I so want Ramirez to become good but he won't (with us). He doesn't fit our style of play and makes our side unbalanced. I did a thread before the season started asking who people will think our surprise star will be, and Ramirez was voted as a clear number one, which surprised me as he had/has a lot of competition at CM, as well as buying Osvaldo and playing two strikers up top with no AM. Lallana has also upped his game a lot this season so there's no room for him on the wing either, and Rodriguez showed more consistency last season than Ramirez did. He is not a waste of money, however, as I'm sure we can find someone stupid enough to spend £15-20m on him! Liverpool/Arsenal?
TBH I think we will struggle to make our money back. Arsenal aren't going to buy any more midfielders and Liverpool were hesitant before we bought him. I think he'll go back to Italy for £7 - 8m. That would be a good deal at the moment because he 'seems' to be getting further away from the first team each week. He was fighting for a place with Adam / Jay and coming on as sub. Then he was an unused sub and now even though Poch says he is fit and not injured Guly is ahead of him. We will have some failures with the deals we make. All clubs have some. Just look how many Man U have made whilst still dominating the league!!! As for squad players, yes we need some depth but should it be a £40k a week option on the bench? or a talented youngster or a decent back up player? We don't need 2 teams unless we are in europe.
Ramirez has special abilities but also special needs, he isn't a work horse who can come on and do a job for the team ala ward-prowse sunday. His game of creating chances for others requires a lot of competitive matches to fine tune. We saw on sunday even rickie who has played every game and is an excellent passer got his timing of 2 through balls a bit wrong and so the runner was offside. Anyone could see last season that Ramirez has a touch of genius but he needs to know what his team mates are doing and they need to understand his game as well. This would require him starting several games in a row but I doubt poch values Ramirez's ability enough to run the risk of playing him. Because he isn't going to play anywhere near his best without consistent games, if I was Ramirez I would be very keen to leave and get regular football with a possible world cup coming up. It will be our loss no doubt about it as he hes brilliant and exactly what we need to play better football.
There is no way in a million years anyone is spending anywhere near 15-20m on him. On what basis has he gone up in price? Ramirez has played more than enough as it is. 20 starts last season. Bringing up two incidents from Sunday's game isn't relevant. Lambert mistiming a pass in any match is nothing to do with playing games. In an isolated incident like that whether you complete a pass or not is to do with vision to see a pass and the execution of it. Before you hit a pass you look at the runners and options available. What you want to be able to do is see the best pass to play at a given moment, the correct shape of pass to play and then execute it. The movement and positioning of the attackers and defenders at a given moment dictates this. The last sentence you've written takes the cake. Some people rally do have an unhealthy love affair with Ramirez.
In my opinion, Rodriguez and Ramirez don't work well together. Rodriguez is a bad timer of runs. He doesn't need to cut it so close with his speed, but he always tries to time it perfectly and gets caught offside. Rodriguez is also not a very instinctive passer, nor is he good at finding space other than trying constantly to get behind defenders. He's improving, but still needs work. Ramirez on the other hand, at some point has to realize that other players are not always going to be on the same wavelength and be ready for that perfect throughball. I wouldn't say Ramirez is selfish necessarily, but he tries to do too much. You have to trust that sometimes the other player can take on and beat a defender on their own off the dribble if you give them a plain old boring pass that they have time to control. In Ramirez's first few games I would have said that he was doing the right thing by being creative and it was up to the other Saints to adjust and see the opportunities Ramirez was presenting them both with his runs and passing. And also that he was taking unfair criticism because the midfield at that point was somewhat disorganized and Ramirez was coming back to support which hurt his offense and he was being called lazy to boot. But it's been awhile since we have lost the midfield battle other than the occasional off game. Ramirez never seemed to find the groove after getting hurt last winter. Still feel like Ramirez, Lallana, Rodriguez, Davis are all pretty decent players with different strengths and flaws and the trick is more in finding the right mix or who can eventually up their game. I'm putting my money (and I think MP is too) on Prowse being the one who will emerge from the pack. But it's all conjecture. None of them are really that bad, or that good that there's an obvious solution as to who should play and who isn't going to cut it. Just let Pochettino figure it out, he's doing a good job so far.
I'd still like to see if Ramirez can link up with Osvaldo. Mind you, I think we might see a big push for Banega in January.
I'm not writing Gaston off yet but the clock is ticking. If we go in for Banega in Jan he could be sold in the summer.
Banega was really awful against Swansea. Only time I saw him play so far this season, though he's supposedly had some good games. People need to get used to the idea that Saints might be here to stay. If we finish top eight this season there will be all sorts of targets who will be interested, so no need to hang all your hopes on Banega. Could very well get someone even better. In fact, we could likely get 3-4 players better than what we've been doing that fairly consistently. The front four players next season might all be transfers!
Yes absolutely. Pisses me off when people dismiss him as being absolute crap because he's obviously not, he's just been underwhelming. Not looked £12m, sure, but obviously he's not crap.
