How long should Ron get to turn things around?

You well over stepped the mark there and I find that incredibly offensive.

Think you should apologise and gracefully move away from this one, after all restoring to that type of abuse just suggests you don't have anything further or constructive to say.

 

That doesn't make any sense. You want two DM's, but you're complaining about us having five defenders on the pitch. Two proper DM's is SIX defenders on the pitch, no? Then you say that Ramirez had a bad season at Hull last year because Hull was too defensive. But our formation would be "defensive" to you as well.

You can't just divide up the team into attackers and defenders where all you care about from attackers is goals created, and all you care about from defenders is safe passes and lots of tackles. Someone has to be able to link up the lines.

We were spoiled with Schneiderlin. Because he was fairly strong and decent in the air for a midfielder and a great tackler, while at the same time he had some playmaking skills and was a solid passer and dribbler. And fast enough to cover a lot of pitch. In effect he was able to fill the role of a DM AND a linkup midfielder. There are not too many players like that out there. And the few who can do it won't play for us.When we had Schneiderlin, I think you could make a better argument for Ramirez. Because we had someone to do the linkup work, and-- if Ramirez gave it away-- could also defend on the subsequent counter.

But now, I think our defense is looking very shaky. And so the first priority should be to shore that up. Which means I'm not averse to Wanyama and Remeu/Reed. But then you can't play Ramirez. I think you have to use Davis or Clasie in the attacking midfield position. Otherwise, you are just passing the ball to Ramirez against a wall of defenders and he coughs it up and it just comes right back to you.

Pelle is actually playing the role that Ramirez would play, albeit in a different way. But basically you would use them as target men, and everyone would make their runs off them.

 

In the game I complained about the five defenders we played the two DM's (Wanyama , Romeu) and Davis. By your logic that would mean 7 defenders vs 6. I'm also axing Davis for Ramirez. Davis can arguably be called 1/2 a defender anyway, considering how little end product he has and how people bang on about his work rate. I could easily call it 7 1/2 vs 6 then.

You really do amaze me actually. You're contradicting yourself....

 

I'm just pointing out your own contradictions.

You want TWO "pure" DM's who just tackle and play safe passes. You then want Ramirez who you like because he scores and creates goals, BUT ALSO GIVES THE BALL AWAY FREQUENTLY. And you state the reason why Ramirez was ineffective at Hull was because Hull played too defensively.

So how is the ball supposed to get from one end of the pitch to the other? When Ramirez played at Bologna, they were using him as a trequartista. That's one of the major reasons he hasn't been able to fit in, particularly when Pochettino was here. He wasn't able to drift about near the strikers, he had to come way back to receive the ball. And cover people. Covering people is the opposite of drifting into space.

You are not looking at the thing that Davis does really well, and that Ramirez is really bad at, just because it doesn't lead directly to a goal being created. You are trying to cite all these statistics from Squawka and WhoScored as if somehow those stats prove Ramirez is better... when in fact both sites rate Davis as the superior, albeit different, player.

 

I'll throw another one in there, many people that I know feel that Gaston is not suited to the fast paced, physical game in England and very often gets knocked off of the ball or doesn't retain possession enough.

 

I agree. I think the Gaston issue is a bit of a red herring and just a personal agenda.
Replace Steven Davis our consistently hardest working player with Gaston in a team that has just got overpowered physically by Palace and Spurs? That would seem like a bad idea to me. Apparently Gaston will be ballet dancing round the likes of Dembele and smacking the ball in the net ... yeh right !!!

 

Be careful Vin, if you "prove" a contradiction, he'll not respond, not admit and then just "ignore" you. Don't do what I did though and keep pushing him on as I made a bit of an arse of myself doing that. I just go lt really rattled.

 

That's a bit harsh. I mean I know Vin comes out with rubbish at times but still...

 

I've already noticed that where I proved that he'd artlessly manipulated his stats to make Tadic look worse, his response was to ignore the post, so I've given up on him for now. He knows he's in the wrong (at the very least on that post) but I'm sure there'll never be an admission of guilt.

