It’s no slight on his capability as a footballer and I really hope he gets a prolonged period of fitness to press on. But right now Ross Stewart looks like another moronic SR signing granted I think it was driven by RM, they are lucky that Adam Armstrong has been in decent form.
Just typical Saints. Didn’t have much faith in the signing to begin with but he gets dangled & actually for his 20min cameo, looked pretty good, surprisingly good. And then, in a flash, the rug has gone & now he’s out till late Jan / early Feb, which probably will equate to another month on top by gently easing him in.
I’d always expected us to wait until January for Stewart anyway. We brought him in early to make sure we got him That said, something needs doing in that area with regards to Che and Mara. Probably both out and someone new in I don’t see who we could get in on the wing to guarantee goals as a championship club. Would need some very good scouting and would likely be a name that the vast majority on here do not know. So will be greeted with the usual tantrums from people who have forgotten what division we are in now Sulemana will probably get a loan move out to open up the slot. We absolutely need another central midfielder but I recall this being identified in the summer so hopefully we are further along with this. The tough one is I don’t see how we can sign the needed left back with Manning having only recently signed. Despite him underperforming so much that he lost his spot to James Bree playing out of position. A lot could well depend on what the table is looking like. How close we are to both 7th and 2nd…
More regrettable than the signing of Stewart, is the fact we left it too late to outbid Hull for Jaden Philogene. He's looking far better than Sulemana, and is on course to be Championship player of the season if he keeps up his form. Hull got him for 5m, and they'll be getting offers of 4 or 5 times that at the end of the season. As per The Athletic, we simply joined the negotiation table too late. So I'm thinking it was our holding on to Tella til the last minute that might have scuppered signing Philogene. At least it shows the scouts have got an eye. Along with Doku and Jackson, seems like we've missed out on a few real talents of late.
Wonder what the latest is with Juan Larios. The last I heard was that he also suffered a setback after getting close to full fitness again. That was back in September.
I remember all the videos of the deadline day he signed and it showed him doing the medical. It clearly wasn’t done properly as the guy is permanently injured
So we bought a forward, our Achilles heel (one of) & didn’t expect him to be available until 2nd half of the season!? Hummm
We got rid of our best attacking player (tella) Fraser is a good impact sub. The Armstrong’s are good at championship level. Alcaraz puts himself about. the rest of our attacking options are ****ing garbage.
So Stewart is out until mid/late January. Then it`ll take half a dozen games to get him up to speed. So it`ll be late Feb/March before he is fully ready then. January isn`t the best time to get a striker, but we need one. I`d get what we can for Che (not that his form warrants a stampede for his signature) and go for Miovski. The timing might suit Aberdeen as the League Cup final is just before Xmas. He would probably cost half what Stewart did - maybe what we`d get for Che.
It seems to be the norm these days for youngsters to have a year out with injuries. Tino, Diamond Edwards, Simeu, Nico Lawrence, Ballard, Smallbone, Larios. That's just off the top of my head.
Burnley’s best attacking player. He’s never been our best attacking player by a long chalk. Not saying he wouldn’t be, but you can’t say he would have been. Much as the Armstrongs are good at Championship level (as you say), that’s all Tella has shown as well. We’d all have happily got rid of Adarma in the summer (realistically), but he’s our best attacking player this season.
Yeah we need a striker, but no panic stations from me yet. If Stewart had come in, scored 10 goals in 5 games then got injured I would be more concerned. The way I see it is that you can't miss what you havent had. That said, what a team we would be if we had a SRL type of striker - we would be killing off teams and Leicester would be looking nervously over their shoulder. That is where we are. As usual, we are a striker away from being an excellent side. We do create and even when we only create a little, that striker would turn the 1-0 into 2 or 3-0 and the 2-1 into 3 or 4-1.
I think we would need a Lallana too, tbh. We don’t create millions of chances that are being missed either!
Yeah I don’t think we are missing loads of chances. Against Bristol City it was just the Sulemana one from memory and the one were their defender did a Saints and lost the ball 5 yards from goal. We got into some good positions second half but didn’t create anything clear cut. Again I put this down to the style and how slow we are in the build up allowing the opposition to sit in and hold a good defensive shape
Cunning plan for buying aforementioned striker. Identify player Agree fee Agree personal terms Pass medical Starts playing and scoring goals Promotion as champions That's the way to do it, easy peasy, what could possibly go wrong?
Sure, but you get my point. We're guilty of some revisionist thinking when it comes to Tella. He was deeply average for us in the PL in reality, and hasn't really shown much at Leverkeusen to date (a league which is pretty equivalent to the Championship with about three or four PL quality teams). He was great for Burnley, but they played a fast, attacking style. We don't. And despite being great for them, the didn't think he was worth more than £9m from memory. We got a bunch of cash from Leverkeusen for him too. I like him, and I'd have preferred we kept him. But touting letting him go as some catastrophic error is wrong (in my opinion).
