Ryan Bennett will miss Saturdays game against Brighton but is expected to resume training with the first team next week. Midfielders Wes Hoolahan & Vadis Odjidja-Ofoe are both a couple of weeks away from full training. Some good news on the injury front, these players have been missed badly, hopefully they will return very soon and with the appointment of Micky Phelan as Coach results will begin to improve
Can't wait for RBenn back tbh. I'm quite possibly over-egging him but I can't help feeling that we would be a lot better off with him and Turner at the back
But both Hooiveld and Cuellar are more experienced than R Bennett, yet we've persisted (until last match) in playing a RB at CB when week after week, it clearly has flaws and has cost us goals / points. <temptedtouseslapheadbutrestrainedmyself>
A scottish friend of mine says that he he can't believe Martin is a RB. He reckon that he is a brilliant centre half for Scotland. Could it be a case of the captaincy being too much for him? Look at what happened to Bassong last year. Also, if I remember rightly, didn't Lambert play Russ at centre half a few times, and he looked very comfortable there?
He did, and it was he who recommended Martin to Scotland as a CB. IMO this has advantages and disadvantages regarding mobility vs height, etc., but is in no way as clear cut as some people make out.
If RM had a decent right back alongside him, I think he would be much less of a liability at centre back . As it is, too frequently he gets pulled out and away from Turner (or too tight) and that gets exploited. The weak link for me is Whittaker, whose lack of pace and early positioning disrupts the others far too often. That hasn't helped Olsson either. It's one of the messes I hope Phelan quickly fixes. Then he can solve the eternal riddle of how and when to play Hoolahan.
Let's face it, Russ is a full back who is asked to play right centre back. This means Turner, an experienced RCB is played out of position at LCB so that the back line is unbalanced. Sorry, why buy two LCB's and ignore them.
I know a lot of people have felt like you do about Martin at CB and it's difficult to disagree given that the partnership simply hasn't worked. However, the one thing I do understand is what they are trying to achieve. Received wisdom for a modern CB combo just isn't two experienced giants any more - Cuellar and Turner together did ok, but their pace left us vulnerable. The expectation now is that you have a fast CB and a dominant-in-the-air CB. That provides us with the best of both worlds and is a really balanced unit. I think that's why we persisted with Martin for so long as he is closer to that ideal than using any combo of Hooiveld, Turner and Cuellar (though I think Hooiveld would have been used more if it wasn't for his fitness). So I think that even though Bennett isn't as experienced, the combo of him and Turner (or him and Cuellar or Hooiveld) is far stronger because it has balance. What really disappoints me is that it is clear Miquel isn't ready yet so why didn't we get another Bennett-style CB instead? I appreciate that was what Hooiveld was intended for, but he's more of a half-way house and has ended up injured too.
Goldeneadie makes a good point too. We need a left-sided CB on the pitch. I'm not a huge fan of the latest opinion that Whittaker is a dreadful FB. He's ok. Average. He's not dreadful. Martin is better, yes. But Whittaker is decent enough when we have a proper CB pairing to cover him. The problem is simply having both Whittaker and Martin on that right-hand-side where they don't communicate properly
