto-promotion rather than longer term goals will lead us to more disruption, manager turn-over, panic buying This doesn't mean I want us to be relying on the likes of Ballard to be starters, managed development is the way
He was helped by coming into a team with Channon and Keegan and able to take any team apart on their day. I think we were top for about two months on Jan and Feb before fading
