Am I alone in worrying that whilst it appears that CH has purchased two decent additions to the defence we could line up on Saturday with a back four of whom two have never played with each other or the team and if Bennett is dropped rather than Turner possibly three who have next to no experience playing together. If this is the case I reckon we'll need to score a few to get any sort of result as one of the key things about defence is organisation and knowing how to play as a unit. Balanced against which whatever happens it is unlikely to be as bad as last week and frankly the incumbents could do with a kick up the backside after their lacklustre display. I know that Lambert was unusual in getting his targets in nice and early but surely it makes more sense to get your personnel in place for pre-season otherwise what is the point of the warm-up games? I would love us to grind out a 1-0 win just to give the defence a bit of a boost although obviously levelling out our current goal difference deficit would be much more fun.
I suspect we will concede at least once - as you say, defensive unit not yet used to playing together. However, I think we can score a couple, so I'm going for a 2-1 win.
Thing is Bassong could have been a target all summer but AVB was installed as manager quite late and similar to CH with ourselves had to familiarise himself with his new players and who he wanted to keep/sell. Garrido is a loan signing and I don't know much about Lazio/Serie A but I will assume Lazio were unsure if Garrido would be requird this season. Sometimes it's just not possible to get players in early even if you want to.
Bassong said on TalkSport the other day it's been about 3 weeks in the making. You cant do al transfers quickly, especially in this league. It's a sad fact.
Mind you its going to be even more of an unfamiler line up for QPR as they seem to be signing 11 new players every week? And as for building confidence.... your new keeper makes one howler and suddenly your publicly going after two more!!!! How shakey will Greeno be?
I think we'll only see Tierney dropped- he was the stand out poor performer, although competition was fierce... Garrido has presumably had more time to train with the squad. Turner had a shocker, but looked great for the first half or so, it was only when his head went down after the unlucky deflection that it all went wrong for him
We need a good show against Koo Pee Arr for the team and the supporters and come away with a point minimum. We took all 6 off these last year and need to keep them where they are, at the bottom!
interesting. shows it wasn't a panic buy. as you say, these things take time and even deals we are hearing about today will have been weeks in the planning, even if approaches only happen more recently
As if you'd know. Seriously, how can a player reaching his physical peak as a central defender (age 28) suddenly be no longer good enough as a premier league footballer despite playing solidly in the premier league for several seasons. Deary, deary me!
