Sorry to bring pessimism to the party, but I'm looking for someone to convince me on this deal. Sako for £4-5m is a waste of money. We would be spending the majority of our budget on a position we don't need to fill. Kaca and Dejagah should be starting and have Duff and Frei/Richardson as back ups. Redmond is younger and would cost less, so why are we spending big on Sako, a League 1 player?
Not sure why people are saying Sako will compete on the left wing, he's more of an Attacking Midfield to take the place of Emanuelson I would presume.
Yes, there's no reason to say he can't play in central midfield. He looks handy in the middle going by the video Silky posted.
Quote from Kenny Jackett: "It doesn't surprise me. There's not that many gifted left-sided players around and he had a very good season" Of course he could do a Dembele but I don't see it and if he is Kaca's replacement them I'm going to weep.
Yeah, I'm finding it a little bit hard to be positive about the Sako deal. I don't see him as any better than Kaca, when we need to be spending money on a central midfielder.
Sako is 3 years younger than Richardson though? I wouldn't be that happy with Kaca and Dejegah as starters- I'd rather see Duff on the right and Ruiz on the left. I'll reserve final judgement on Dejegah until I've seen more of him this season, but I wasn't particularly impressed in the one past. He did improve, and he lost weight, but I think a lot of credit for work on the right goes to Reither. Watching Dejegah at CC wasn't always pleasant- he has one particular skill, where he tries to turn away from the defender- that he employs far to frequently and even at times when its taking him away from his teammates. I found him to be one of the most infuriating players. His performance against Blackpool was shocking. It might be that he still wasn't match fit before the injury and will prove me wrong. Kaca should get more game time but he's not at the level of being a starter- I'd prefer to see him come on with 30 mins to go. I think Richardson will get more action at LB than on the wing and will be back up to whoever we bring in- unless Jol decides to give him a run.
Could be that Jol has in mind to play Kaca in the centre up front?? Young Alex did say in the bit about him posted by the Club: âThere have been times when Iâve got into good positions during games, so the aim for next season is to improve on those four goals. I think itâs an area where I can contribute; I want to make more of a difference.â Here is a link to the article (which admittedly focuses on him being a winger): http://www.fulhamfc.com/news/2013/july/02/alex-out-to-impress
Meant to say Redmond, been fixed. How can you not want either Dejagah or Kaca in the first team? Both were miles better than Duff and Ruiz (who can't play on the wing) this season!
I've always thought Ruiz looked best there - he gets that extra bit more time and can shift the ball away from the defender to his stronger foot - in the middle he gets crowded and turns into the opposition. I just don't see Kaca as a starter - he needs to continue developing his game - he can be a bit one dimensional
A couple of points that have been made many times before: 1. Duff, for the last two or three years, has started the season in excellent form, arguably our best player, but doesn't sustain that level of performance through a whole season. Ideally he will have runs in the team until he starts to run out of steam, then be dropped to the bench for several games. Fortunately, it looks like we have a good enough pool of wingers now for this to work. 2. My mate the Wolves fan said that he thought Sako was an attacking central midfielder as well as a winger. He doesn't get to a lot of matches (my mate, not Sako), but he has more knowledge of Wolves than any of us. In summary, if we're signing Sako as a replacement for Kaca, that's a shame. If we're signing him to play more in the centre, he could be a very good signing. I disagree that Ruiz looks best on the wing too. I think his best position is behind the main striker in the centre, but only if the two midfielders behind him are on top of their game. For most of last season that wasn't the case. When we played Norwich last August, with Diarra and Dembele as the centre mids, Ruiz was as good as anyone on the pitch (and he had plenty of competition that day, as I recall).
Apparently we have made a £1.5million bid to bring Dinamo Bucharest striker Marius Alexe to the club. The 23 year-old scored 15 goals last season and has one year left on his contract. He apparently is extremely quick and can also play behind the striker and on the left wing.
You can read a lot into that though. He didn't say "left-sided winger", you could say he just meant he's left-footed. You could even argue from that that he's a left-back! In any case, he's not signed yet and we certainly haven't seen him play in our side. I very much doubt Martin has looked at our team, with it's dearth of central midfielders and thought "you know what, we could do with another winger". And I agree, if he's coming in as another winger to replace one of our own it's not good news, but it doesn't mean to say we won't be signing any more CMs.
I think he can play that AM reasonably well- but if the striker ahead of him is Berbatov then it I don't think it works. One problem with Ruiz in the middle is that he is prone to losing the ball as much as he is to producing something special. I think a player like that is better on the wing, where they can lose possession without the same threat of a counter attack. If your AM is losing it then it forces the CM's forward which either leaves a gap between CM and CD or forces the defenders to step up and leave space behind. If a winger loses it there is still potentially a 2 on 1 situation but the advancing player still has to get inside and to a shooting position. Berbatov can get himself into no:9 positions, and scored a few from them last season- but he tends to drop deep, particularly if he isn't getting possession. If we could bring in a poacher style striker then I would rather we put Berba in the Ruiz position and gave him a free licence. The biggest issue with Berba and Ruiz as 9/10 is when we don't have the ball. Ruiz can't tackle, or doesn't want to. There has been the odd occasion where he has won it but generally he doesn't look interested. Berba is either lazy or making a conscious decision to conserve energy- he does put pressure on occasionally, but generally he drops off.
I sort of agree with your analysis of the Berba/Ruiz combination, but the key sentence for me is that Berbatov 'tends to drop deep, particularly if he isn't getting possession'. When our midfield was working well last season, Berba and Ruiz looked great; when it went missing our problems up front started. I can see Berba working as the main striker, and I can see him playing in the Ruiz role with an out and out finisher ahead of him (Charlie Austin? I'm still hoping). But if that happens, I'm not sure Ruiz holds down a place on the wings ahead of all the other options we've got there. I think Ruiz behind Berba with two from Kaca, Duff, Dejagah, Frei is our most potent combination as long as the centre of midfield is firing on all cylinders.
Captain . i agree with your choice in Charlie Austin,but woul be happy to see us splash some cash on Jorden Rhodes but no more than 7/8mil.
And I'd love us to sign Rhodes, but Birmingham will never won't sell him for that price right now. They paid £8m for him last summer when he was unproven beyond League One. Since then he's proved himself in the Championship. The only way they will sell at anything other than a profit is if his contract starts running down and they're afraid of losing him for nothing. I don't know how long his contract is, but if we wanted to pay that kind of money for him the time to do it was when he was at Huddersfield. Burnley value Austin at £7m, apparently, but his contract situation isn't quite so strong, so we might - might - get him for a bit less. I think they've already turned down a bid of £4m or £5m though.
Dan Burn has gone on a season long loan to Birmingham and has signed an extension with Fulham to 2015, which is excellent news. I think someone here said that means we might get Nathan Redmond? I can't remember the logic for that one but he would be handy to have around. EDIT: didn't see C58 had already posted about Dan in the loans thread, but I can't find anything about us getting Redmond in return so it might just be me having a moment again :/
In many ways it's a shame that Blackburn didn't slip down a league last season as we probably could have picked Rhodes up for a reasonable price. As it is, he'll go for big money at some stage but, sadly, not to us I'm sure.
