Great start for him though. Both ends of the pitch, huge header clearance in the last 10 and a few great deliveries
I dont disagree. As it stands, its his shirt to lose. They will just have to battle it out for the starting spot. For us, its a good problem to have and as others have said, he is versatile so will maybe get an opportunity at RB.
He can cross the ball well; we occasionally saw that last season but he got far more crossing opportunities in this game than he's generally got previously. For me though, the biggest improvement was his defending. That's what let him down big time last season both for us and Middlesbrough but yesterday he looked quite assured and seemed to be much more positionally aware. I wonder if having Ndala on the left side helped? He also took up good defensive positions. It would be a bonus if those 2 can form a really good partnership and nail down the left hand side.
If we go back down, and I am not going to pretend it is not highly likely, then the board will blame Farke, who will be out on his ear come the new year. It will then all depend on the new coach and how he see's Gelhardt. Bielsa spotted something in him, sadly Bielsa also destroyed his progress due to wanting small squad numbers. He wasn't picked for the U21's as we didn't want him injured and he sat most games out as an unused sub, he became a "just in case player" and his progress went back a step
I'm never sure how things went, did he treat the club badly or were we obliged to buy a player we didn't want? Nobody is going to perform well knowing their employer doesn't want them
I reckon 'unofficially' in the background if our embargo is suspended or reduced to one window, we'll be signing him on a permanent and in principle it's sorted.
Hopefully this is the case, the lad deserves to be settled at a club who want him and will give him game time so he can develop
Sorry I didn't mean us as I was replying to the post that said Boro' are interested in him. I know we cant
Its Macca I feel sorry for. Our best left back and we ship him out and bank the cash. Madness selling him like that.
We had enough injuries in midfield last season to know it could happen to the defence to, last season we never had Gilo and we played Macca there if he got injured we had Jacob, at least this time we have fully capable replacement if one gets injured.
Thought Ndala did see. lot of of the ball and as a result he did not do a lot. He was not hugging the line and probably told to take up a more defensive role and let Giles do the running down the line?
They were trying to keep a compact midfield to limit Cov offensively. And by and large it worked very well.
Which isn't really the point. If ANY club wanted him, or any loan player, on a perm could they buy them and null the loan? I don't know.
We've seen Tom Cannon recalled from loan at Stoke to be sold to Sheff Utd last January haven't we? So the answer is yes.