Cooper may have been distanced - but we needed this signing. I think Cooper has promise, but he and Chester as a pairing simply aren't big enough and it showed late last season. Chester is superb, but he's best off with a big, strong fella next to him. Faye is one of the most physically imposing centre-halves I've seen in recent years - a complete beast. The problem is he may not be fit week in week out - let's hope that he stays fit between now and Hobbs's return. What happens after that is hard to predict, but at least then he could get injuries without the team suffering too much.
I don't recall his lack of stamina ever being evident though, wasn't it just City fans saying because he was old he must be unfit? He only made two starts and yes he got subbed off in both but I'm not sure he was any less fit than say Windass in 2007/8.
I think you flatter him a bit. He scored a decent goal at North Ferriby and he had a good first half against West Ham(before we got raped in the second), but other than that I though he was fairly cack.
But isn't that most of his career for us? The only other game he started was Blackpool in which he did OK and got decent reviews, apart from that he made a few sub appearances against Forest, Watford and Barnsley and on all 3 occasions it led to us scoring after the sub. So when was he cack?
Personally, I thought he was fairly cack against Blackpool, also Ipswich, Leeds, Palace, Watford, Forest, Barnsley, Burnley and Southampton. From memory...
We only played Burnley and Southampton under Barmby and he never picked Adebola so at least some of that is made-up! Also in the Forest, Barnsley and Watford games we ended up scoring and they led to him getting a start against West Ham (which was actually the end for him because it was NPs last game. If NP had stayed he might have had a run after that decent half) But they're all just sub appearances anyway so we can hardly say he had a real chance and let us down. It's all pointless anyway, he's gone, we've got better players now and I detect that neither of us care that much.
Do you mean Southampton at home or away? Because against Southampton at home our front line didn't look very good at all to my recollection!
I believe the West Ham game was the one where I thought he started off well, but then with about 10 or 15 minutes of the first half still to go you could see him struggling. It may not have been West Ham, but it will have been a Saturday home game because that's all I was able to make it to last season.
Who says Zayatte was ****? I thought he was good, yeah he had his headless chicken moments but he saved us on more than 1 occasion!
Probably more to do with his permanent signing happening at the same time as Brown lost the confidence he needed to play 2 strikers with Geo behind them and started playing one up and Geo on the left wing. We were inviting the opposition to attack us for the entire game every week so it's no wonder the defenders started making more mistakes.
IMO, the decline of ZAYETTE started after Turner was given away. IF Slumberland complete the signings of Aston Villa defenders Stephen Warnock and James Collins could that spell the end for a certain Mr T. ?? twt as always.
I agree with this. As a partnership with Turner I thuoght they were great but alongside Gardner they were crap (though it was mostly Gardner's fault).
In the year-and-a-half I've been on this board, I've always stuck up for Cooper where necessary. However, after a decent debut for Carlisle last season he came back having fallen out of their first-XI, before the same happened at Huddersfield. He'll soon be 21, and time is running out for him at City IMO. Whenever I've seen him play in the last 3 years, he's been pretty poor, which is a real shame given how impressed I was with him against Arsenal when he played against them in the Premier League. He's slow and one-footed, and always looks nervous too.
I disagree, i thought Cooper did well when he had to fill in after Hobbs' injury & next to Chester last season.
Yeah, I didn't actually see too much difference between the two of them (there was one, but it wasn't extreme). I think the partnership struggled from the lack of height they both had, and since Chester had been good alongside Hobbs it made it seem like it was down to Cooper being a poorer player than he is. Had it been Chester injured and Hobbs who was playing alongside Cooper I think we'd have been a good few points better off than we were come the end of the season, despite Chester being our best CB.
