I don't think a loan is. If we change to a back 4 which looks likely his minutes will be extremely limited.
There will come a time when Stephens and THB will be injured/suspended at the same time. A CB partnership of Wood and Quarshie is just suicidal. I realise others still rate Quarshie, but for me he doesn't even look close to ready.
Mads can cover at CB if required. It will be better for Ronnie's development if he plays week in, week out.
I guess it depends on how crazy the offer we get for him is. Every player has a price Buy back talk is nonsense. We don’t have that kind of clout. That is for clubs like city and Liverpool with their young players who come through the academy but are sold to smaller teams. Glorified loans. That won’t be the case here Note he was also sent out on loan last year. So might be questionable scouting if we got him and decided once seeing him in training that he wasn’t good enough. But I don’t think he was signed as PL ready so it’s a confusing one
Not sure about that. Playing time is always helpful but he's already played close to 150 league games in his career - including over 50 in the Championship - so he's not lacking experience.
I know Stephens is captain and has been our best CB so far, but he should really be getting phased out over the course of the season imo, as we know he isn’t good enough in the PL. Edwards really hasn’t been that bad in the limited time he’s played, a few costly mistakes but also whilst playing alongside new players and in a system that I don’t think suits him. Want to see a lot more of him in a Saints shirt before we write him off.
My issue with moving Edwards on for the season is that he can double as DM cover and we are still potentially quite light there.
So, do we think it’s Scienza and we are then done for incomings, as no more links etc? Also, outgoings are a bit quiet, no Aribo, Edozie or Smallbone links yet today? Just over 4 hours to go.
I am surprised by the lack of noise around those 3, although with Wrexham signing Sheaf from Cov that explains Smallbone. I expected Aribo and Edozie to both go and possibly a last minute loan too signing from a PL club too.
It's worth pointing out the transfer window for countries like Turkey stays open for longer so he may well move on after today.
Taylor’s move to West Brom and Brees move to Charlton are disappointingly both loans. So being in the last year of their contracts it’ll just be clearing the decks and not having their wages before losing them on frees next summer. Not the end of the world, but surprised we couldn’t sell for a £1m or so. Or maybe it’s so we can recall them because whilst Wellington is out injured we’ll have just 3 full backs.
We can phase Stephens out of the team...if we actually get promoted. People get way too ahead of themselves instead of looking at the here and now.
I haven’t seen enough of Edwards to have an honest opinion about his qualities going forward but in the first game of the season Wrexham targeted him and stationed Moore on his shoulder, exploiting the physical advantage that Moore had. It was only one game but it will have been noted by other teams that Edwards can be bullied/pressured into playing badly, and he was bad in the first half of the game. It might have been a one off for Edwards, but he seems to be at least number 4, if not number 5 in the pecking order of CBs.
We have three full backs on each side (and currently also Edwards and Jack that can play there in an outright emergency). RB - Roerslev, Jelert, Fraser LB - Manning, Welington, Jelert
