McLoughlin and Jones both stare at the ball too much when they have it at their feet, albeit McLoughlin is far worse for this. Jones, I think, is the better defender and the more composed of the two. He’s like a classy sweeper centre-half who doesn’t lunge in that much but has good awareness and he’s quite comfortable on the ball. McLoughlin is slow and ponderous. I think both are found lacking when it comes to vision and passing. Jones and Greaves were a good partnership because both were comfortable on the ball, Greaves often marked man-for-man and Jones zonally and Greaves was the more adventurous of the two in terms of carrying and passing the ball out. Jones looks worse this season because he has McLoughlin next to him.
Mcloughlin is just quite a limited player Not someone you want as a starter for a playoff chasing team
Or move him into a central position and play a natural winger on the wing - it's not like we are short of options.
I saw a few people on Facebook who got them, a couple got tickets to away games and I think another got a voucher for the club shop.
Some head to head stats for the two, as well as Coyle. Aerial duels won: McLoughlin - 23 Jones -16 Coyle - 7 Ground duels won: McLoughlin - 33 Jones - 33 Coyle - 44 Clearances: McLoughlin - 30 Jones - 21 Coyle - 11 Tackles: McLoughlin - 6 Jones - 9 Coyle - 18 Shots blocked: McLoughlin - 2 Jones - 5 Coyle - 3 Dribbled past: McLoughlin - 5 Jones - 2 Coyle - 2 Successful passes: McLoughlin - 432 Jones - 404 Coyle - 320 Key passes: McLoughlin - 3 Jones - 1 Coyle - 9 Expected assists (xA): McLoughlin - 1.21 Jones - 0.86 Coyle - 1.20
Macca seems to be edging it on passing play, headers and clearances, but Jones has been slightly better tackling and blocking. If one needs to be dropped for Hughes, you’d imagine Walter would drop the one that’s less productive offensively, i.e. Jones.
Because 5 minutes isn't enough impact on a game to justify it? Why not play him central where he can, you know, do that for 80-90 minutes AND we can get a natural winger on the pitch?
It's more a question as to whether they want 2 natural wingers from the start, or someone who will run, be mobile and pop up in kind of a free role and try to overload areas I suspect.
I just don't think it's as simple as that. He's played games centrally and not done enough at times, and he's played on the wing and done well at other times, particularly last season. In both positions, he's generally looked good but lacked output. We've won two in a row, and the main reason he's playing on the wing is that we have other in-form options in the middle and he's too good to leave out. That situation hasn't really changed so I don't see much reason to mess with the team aside from any rotation we may need to do for conditioning reasons. We get too carried away with correct positions. Luxurious midfielders often end up on the wing. Geovanni and Koren played plenty of games out wide in their days but people didn't worry about it as much as they do now. Currently Drameh is our best left back and no one seems to mind but you can guarantee as soon as we start losing there'll be complaints about him being a square peg in a round hole.
When has he done well on the wing? Can you name a single game? Because I can't think of any. We've won two in a row despite him playing on the wing not because of it. He's also not too good to leave out, he likely started because Palmer was sore and couldn't start the game. This notion that Omur is undroppable despite his lack of output and a brief 5 minute spell - in the middle - where he looked good, is quite silly. No one's getting carried away with correct positions, everyone is talking about how good he plays centrally - even when he's named on the wing. That's literally talking about his position on the pitch. Geovanni and Koren had end product, what strange examples to bring up. Even Slater when played out on the wing actually contributed.
