It is the best but his press resistance and close control gives us our best chance of control if we use him deeper. He’s pretty relaxed and isn’t the highest energy player which I think in our current situation is more important in the 8. Next season 100% go out and get a ball winner DM but for now I think he’s the best for where we are.
Transfer Rumours Winter 2025 Transfer Thread
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I don't mean this to be confrontational, I'm just curious, but what gives you the confidence to be able to assess a player's suitability for the Championship when they're playing in a totally alien league? How can their level be judged? To be honest I've always wondered how managers and scouts even do it. I've watched local non-league games and thought some players looked amazingly skillful at that level, but with the understanding that they would look totally different if they were playing in say The Championship.
There are a few players in that league who have been linked with or have already made moves to the Bundesliga, Ligue 1, Serie A and the Championship.
A lot of them are younger players with high ceilings and/or head and shoulders above the rest. Hajdari, van Breemen, Bernede, Alvyn Sanches, Condé etc. could play at Championship level imo and probably even higher like a mid-table team in Italy, France or Germany.
Thierno Barry went to Villarreal in the summer and he’s doing really well in La Liga, for example.
I guess it’s like how most of us thought Greaves was good enough for the Prem for a while before he actually went. Well, everyone except @Charon
Good read, exactly the profile of the type of player to play Sellers style, this looks like a very good bit of business
Speaking to an analyst they build models to compare what their biggest strengths are to the highest performers in the division that’s recruiting. For example, an analyst I know predicted despite Delap’s fairly tame numbers with us, that a premier league team should sign him as in one of his models he assesses how often a striker hits the corners of the goals when they shoot. Delap does just that and Ipswich are reaping the rewards. He also said Langstaff was a poor signing for the champ due to the same thing despite good numbers. He knew he’d not get the same chances like he did in LG2.
Also why Magennis and Wilks scored goals for fun in League One but were below average in the Championship.
I remember thinking Doherty was destined to be a top player for us in the championship after his season in League 1. Good job I aren’t a scout
Any slowing down of our signings will be due to our pond being frozen over as well
It's a huge combination of factors - raw skill is one obvious one, but there's also things like the player being able to comfortably move countries without being homesick/unsettled, language, the league and team they came from, quality of opposition and their respective strengths and so on.
Top level leagues tend to be judged on coefficients, though there's some debate as to whether they give a true statement about quality given that some bigger clubs come from relatively ****e leagues and some strong national teams are fed by mediocre (by PL standards) talent at league level. Second tier clubs are generally judged next to the top flight of the respective nation, but it isn't as cut and dry as that, so that's when you'd need to be much more detailed. So the Championship would comfortably be the strongest second tier, followed by Serie B and, Segunda Division and Ligue 2. But some nations, like Scotland and Norway, tend to have very poor standards of second tier football, so talent from there isn't in abundance and if you're a Championship club they're not leagues you'd probably bother looking at a lot of the time. Which is a shame because that doesn't mean the league is a write off, but English clubs tend to wait until a player moves to a bigger club and proves themselves before making an offer because they have the finances to do that. I imagine Southampton were watching Ross Stewart for a while before he moved to Sunderland from Ross County, but were happy to let him have a season at Sunderland to see if he developed. That one backfired a bit
If a player was moving from Kosovo to Serie B, for example, that's a big step up, so the player would have to be very good. It wouldn't matter if the lad had scored 30 goals in the Kosovan top flight, that might pique the interest but it won't guarantee him the move if he's only going to end up being bullied and sulk. In fact, we took Malta international winger Clayton Failla on trial in our bounce back promotion season after he scored 45 goals in 92 appearances appearances for Hibernians in Malta. He didn't look anything like good enough when he trotted out against Hannover, but he went back to his home country and had a decent enough career there. We also had players like Martin Pusic, Tijani Belaid and Norbert Balogh come through that on paper would have looked like decent signings, but ended up having little to no impact at all because they just couldn't break through.
So basically you can't just watch a couple of games and come to a robust conclusion.
Thought as much.
Odd Baz didn’t mention anything to do with a ‘6’ considering he mentioned it multiple times before the window it was a priority.
We definitely need to sign the last four, talk about nominative determinism.
Tijani Belaid, Tijani Belaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaid.......... he signed for City, but never got played
