LinoJo3

Personally I want an end to these ‘caution first’ containment managers. That doesn’t mean I’m expecting guardiola type football because believe it or not you can have exciting football without constant silky passing moves. Things that *** me off that I want to see an end to is: No movement up front and from midfield - We seem to have had this problem for years, static isolated strikers. Monk was the only manager who looked like trying to solve it, some of the moves from Britt, braithwaite and bamford were really good when things clicked. Aimless balls up the pitch - For the love of god can we please get a manager who isn’t seemingly happy just to see the ball going up the pitch by any means necessary. We almost always lose it and end up under pressure. Again I’m not expecting to play out from the back, but at least good it up there with a plan, target a full back or get guys up in support of the receiver. Attacking patterns of play - When was the last time we regularly put some good forward passing moves together? When did we regularly counter with purpose and direction? Sick of seeing the majority of our goals come from seemingly ‘lucky’ ball rebounds, loose balls in the box etc. I call it ‘hopeful’ football where you just ‘get it in there’. Yes many goals will come from this route but I don’t want it to be our ONLY chance of goals. There are other smaller things but in the end I just want a manager that wants to play football. Not one that puts defence above everything, not a launcher, not one who wants to fill the team with big lads and people that ‘get about’. I think Karanka was the closest thing to what we can hope for, all he needed to do was just loosen up the ropes on the forwards and midfield a bit. Get the ball out a bit earlier, let players make forward runs a bit earlier. I feel our biggest mistake was ripping up what Karanka had built, despite our performance in the premiership he had built a totally solid base to build from, it simply needed tweaking. Imagine what we could have added to the base of that team with The £50m monk had to spend. Which I guess sums up what direction I want, stop ripping things up and starting again every couple of seasons, decide what you want and stick with it why oh why we never went for dean smith after monk left I’ll never know, he was tailor made for what we needed.

I’m not sure he was out of his depth necessarily, up until the January window he wasn’t doing any worse than how other promoted teams generally do, you could say he was doing quite well given our awful recruitment that summer. My opinion was he was overly cautious as he thought the team wasn’t good enough and lost his head when we didn’t improve the front 3 in January. His problems are all psychological going by the stories I’ve heard.

So they’ve spent roughly £30-50m on players (fees) in 6 years. We spent that in one summer and spent the next couple of seasons getting shot of half of them.

Does that include wages or just player fees?

Come on it’s obvious surely? They consistently replace their best players with cheaper imports and the same with their managers. Yes we’ve had one season in the prem and gone backwards while spending an absolute fortune. Meanwhile they have slowly caught and passed us while probably staying in the black.

Maybe if Britt had gone otherwise it would match the type of player warnock has brought in.

Watmore is hardly a giant is he and he’s been played there.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Kebano played a lot as striker tbh.

With 3 outlets like these I think it will lift the whole team. I think it’s easy due to bias to lose sight of just how poor our forwards have been (more in the wide positions). With actual quality up there teams maybe won’t be able to push up on us as much, they will be that little bit more stretched and should theoretically give the midfielders more room to work, specially on counter attacks etc. These signings will be a HUGE transformation to our team make no doubt about it.

Agree with this, think fitness has caught up with him now and also he never really helped with creating much.

I don’t think MDL or Bolasie will be guaranteed starting till fully fit. I think it will work itself out as people impress from the bench etc.

MDL.......Kebano.....Bolasie .................Britt

Sounds a bit like their version of adomah

It’s actually amazing to finally have a manager who gets players that we actually NEED.

I think Britt will be transformed with these players around him, even under monk with braithwaite and bamford he was far more effective. I think this group will be even better. I’m glad he’s still here now tbh.