If push came to shove, I'd agree but I'm being greedy and thinking of a midfield 3 of Downes- JWP-Smallbone Whether that would theoretically work or not, I don't know but it's a nice thought.
Yeah I get what you mean. Feels kind of dirty saying it as he was ‘one of our own’ and stuck with us for a long time.However, ultimately, he didn’t Downes is an upgrade in RM system, though I think JWP is better at free kicks…and cooking
Easy to say Downes is better having only seen him play against Championship opposition. JWP would have been equally good. And would have scored half a dozen.
Downes is more what we need. He's much better defensively than JWP and can also make driving runs forwards.
As much as I’ve never been JWP biggest fan it’s impossible to compare him to Downes as JWP never played in the Championship and Downes has barely played in the PL. That alone should be a pretty good indicator as to who is better and the fact that West Ham were happy to spend bigish money on JWP and ditch Downes, all logic points to JWP being better.
Hard to say. Very inexperienced at Prem level. Dean Hammond bossed it in the Championship. For me JWP offers just as much defensively, but also offers more going forward, and of course the free kicks.
They're different types of player so bit pointless comparing the two TBH. My point is Downes fits Martin's system better.
Again hard to say. I could see JWP being able to fit in very well to Martins system, especially in the Championship. Probably more in Smallbone role than Downes though. Anyway Martins system will be destroyed in the PL so whoop de do that Downes fits it better, if we have any chance of surviving he will need to make big adjustments to what we saw for the vast majority of the Championship season
You also said that we'd finish 15th last season and Martin would be sacked, so much for your realism!...
I also said we had a top 2 squad for the division but I didn’t think we had the mentality to go in long winning runs. I was wrong about the mentality part, I still believe the quality of the squad bailed Martin out a lot. The Bazunu injury might be the Shane Long/Koeman moment or whatever it was where he was forced to change and it worked. Anyway hopefully the playoffs taught Martin something about his tactics and some tweaks he can carry on into the PL. I’m hoping he agreed with me that the squad last season was very good for the level so that’s why he was so stubborn with his style and now he realises we probably have the worst squad in the league and he needs to adjust. Time will tell if he does
Hang on, you were saying Leeds and Leicester were far better than us all season. I'd rather wait and see what happens than predict doom and gloom when we don't know what the squad will even look like yet.
I don’t think I was. I was arguing that our squad was just as good as Leeds’ when others were saying it would be a great achievement if we finished above them due to the difference in quality. If I was saying they were better over the season (they were according to the table) I was referring to the way we were being managed hindering us
Possibly, I don’t really like him. I can’t actually remember the last manager I did like when it came to interviews etc but I don’t really pay much attention to those now as usually it’s just bullshit they are saying for the media. I have given him credit at turning round the atmosphere at the club (the exact reason I predicted us to finish 15th), and he has delivered promotion at the first attempt. I’ve never called for him to be sacked during the season, only if we didn’t go up. I just said that I didn’t think we would go up playing his preferred style (arguably we didn’t with a change in formation in the playoffs). He deserves a chance in the PL even if I firmly believe we will be next seasons Sheff Utd
I think JWP would be a very good addition to our midfield in one of the two CM roles, with Downes behind as DM. He’s strides ahead of Aribo and Smallbone. I don’t think it would be a case of Downes OR Ward-Prowse as I think they’d be slightly different positions. If it’s more than paper talk, the money would have to be sensible (unlikely), but I don’t think a club in our position should be turning our nose up at someone who was back-to-back player of the season for us in the PL, and who is very experienced with almost 400 PL apps.
