A commanding centre back like say Clint Hill? A natural right back like say Luke Young? I agree that we could do with getting one defender in to shore things up but Mark Hughes is missing a trick if he thinks he'll get much better out there willing to come to us, than Luke Young. He was our best Summer/Autumn signing for God's sake! Onuoha could be a decent centre -back too.
I mean commanding as in 'Sh*thouse wall' aka Samba who you can build a tight defence around. For all Hill's sterling efforts last season you always get the feeling we can be got at by clever midfielders/forwards. Young was our best player up till his injury, but he never got back to anywhere near that when he returned and MH clearly doesn't rate him. He was being skinned regularly in his last few appearances. I'd love to see our spine consist of Green, Samba, Diakite and Cisse...
I see what you mean alright mate. When you put it like that, I find it hard to disagree! I'll bow to your judgement on this one because you're totally correct that every good team has a strong spine up through the middle. Samba would be a top signing.
Light blue touch paper....... I'm not suggesting for one moment that the goals against column was entirely down to the keeper & defenders, but, you can't deny that the sole purpose of defenders is to defend! Personally, I've never been a fan of Anton Ferdinand, but I accept he can't do it all on his own. Who did he have along side him, Hall, Gabbidon, enough said! All good teams defend from the front, we didn't do that well enough. The additions of Diakite and Park will without a doubt improve the situation. We still need a decent centre back in my opinion. As for for having Hulse and Bothroyd up front, god help us!
I'm sorry mate, I went OTT there. You're right about Ferdinand not being great (although poor auld Gabbidon was actually better than I expected). Of course, if we want to progress up the table we have to strengthen the defence. Yourself and Sooper (and God help us ) COL are taking sense here, no doubt. The one thing I would say is that out of the four areas of GK, DF, MF and F last season, our defence was the best IMO!
Have to agree with most of the other posts A strong central defender would be the icing on the cake for us Samba to sign as captain would be perfect
New CB would be good but there are others out there besides Samba. He's a good player, but I'm not keen on a player who will effectively have walked out of 2 clubs in a few months. His 'strike' at Blackburn was a disgrace. Not captain material, unless your role model is Barton. We have Hill, Onuoha, Ferdinand and Nelsen, who is a very good player, at CB. We need a FB more, we only have Fabio, Traore and, er, Dyer for 2 positions. Last season showed Onuoha is not comfortable there, offers little going forward which is critical in the premiership. Hill is not good enough at FB to play there, but has the right stuff for CB.
We have just signed Ryan Nelson And if there is a tougher cb in the premiership then please enlighten me He will do good for us ... Just watch and learn ... This talk of Samba is still just talk Young may have other reasons he has not travelled
hum......two people on this thread have me utterly confused when they say "sell Rob Hulse". FFS, who in their right mind who make an offer for him....surely we pay someone to take him off our hands? Doesn't that make more sense?
