I'm torn on Bednarek. He's shown before that he's not really cut out for pL football, but he was so consistent for us this season that I would argue he deserves another chance. Only one year left on his deal though, and the club might look to cash in if he has no intention of signing a new one.
So has Adarma, he should be given another chance. Bednarek really stepped up. We need a good 3rd choice though as he will be getting suspensions.
I disagree that Bednarek isn't good enough for the PL. He's played over 150 games there over 5 seasons. I think he struggled playing the high line under Ralph at times but still looked decent in spells. Played 34 matches when we finished 11th. Adarma on the other hand almost certainly isn't good enough and nothing I've seen this season changes my mind on that.
I think the only players currently under contract you can confidently predict will be alright in the PL is KWP, that’s it. Bednarek would be second on my list. Aribo and Adarma resurgence is completely down to playing at a far weaker level where we dominated games. We will still be relying on them next year as we can’t afford/won’t just sign 15 new players who are all better but I’m not expecting either of them to look like PL players
I don't expect AA to be good in the PL, but his change in approach (if he maintains it) might allow him to be less bad. He has always taken an alarmingly high percentage of his shots from outside the box, wasting good buildup play with highly speculative efforts and also ensuring that he rarely got the sorts of in-close chances he could finish, because his focus was on dropping off the line to receive the ball. This past year he actually played to his skillset and made run after run behind the defensive line. In his first nine seasons, he had a total of 14 shot attempts within the six-yard box, which is frankly ridiculous for a forward. His highest tally in a season was 3. This season, he had 23, which nearly doubled the second-best total in the Championship. That's an outlier, and he won't repeat it at any level, but he made a concerted effort to get behind defenses and set up opportunities that were much more difficult to miss. Granted, he still missed most of them (he only scored 3 goals from those 23 shots in close), but that focus on creating good shots rather than a lot of bad shots might allow him to be a useful squad player, rather than the complete net negative he was previous.
But a lot of this is down to the team as a whole. We got in behind and created far more this year than we will next year. Both Armstrong and Adams missed lots of chances but it wasn’t that big a deal because we created so many (they still got flack and in some peoples minds it’s their fault we didn’t go up automatically). We won’t get anywhere near the same level of chances, or quality of chances, they will be at a premium. We will have far more long shots next year just because we will struggle to break teams down with the step up in quality. If we don’t shoot from long shots then we are going to have very few shots per game, so I hope Martin isn’t telling them not to shoot from distance
Adarma will be fine in the PL. He'll work hard, make good runs, put pressure on defenders and play to RMs plan. But I just can't see him scoring 10 goals in a PL season. And that's if he's an every game starter. For me, he's a trusted rotational player who is better than last time we were in the PL. (I'd also see good business sense in giving him a new contact - he's worth a decent transfer fee for anyone with money wanting to get out of the championship)
Definitely agree that the poor finishing will hurt far more, but I don't agree that it necessarily means we'll be restricted to longer chances...better opposition will push up against us, and that will leave space behind. That will require being much less ponderous in the opposition half, though.
Agree with the working hard and being an asset in build up but also the not scoring bit. The issue then is who will score the goals, I’m sure we are looking for somebody in that department. As if we don’t find a combination of players who can score probably 30 + goals between them to add to the current squad we are really going to struggle I think. I can’t see where the goals are coming from in the current squad at all and we likely will need around 50 to stay in the division
adarmas movement and finishing was absolute quality for large parts of the season. He still has a tendency to shoot from anywhere but I think he can do a job for us in the EPL if his confidence and service remains high.
This is a tough one, from a mediocre sunderland to the premier league without having played a whole season. That’s a recipe for failure right there.
we didn’t struggle to create chances when relegated from memory, it was the not finishing of them that sent us down.
It was a combination of the two. We were 19th in expected goals, so we didn't create great chances, and we also underperformed our xG. We also badly underperformed our xGA, because our defense regularly demonstrated a level of organization generally achieved only by giving a hoard of five year olds caffeine.
