Yeah we’ve got to sign (in addition to a CB) a forward now - if not Isak, then someone who can play left and right like Rodrygo. The later for a lesser fee than Diaz would make more sense of Diaz leaving.
I keep saying that when you have a talent like Ngumoha, you don’t expect him to play every game, but you certainly don’t put another player between him and the first team.
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Yep, I’d like to sign Fofana. And rotate Mo a bit, so he does not play the full 90 all the time.
Plus Isak. Plus Guehi.
Might be too much to ask, but I’d be happy with that!
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And yet we played a glorified friendly yesterday where both Salah and Gakpo were asked to do 90 and Ngumoha sat on the bench. As did Chiesa.
There’s a near enough nine year age gap between Gakpo and Ngumoha. We need a squad where game time is something we find for him not something we’re relying on him to fulfil a quota of minutes. And what you definitely need to avoid is a situation where you’re overplaying a 17 year old full of fast twitch muscle fibres who is still growing and developing.
I’d love to see him get some minutes we should be cautiously planning his next couple years rather than rushing him into senior football because we don’t have the right balance in the squad.
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At his age you do hes not 18 or 19.
Although I would have liked to have seen Rio given 15 to 20 minutes, I do feel and think that with Munoz being such an attacking full back and an offensive outlet for Palace that Arne may have thought that Rio may not have have the defensive nous to track him, Cody struggled to get to grips with him and he has vast more experience.
I agree to an extent about over playing him, but I think that means he doesn’t play 90mins every week - not that he can’t do 10 minutes against tired legs.
Gakpo is a pure left winger. Slot has staunchly refused to play him anywhere else. His back up should be someone multifunctional, whether that’s Chiesa, Ekitike, Wirtz or someone new. Someone who isn’t going block Rio.
It should not be another Diaz - ie a left winger who isn’t really anything else. That would be a bit daft given even if you think that Ngumoha isn’t ready to breakthrough now, he is going to be in 12-18months.
This is a lad we snatched of Chelsea with a bit of fanfare, so we’ve obviously laid out a pathway for him to the first team, and he is already considered a first team player for training purposes.
Just watching the replay of their 2nd goal, I am at a complete loss what Virgil is doing in that situation, Sarr is the biggest threat and if he steps over to cover him the goal should be prevented.
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Really think we’ll come to regret this idea of “just stick Wirtz or Ekitike out there when Cody needs a break”. Remember when we said that about Fabinho and centre back but when you take that player to fill in somewhere else you’re relying on others to fill the gap they’re leaving behind.
Right now Ekitike is our only CF and people are earmarking him as our back up to Cody on the left so that a 16 year olds pathway doesn’t get blocked even though we’re only looking to give him cameos here and there.
All feels like we’re spread too thin.
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There are certain players in the team at the weekend, that AS will have wanted to get a full 90mins into their legs ready for the PL on Friday… Charity Shield final yes, but still a training exercise for us, due to us having a delayed pre-season.
Palace looked up for it and were bouncing… it could simply be they are a couple of weeks ahead of us in the fitness table.
AS will go for the the throat against Bournemouth… we will see a different side to him once the PL begins
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Well, I’m assuming we get Isak. We definitely need another quality option across the forward line. I just don’t think it makes sense for it to be a pure left winger.
Once again we had Diaz 14 starts at CF 1 at right wing.
I think you can get over your skis on this sort of thing in terms of your expectations for and the accommodations that should be made to kids who simply arent there yet. You had the same attitude to not buying another striker because of the need to leave room for Brewster, assuming far too much about how ready Brewster was to step in and step up. There is a HUGE distance between a kid we like on the fringes of the first team and someone who has earned enough faith in people whose jobs are on the line that you don’t need a senior professional to bolster the ranks in their position. And that gap is huge because at this level the overwhelming majority of the former never become the latter.
Rio is incredibly exciting, and by all accounts is in the rare category of youth talent that he’s closer to a cant miss than just a top youth player with potential. But even if he were the former, it doesnt mean he is ready yet to shoulder any burden. And that is precisely what you would be needing out of a 16 year old if we forgo buying anyone else to leave room for him. He cannot even change in the same changing room as the rest of the team.
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Did I? Brewster had nowhere the potential that Ngumoha had.
I’m not suggesting we don’t buy anyone. I’m saying we don’t put someone in his path. As I said before in a year’s time he will be on the cusp of being 18. That’s the age at which the best kids start to have an impact.
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But say we get Isak, I still don’t think it’s enough when Slot clearly has zero faith in Chiesa.
It’s a long season and I’d rather go into it worrying about how we get Rio some regular minutes in the next couple years than how we’d cope if Gakpo wasn’t available for a couple of months.
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I am puzzled why he is so reluctant to use him in important matches, he has had a proper preseason and looks fit and he can score goals? He is very stubborn about his decisions on certain players (the brutal removal of Quansah).
I now believe that Slot is maybe simply someone who doesn’t take any risks. Does anyone know if he ever developed any talented young players in the Netherlands and integrated them into his team?
So we are a couple of weeks behind other teams fitness-wise with our first game in 4 days time? I hope Bournemouth, Newcastle and Arsenal aren’t a couple of weeks ahead of us too because we’ll be out of the title race before the first international break.
I really hope there is no truth in what you’re saying. It would be gross negligence to be going into a new season in that situation given we more or less downed tools with a month of last season still to play and went on a huge piss-up.
I’m seeing more and more excuses trotted out for the fact we have been generally shite for nearly 6 months. “Oh the league was won so we took our foot off the gas”, “They wanted it more than us/ the PSG game took too much out of us”, “VVD is carrying an injury/ VVD was still sick”. Even when we embarrassed ourselves at Fulham before the title was won people were defending it saying it’s impossible to keep up that level of intensity when you know it’s only a matter of time until it’s done.
Too many excuses, too many shite performances, too many chances squandered, too many mistakes in dangerous areas and too many bad goals conceded. The lack of proffessionalism at the end of last season wore pretty fucking thin in the end.
Frday night will tell us a lot. Bournemouth have lost a lot of key players especially at the back so you’d expect us to get at them and create a lot of chances. We’re the fucking league champions, time to start acting like it.
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I agree… however, we never started pre-season as originally planned, and there has been a dismal, dark cloud hanging over the squad ever since they lost their mate… even that event would take a little while to shake off.
Like I said, Palace just looked to have more energy, as well as bit more desire… Which given the circumstances, it would not be surprising.
Whether we remain a tad disjointed in the next few weeks, which we might do because of the new players… I for one will be cutting them a bit of slack…
AS on the other hand, to me anyway, appears to be ruthless in his desire for winning every game… It might just be Bournemouth that get battered at Anfield.. Hope so.
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agree 100%
no doubt we get lumped in with the knee jerkers and habitual moaners but there are legitimate concerns to how we have looked over an extended period now…
shocking how for around 15 minutes in the Charity Shield we couldnt even retain possession against a good but middling PL team…i mentioned it in the game day thread but it actually began to look like a tactic of working without the ball…
things like conditioning and injuries and mental fatigue are not a fasctor in simply passing it to a red shirt and im leaning very heavily into it being a coaching directive now…
theres just no way a midfield three of Wirtz, Jones and Dom cant just keep the ball, and no reason on a hot summers day in the second half the back four couldnt just take the sting out of the game by keeping the ball rotating in the back third…palace were hardly a ‘pressing monster’
theres concerns.
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