At this point..! I suspect he'll come good. What we don't want is that he comes good with another club. As regards Hammond and Sharp, if they had been good enough, they'd have been playing in this league. I doubt if their transfers were done as cut and dried as, you will play in League One and the Championship and no higher. I suspect their Prozone data showed that they were superfluous to requirements, which is possibly why seemingly more fringe like players, such as Butterfield, etc, were retained.
Yeah I'm sure Ramirez will improve. I guess it was asking a lot for him to come in and adapt straight away, but he looked so good in his first game against Villa it's disappointing he's probably not had a better game since! Hammond and Sharp aren't good enough, simple as that, but I consider them good signings because they did a great job for us at the level they were signed for, and I'd include Harding, Dickson and so on in that as well. If they could have stepped up, then they'd have been even better signings. The likes of Butterfield are still with us probably because no-one else wanted them!
Lets look at this in a Nigel Adkins positive manner. I feel it's more to do with how well the current team have done as opposed to the signings failing. Lets begin with De Ridder Fresh from league one and the sale of chamberlain. Puncheon was in full sulk and Jonathan Forte was not good enough. De Ridder was an improvement on Forte, but what no one bargained for was the form of Guly on the right. Our front four were sensational at the start of the season and ultimately that platform saw us promoted. Steve had some injury niggles too which did not help, but we have gone up a level of football now & like Hammond & Harding it's a step too far for SDR. Tadanari Lee let no one down when he 1st arrived and put in some energetic displays and helped gain some crucial points. He kept Sharp out the side and then he got that bad injury. The club went up a level and crucially for Lee and Sharp we changed Formation to one up top. Michael Owen has stated that players of his type. The little finisher are dying out from the top of the modern game. Teams can't afford to carry a pure finisher. Adam Le Fondre is doing well but only as a sub. Ramirez...if you can't see the quality then you probably shouldn't be offering football opinion. Injuries & whether a player can settle in a group are relatively uncontrollable. Mayuka...He has the raw materials. I think he was in to rival Puncheon and be an impact sub this season. What a season Puncheon has had so far. Rodriguez heads him in the pecking order as reserve sub so opportunities have been minimal. I don't think you can fully judge a signing until they're out the door or within a couple of years.
I think Lee has been unlucky with injuries and had not managed to get his form and fitness back. It makes sense for him to go back to Japan, get fit and some game time to then come back and get a good pre season under his belt here ready for next season. Mayuka has pace to burn and could be really good up front for us in this pressing style that we play. Ramirez has been stop start but has undoubted quality which I think we will get to see. They have moved from different continents and may not have completely settled yet, something our domestic signings obviously haven't had to go through. I still have every faith in them to perform well for us but we may have to wait till next season to get to see it on a regular basis.
Have you ever seen him pick out a player with a long pass..? It's a jaw dropper. I once saw him pick out Guly, on the edge of the opposition penalty area, and Butterworth was somewhere covering his own corner flag. His long passing and crossing is excellent. I don't think he's miles behind anyone, and he brings his own special qualities.
That's a very good point you make. I didn't know that Michael Owen said such a thing, but I think he's right, and it's clear that a team can't carry a passenger for moments in a match, these days, when all they are brilliant at is poking a toe out at the right opportunity, and nothing else. They are specialist players and therefore super-subs only. Best to have an entire team that are geared to scoring goals, for 90 minutes. To be honest, the way we're heading, we're going back to total football, in a way.
It's not just the "finisher" style of player, it's any sort of attacking player who isn't capable of performing basic defensive duties like tracking back and closing down. I'm worried that Ramirez might fall into this category. He's clearly very good at playing behind the striker and creating chances, but whenever he has to drop deep or wide, he looks a bit awkward. He's a little slow off the mark, and he's not particularly strong or aggressive.
True, though if they're Le Tissier/Berbatov talent then exceptions will be made. Part of City's failing against us was due to too many defensive passengers like Nasri. I'd disagree with Ramirez aggression, but that lack of strength does mean he commits a few fouls in his exuberance. He is still young and relatively slight. I hope these injuries push him toward the gym to bulk up a bit.
