The most depressing week for ages and not helped by the sight of Junior Firpo, Weston McKennie and Louis Sinisterra watching tennis in Monte Carlo instead of being coached into not bottling it. The arrogance of Jesse Marsch who turned Southampton down because he was only offered a 6 month contract and now gets offered a long term job at Leicester but bottles out. Yes he bottled out because after watching their last game he decided the players were the wrong sort of players for him. Dean Smith and John Terry at Leicester cheered me up a bit though and when Lampard lost his first game back at Chelsea even better. Then watching Madrid batter them on Wednesday night shows Lampard has still got that touch of uselessness about him and as we say in the States Lampard is now 2 for O. After last weeks dire performance what are the odds now on Gracia keeping his job at the end of the season? Personally I’m having problems with some of the team selections now. Yes we all have our own thoughts on this but cannot get my head around Ayling’s selection as he has cost us 4 or 5 goals over the last few games. Kristensen is a better defender. Rodrigo should be well ahead of Bamford? Also not getting why our player of the season isn’t getting a sniff? Gnonto. I had hoped that Andoni Iraola was going to be our head coach but as he refused to force the issue we were left embarrassed and ended up with Javi Gracia. On the whole Javi has done well tactically and in reality only had one bad half of football. Problems with his selection but…. Marcelo Gallardo is a world class coach and he refused to come until the summer, but now looks like Chelsea are chasing him for the summer too as well as Nagelsman. Lampard will be sacked in June. Lets hope we stay up and lets hope we keep our better players and offload those who don’t deserve to stay. My squad would be: New keeper Klaessen New RB Drameh Koch Wober Cresswell New CB Firpo New LB Adams McKennie New DM New midfielder Harrison Sinisterra Aaronson Gnonto Rodrigo Georginio New CF Perkins Gyabi Summerville.
Players to sell and will bring in a few quid: Cooper Ayling Struijk Llorente Roca Kristensen Gelhardt Bate Hjelde Meslier Roberts James Players to release and get off the books: Poveda Shackelton McCalmont
If the club want him they need to talk to him or start negotiating with clubs who want to buy him. If they do nothing he walks on a free next summer and can agree a free transfer with whoever in January
I agree with a lot of that but i'd keep Hjelde, I think he's looked a more rounded player than Drameh. Drameh looks great going forward but has struggled in 1v1s against championship players. I would like to see him over Ayling or Kristensen but I can't see him being as great an improvement defensively as everyone thinks. I know i'm in the minority here but i'd give Cresswell another season on loan if we can get someone else in. He's had some great games and some awful ones. I don't think he's ready to be a first choice Prem CB yet. He's a decent back up would be better off having another season on loan and coming back ready to start than sitting on the bench. Get Rid: Cooper Ayling Llorente Kristensen Meslier (For the right price) Roberts James Poveda Shackleton McCalmont Loan Gyabi (Wouldn't mind him staying but needs minutes) Cresswell Gelhardt Bate Monteiro Buy GK RB CB CM CM (If we don't get McKennie) CF
Did you forget Forshaw Doc ? As far as I'm aware we have an option to extend for a further year which given his injury record we surely won't be exercising. That said he was on the bench last Sunday and he couldn't have done any worse second half than the rest of them. With Adams out injured we actually need his midfield experience for the remaining 8 games and he definitely owes us, but will a player who's out of contract in the summer put it all on the line ? My view is he's a solid individual so he'll want to give 100% and wouldn't let us down...errr if fit that is.
So Liverpool on Monday night and at the moment I've no enthusiasm for going at all. Shouldn't be like that for one of the highlights of the season and I love watching Monday night football on Sky...just not when it's fecking us and we're at home. Hopefully the weekend results will fall in our favour and that will perk us all up to have right good go
I'm interested to see the response from the players. It may sound a bit over dramatic but Monday is a tipping point to our season. The performance is everything.
Wasn't this the first premier league since the so called "super league " announcement, and thus there were a fair few fans both, ourselves and Liverpool ones doing their protest for the tv camera
Forshaw has earned more than enough out of this club for very few minutes on the pitch. Time to get rid. In truth all our championship winning first team players should have been replaced by now.
No one cares about performances round here Emu. Win we're great. Lose we're sh*t. Get with the program bud
Perk up Jambo, we're going for the double over them. Only side to win at anfield (when they had spectators) since 1927 (ish). Add to that their p*ss awful away form... and the 'reaction' we're all expecting after last week's little blip... and what's there to be so gloomy about!? That last question was rhetorical, before someone starts compiling a lengthy list.
How do you judge a performance if we’ve played well but lost though ? So yes play like we did against Arsenal at home and it shows we may have what it takes but anything below that and it’s hard to say really.
More the body language of the players. The defining point in our season will happen if we go 1-0 down early on. If the players heads drop then we probably play Championship football next season. If they roll their sleeves up and get fired in to Liverpool then at least we might fight until the last whistle of the season. I remember toward the end of Bielsa the players turned in to a bunch of pussies. We'd go a goal down, everybody's heads would drop, we opened up like the Red Sea and it was a matter of how many we'd concede. You learn more about a person/people in adversity and this squad have regularly folded under any kind of negative performance in the past. Hopefully they turn up determined to put things right on Monday.
We spent a lot of money in January and if we have to pay JKA his wages then there is not going to be much to spend unless we unload some for decent money, do we trust Orta to get it right. The problem we have is we risk getting rid of any little depth we have if we let many of the old guard go and by the way Doc you've missed Dallas off the list too. Take Ayling, he has had a couple of stinkers but prior to that he was dependable, if we let him go we will receive nothing for him but replacing someone with the relegation fighting, championship winning and PL in general experience he has won't come cheaply. Rutter is nowhere near ready and he won't be next season either, throw in Dan James and we have over £60m of transfer fee not good enough for the first team. We've wasted far too much money by listening to coaches needs and panic buying. Aaronson is another who needs to find his feet next season or it is another £25m down the drain, I haven't given up on him yet but I am getting there. We need to survive this season and get ourselves a coach who can coach the majority of who we already have
Think he needs to do what Harrison did after his first season on loan with us, and spend the summer bulking up
I agree. There is a player in there somewhere. He has decent pace, decent feet, drifts in to space fantastically well and takes up some really dangerous positions. Unfortunately he either makes the wrong decision or gets outmuscled. Sometimes the pace of the game catches him out, especially the speed at which defenders recover their position. I think he's been pretty good recently to be fair to him. I think a goal would do him the world of good.
I ignored Dallas because it would seem to be cruel to get rid before he makes a comeback. In some respects I hope he retires gracefully and gets the plaudits he deserves from fans. He is covered by insurance and will be wealthy enough… Harrison is one I haven’t added to the get rid list simply because he signed a new deal, but hopefully some club will stump up enough cash so we can offload him. Too many crap performances amongst just a handful of great ones