Vin

 

You bugger - beat me to my correction!!

 

I couldn't let such a great typo pass.

 

I think you can replace Davis with Ramirez as a second half sub in situations where you need a goal and the other team has semi-parked the bus. That's when you need that bit of magic that Ramirez can provide. And if you can't retain possession no big deal, because the other team is pinned backed and will just boot it back to you anyway. And besides getting the goal is more important than not giving up the goal.

It would also be interesting to try Ramirez out on a wing and see how he adapts. You could put him on the right and Mane on the left, because Tadic is not good at cutting inside and therefore just kind of ends up going out wide by the byline and drifting in weak crosses when played on the right. And Tadic is somewhat plagued by inconsistency or at least seems to need a game or two break from time to time.

The reason I often defend Ramirez is because I think he is miscast. He's really an attacking player, more-or-less a striker. So you don't worry too much about his ball retention abilities. He should be getting the ball deep in enemy territory so they have a long way to go to counter. And he's trying to create, which means he has to try and thread the ball through CB's or take some long-range shots.

And if you judge him that way, then you can look at the stats you can see he's nowhere near as incompetent as some people make out. He stacks up fairly okay against Long, Mane, Tadic, Pelle. But you can also see the problem as well... he's not definitively better than those guys either so it's hard to make a compelling case for playing him.

However, considering that we are having problems scoring and the team isn't doing well it's worth a shot to get him some playing time just to switch things up and see if he MIGHT not be better than our other options, because he hasn't really had much of a chance. But that's about a strong a case as I can make. And it's as a substitute/replacement for one of the attacking three, NOT as a midfielder.

The idea that we can take out Davis/JWP out and replace them with Ramirez and end up with more goals based on "chances created" is ignoring the reality of the team game is kinda like saying hey, let's just put 12 strikers in and score 5 goals a game because our whole team is awesome at scoring goals. But you would actually probably score 0 goals a game that way.

Someone has to get the ball across the midfield line. Ramirez is not that guy. If you can find someone else to be that guy, then maybe you play Ramirez. But right now the most likely candidate is Clasie and Tintin is already complaining about Clasie and the need for a more defensive midfield. MAYBE it could be Romeu or Reed. But until we know they can do it, I think you have to stick with Davis/JWP from that AMC-ish position. We can play Romeu/Reed and IF they prove capable, THEN you can consider using a pure attacking trequartista/#10/second striker type of dude.

 

Having a better passer like Clasie in a deeper-lying position might actually improve our defensive midfield, as it'd allow Wanyama to play more of a holding role...increasingly, he has had to get further forward simply because we have been so poor in building possession through the middle, and that leaves us exposed at the back.

 

I can see where this debate is going......trouble is while Ramirez is a good player he hasn't had too much game time with RK's system and especially with our current squad. It does take a while for players to bed in, time in my view we do not have.
So while I like Ramirez as a player I am not convinced he is what we need right now.

 

We're going to have nothing to talk about when Gaston leaves. I wonder how many pages have been written about him.

 

Yeah, but what we have now isn't working. The longer we play like this, the lower we sink. The lower we sink, the less time we have. So then you're stuck in a vicious circle where the worse the team is, the less you swap out the players who are causing the team to stink in the first place.

I'm not arguing that we need to play Ramirez specifically. But I think Koeman has to (and will) make 2-3 subs for next game. The players are physically and/or mentally tired, or they need an attitude adjustment. And while I don't think the team's tactics are as deficient as some are making out, they aren't exactly working gangbusters either, so if we have to change the way we play a little bit that might be a breath of fresh air for everyone.

 

Why are we suddenly talking about Ramirez? I thought we accepted he was off soon? Or is he about to come good...

 

Because statistically someone has shown he's got a better end product....

 

Because apparently everyone who is playing is bad. And everyone who isn't playing is much better. Until such time as those who aren't playing get their chance and we lose. In which case they will be then be bad because they played, and the same players who are bad now will be good because now they are the ones not playing.

Not playing=good player. It's pretty simple logic. Anyone can figure it out except Koeman, which is why he is not a good manager.