Yeah they both had their shortcomings. McGregor was a better keeper than Pandur is now, bringing in Pandur’s future potential is irrelevant to the question. I love Pandur btw, I hope he’s our keeper for the foreseeable and gets better as we get better - fingers crossed.
We are Hull City...We don't do things like signing players until the last possible moment. When they can see who is left on the shelf...Anyway what's wrong with starting the season with half a squad? It worked a treat last season.
Just from looking at the teams we've played this season I think it's apparent that teams really are recruiting keepers who are good on the ball. The pass out to the unmarked full back on the touchline when the keeper is pressed and the centre backs are marked is a pattern you see over and over again and a lot of them are really good at it. I think you are underestimating the importance of it a bit.
It’s just one move and one way of setting up. Many ways to skin a cat. The goalkeeper is there to stop goals going in, end of.
I think more will move away from it who aren’t the elite teams because as Ipswich showed this season. Signing Muric, a ball player with below par shot stopping for the premier league level. They’ll just let you down. But hey, at least they can play to the full back when they’re being pressed!
Muric is just a **** keeper though, not the best example. There are keepers who can play the ball out who are also good shot stoppers. Joe Gauci at Villa is a good example. He's been on loan in L1 so I don't think he's walking into the Villa side, but I don't think ball playing keepers who can pull off good saves don't exist, especially at the lower level. This myth that 'oh well if they could do both they'd be playing for a better side' isn't quite true - you can be a 7/10 at both and play at a lower level instead of being a 9/10 and being an elite keeper.
He keeps getting decent moves though, and I think it’s largely down to his ball playing as opposed to anything else. I think we’ll slowly see promoted sides move away from trying to play a “pep style” if we’d have gone up under Rosenior it would have been the exact same. We’d have been in the bottom 3 all season forcing a way of football that just won’t work for promoted teams. It works when you’ve got a good squad like Rosenior and Kompany have shown this year at their respective jobs earnt on merit but modern coaches get away with murder forcing certain styles on players and not adapting. Amorim for example, getting away with absolute murder but because he supposedly plays football the right way and it’s all the players fault for not being good enough.
I'd have been fascinated at how we would have gone as I do somewhat believe Acun that he could have attracted a high calibre of players theoretically beyond our station. And Rosenior's best games were actually against the better sides like Southampton, Leicester etc. so I do wonder how we would have gone against the Brighton's, Tottenham's etc. of the league. I guess similar with Selles it seems we struggle against sides that sit in against us so hard to say how we would have gone. Even this season, Sheff United and Leeds didn't actually cause us as many problems as you'd expect, it was Burnley that we struggled with because of their defense first perspective.
I just don’t think you can realistically play the slow control based game as a promoted team. It’s not realistic nor is it proving to be effective. The best promoted teams in recent years have all been transition based styles with solid foundations then quick counter attacking play after defending. Bielsa’s Leeds 1st season, Wilder and Blunts 1st season. Brentford the whole time they’ve been up there. Forest both now and under Cooper for a spell. Those who try the Pep way all get no where near staying up
I'm still not convinced that by the end of the season we were playing that way under LR - we were transitioning back to front very quickly at times, particularly against Ipswich comes to mind, but I think it's all hypotheticals at this point about how we would have played in the PL. I just think about LR's comment post-Soton where he said that style was the ultimate version of what he was trying to achieve with us, and that Soton game was a joy to watch.
We were just fine smashing it to Stuart Elliott who used to win most headers. Peter Taylor in fact was ahead of his time for set pieces, especially throw ins and kick offs! I don’t buy this passing it to the full backs who pass it back, granted I see the benefit of the keeper passing it 20/30 yards to the full back or winger, but I feel teams spend far too long setting up passing it from the GK, and to be honest I’m quite frankly bored of us doing it. I don’t care what people say either, Allsop was meant to be good at it, and it was equally as boring. I know one thing if we had him in goal this year we’d be down whatever advantage he brought with his feet. You watch the Premier League, it takes the better side 3 passes to get too the half way line, sometimes it takes us 33. No thanks.
Allsop pinged balls up to the wingers against Stoke and other sides that directly led to goals though. The idea being by passing it short you invite the press and back yourself to pass through OR you create space over the top for the Delaps, Philogenes to run onto.
Half the teams like to play this way as they are in control of the ball, and can’t concede when you have it under no danger.
To me there's a difference in criticism between fullbacks getting into the final third then passing back to the keeper which I agree is incredibly painful, and keepers passing it out to CBs who pass it back to the keeper to knock it out wide or up the pitch. The latter can be incredibly effective and we did it on a number of occasions last season to great effect, but the former is the boring football people have been critical of for years with us and stems from a lack of ability/movement from our full backs and forwards to link up or better run the lines and channels.
