I noticed a couple of times on Saturday that he really struggles defensively when faced up by a winger/striker and seems slow to react to their movement. He did look better offensively, so hopefully, if we don’t leave him isolated too often, we might continue to see some improvement as his confidence grows.
He’d be guaranteed game time with us on loan as our two best wingers are out injured and neither Kamara or Longman are in form. He’d have competition at somewhere like Boro. Hopefully, that would put us ahead of others as suitors.
Baz confirmed in the podcast that the signing that’s close is a Premier League based loan. Going to guess it’s Luke Cundle from Wolves with that report yesterday.
Hope not. We don’t need anymore short-arse midfielders. We need a physical defensive mid, a striker and a winger or two.
It almost straight after said how we had a special relationship with Aston Villa.. mmm isn’t one of theirs getting recalled in January mmmm
I noticed that giles was marking both the player that scored with a header(captain darling) and the player who headed against a post. I hope the coaches have got him working on improving his defending because left back is still a weak spot for us. If he did go to boro in a swap with jones and we got a decent left back in then I think that would be a great improvement to the team.
Post 553 Swansea thread ... To me it's always looked like he (Giles) enjoys being here. Other players appear to like him. And it doesn't look to me like his not bothered (a bit like Kamara, his 'style' doesn't help maybe).However, I'm just not seeing what some others appear to be seeing in him. One very good cross that Slater should have buried, but otherwise, time and again it's receive the ball in a good position, take a couple of touches, play it safely backwards, even when there's options to go forward or, heaven forbid, a chance to actually take his man on. And then he's very suspect defending, particularly with crosses. He's not tall so you wouldn't expect him to be dominant in the air or anything, but you should expect him to at least put his body in there and disprupt. Their first goal was a great cross and header, and you wouldn't expect him to outjump their No 6, but what the heck was he doing? He let both their No 6 and 20 get ahead and away from him. Then even worse, take a look at that 2nd half chance where they hit the post. He left his man (their No 5). That's so poor from a defender. Had his header been an inch to the left, Giles would rightly be getting absolutely slated. Funny old game eh.
The question you need to be asking is why was a 6ft 4 central defender not marked by one of our central defenders, not a small full back. He was never going to win that header against Darling. I'm a big fan of Hughes but for their goal he allowed his man to get away from him.
Tbf. I don't think he was marking their No 6 as such. He'd stayed up and our CB's hadn't switched on to it. Having said that, he wasn't really doing anything, a bit like the let off when their No 5 headed against the post.
It was actually clever play from the striker. Hughes is just about to start backing up and their striker just blocks his path
Could even argue Jones is at fault. If he'd stepped up they'd have been off. Or should he have moved more central? He looked left 2 or 3 times and must have seen he was marking nobody and they were overloading. Would be interesting to hear what Selles made of it. But as has been said, a well worked and executed goal by them. I suspect it's something they were looking to do, as others have and will do.
But surely in the context of a player we want rid of, an appearance fee is irrelevant. If he's going to play and get that money, then we wouldn't want rid of him so badly. Whilst no one knows the detail of his contract, I think it's normal that players' contracts are watertight around them getting their pay for the length of their contract. Unless you can find a club to buy them (and pay him an amount that makes him happy to leave his contract here) or get rid of them on serious disciplinary grounds like we eventually did with Bullard, then you have to pay the player his contract in full. We might get someone to either take him on loan or "buy" him next month for next to nothing, perhaps with us making up any shortfall in his wages as part of the deal. We probably did something similar with Ryan Woods when he was unwanted and left with a year left on his apparently quite lucrative deal.