He isn't lacking effort on that side of things, but the basics of defending do seem a little, erm, foreign to him. He'll chase play, and at times surprises with his ability to win the ball, but he does often seem a step behind.
I feel the opposite about Ramirez. That is why I think he will come good. He was brought in to be a creative playmaker, but he's ended up using his relatively free-type role in a Guly-ish manner. That is instead of drifting about looking for a pass or gaps, he drifts back to where he is most useful defending or receiving a pass in transition. Come to think of it Guly was probably brought in more to be a creative guy instead of settling into his role as well. It's true he's not a good defender in the overall scheme of things, but he is a good defender for an attacking midfielder. I mean, total football is nice but you have to make some skills allowances based on position. On offense he has made a bunch of amazing passes to players who didn't see the opening he did. I think he will do much better in Pochettino's offense because he does have the energy and skills to win the ball from DM's and CB's and now he will have the ball where he wants it instead of getting it in his own half. Admittedly he still isn't firing on all cylinders yet. The problem is that there's getting to be a squeeze for playing time. Lambert has really been playing in the hole and doing a lot of the things Ramirez would do, with Rodriguez playing up top. And he's been so good at it I would hesitate to change that up. It seems as if Ramirez plays, Rodriguez won't. Or Puncheon won't but then either Ramirez or Rodriguez will have to slide over to wing.
Great thread and contributions so far. Surely the point is not the fact that the players are foreign but the fact that they played in a foreign league? Fonte was a known quantity who came down a league to join us. Also, we are comparing the overseas players with two of best bits of business ever done; Rickie for £1m and Punch for £300k! How many other British players are bought in L1 and go on to be established Premiership quality a couple of years later?Personally, I thought Lee was really looking the part before his injury. He did look like he could fail the impact sub role.
Honestly, signing Lambert and Fonte was a no-brainer. I don't know if it could have been expected that they were Premier League players but certainly every League One team would have taken them at the time. We simply had more money than other teams to afford them. And simply by having that much money, I think it was easy to sell them on the team as well because Saints were a side with vast potential and were better positioned than any League One side and probably most Championship clubs. How many other League One teams have such deep pockets? Lambert and Fonte would both know this having played in England. And the risk for them was less considering they were already playing in England anyway, they had better knowledge of the team, and they were established players who could land on their feet if it didn't work out. We were sort of the Man U of League One at the time. We had our pick of potential League One/Championship players bot not so much in foreign markets. And we used that advantage and chose well. That's a credit to the scouts but also to the ability of the various administrative people who set up a good structure for the club. I guess for me the bottom line is it is hard to criticize anything Saints have done in terms of player acquisition. We got two successive promotions and we seem to be doing okay this year and with a young team and a reasonable wage structure. Not every transfer is supposed to work out. It's an investment portfolio and overall our portfolio has worked out so I think I trust the staff to continue to invest well.
Mayuka has been bought for the future, not this season. If/when our PL status is confirmed for next season I expect he'll be given a few goes in the side. It takes new players time to settle, and Ramriez has been unlucky in his attempts to do so. Being bought at the end of the window didn't help, nor the injuries and family problems. There have been games when his quality has shown though (e.g. Villa, Newcastle). Fans are impatient and understandably so, but I suspect that with a full pre-season under his belt he will make a big impact next year.
Perhaps. He may not have been bought as an immediate first teamer but he's 22 so he doesn't really fit into the promising kid category.
Sharp certainly was. We needed a little extra to push us over the finishing line and that's what he provided. Even though I don't think he's a premier league striker, I still consider him an excellent signing. Would we have been promoted without him? Probably not. Lee may have been brought in for the same reason, but for whatever reason he didn't manage to make the same kind of impression.
I think it's worth remembering that even players such as Bergkamp and Henry took a good season to really 'get' the English league. Neither of them turned out too bad (and both had more top league experience than Gaston when they came here)
