We even had Donley ready after the Dunk foul at the end and then sat him back down. Couldn't have hurt to give him a few minutes, could it?
You don’t allow a player to come inside, if you shepherd them you do it by forcing them outside. You also said Porro was upfield a minute ago. It’s not OTT though. He’s absolutely not a perfectly good squad player at all. He’s in the same bracket as Winks, Lo Celso, Ndombele etc. but then you were a fan of Winks so…
Edwards has been linked with big money moves to the Premier League (including us) and Bundesliga. Walker-Peters is far better than Emerson and also HG. Clarke is proving himself to be one of the Championship’s best players at 23. Foyth has won the Europa League and World Cup. Not bad journeymen.
Yeah I noticed that, think it was to replace Kulu who ended up being fine to play on. But chasing a goal, we could’ve subbed off Hojbjerg and gone for broke, we literally had nothing to lose.
It was a typo in my first post....I meant infield not upfield. It happens a lot in the system as both fullbacks go diagonally infield when we have the ball so the CBs often end up wide on counter attacks. Another reason why FBs can fill the role better than you think. Winks would have been better suited than Højbjerg to this system and would have freed up another place in the squad.
Freed up a spot, yes. Better than Hojbjerg for the system, debatable, as neither are good for it. There’s a reason Winks is in the championship at nearly 28 years old though.
Sporting and Villarreal are two very good clubs. You don’t have to be at an elite club to be a good player either… we literally had Harry Kane for a decade and we’re not an elite club.
Re Clarke...being good in the Championship is not a good indication of being good in the Premier. Tarrabt (think that was his name), Sessengon and Winks all prove that imo
Very true but he’s growing with confidence game by game and tearing it up at the moment at just 23. Seems to be only getting better, he’s got an arrogance about his play too that should bode well if he makes the step up to the Prem - which I think he will, if not in January, then the summer.
I think Foyth and Walker-Peters were jettisoned too soon. Both - but certainly the former - looked to have a lot of the strengths that would have worked well in our current system. Edwards is and was a Mercurial talent. He probably did go off the rails a bit at 18/19, but maybe more effort should have been made to get him through. But hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Players develop at different speeds and in different ways, and especially young players, they thrive in different environments. Clarke’s move to us was too much too soon IMO, in terms of spotlight, and Edwards is another who has probably benefited from being out of the limelight of the English press and football environment for a few years. It’s hard to give players the most valuable commodity - game time - when they’re not ready. Some, like Destiny, and Sarr, are still a little rough but are definitely diamonds but they’re levels above where others have been in the past. They’re among our best and most impactful players but have plenty of room to develop still too.
They are hardly journeymen, they are young players who are now forging good careers. KWP has gone on to play for England, Foyth has won the World Cup, Edwards is a leading player for one of Portugal`s leading clubs and Clarke is now scoring goals for fun at Sunderland.
So every player that does not play for an elite club is a journeyman. Jamie Vardy has never played for an elite club but has won the PL and FA Cup, is he a journeyman too?
