I think funnily enough most of us do now too. The idea of Elliot playing there is more to give him playing time when other midfielders are available, and to allow minutes for Gordon to be controlled. I don’t know whether we really need Bowen to do that.
I think this depends somewhat on the new contracts. We know Mane and Salah have been offered new deals, but Bobby appears not to have one on the table yet and Jota has been getting in on the goals. I think talk of Mane’s performance decline is a bit over done.
I also don’t know if non sales of the above are due to Covid, they would have cost a lot of money and we can see that a number of potential buyers have not had the finances to spend big even before Covid.
Presumably the club need to consider whether transfers are needed for RB cover, midfield, and to replace Origi (and any other forward who moves on next summer). Maybe Bowen is part of that discussion?
I think there’s a lot of bias on these forums to think that we will have large amounts of transfer activity, whereas we haven’t actually done so in recent seasons, and there is no reason to think that the management team would want that either. We seem to be doing more transition planning rather than plugging gaps, so I doubt we’d be bothering with the likes of Bowen unless we shifted one of the starters on.
The man literally has had 3 goals in our 6 league games so far. Our forwards look wasteful because few top goalscorers actually better their conversion rate, but because they don’t play for us so many don’t follow them as much and see those misses.
He’s about as left foot dominant as Salah is from what I’ve seen. Don’t think it’s a big issue really. Sterling could barely kick it with his dominant foot when he broke through, game intelligence, speed etc is more important.
actually as a team, we do not do well in conversion rate. We were 12th overall last season. We are 9th thus far in this season. One statistic sticks out. We had the highest number of shots on goal last season and even this season thus far, but yet our conversion rate is only 12th and 9th respectively. This tells us something how clinical we are in finishing. I have always said that our forwards especially Salah, thrives on putting themselves in scoring positions as many times as possible so as to score compared to clinical strikers who might not need as many chances to put one away. And that is possibly because we have to note that none of our forwards are traditional strikers and we have to keep creating chances to ensure that we score in a game. And I have also mentioned this is something our forwards can improve, despite already being world class, scoring more often with lesser chances. Don’t get me wrong, they are already world class and possibly the best attack we have seen in decades, but there is absolutely also nothing wrong to say they can yet still improve on.
I’m not sold on Bowen although I recognise his stats are good. Very two footed, good balance, just think he’s similar to Jota but not as good (or quick).
I liked Toney, and on Saturday’s showing would be an immediate upgrade on Origi and Minamino and also on Firmino of the last 12 months. Salah, Toney and Mané would present considerable problems for every team.
Adeyemi looks a decent prospect as well and at 19 a good age. I doubt we’d add two mid-twenties to our forward line if Salah and Mané were still here. A mix of Salah (30), Mané (30), Toney (26), Jota (25), Adeyemi (20), Elliott (19), Gordon (17) would be pretty good. Could see Sarr coming in if Mané was to have left.
Saint-Maximin, wow. I’m not sure what we’d do with him! He’s brilliant but untamed. Could he learn to press effectively as part of our system?
Just a quick question (probably for Illok, or any other locals who watch the young players) a mate was saying to watch a YouTube vid of the “polish Messi” and I was pleased to see him in our colours etc, but what’s the deal? Anyone honestly think he’ll make it here ?
I genuinely don’t know but I think that age mix is more likely than two forward additions both in their mid 20s, particularly if 2 of the main 3 are still here.
I’m torn between losing either Mané or Salah next summer. I feel Mané is more easily replaced, stylistically at least. But Salah might be the one more itching for a move…hmmm.
I don’t think we need to replace either of them with a ‘big’ name if they left (Haaland, Mbappe for example). There are players that could be ready to make the move up, as with Jota. I know we paid £40m for him but I don’t think anyone fully expected him to make the leap he has done but clearly people at the club did.
Sarr could be similar. Toney as well. I’m not sure ASM has another level to go to, he’s already as effective as he’s ever likely to be because Newcastle build everything around him, which we wouldn’t. Similar to Grealish at Villa. Adeyemi could be ready for a leap though. There’ll be loads of others.
He’s gone from a player nobody had heard about to one everyone rates. He’s scored a handful of goals in Austria and an international goal against Armenia.
Not doubting he’s a decent talent, just wondering when anyone has seen him play.
Mane proved himself in the Premiership, huge difference.
So I do get ILLOK’s point, it’s very rare we go to “source” i.e. the player showing promise in Austria, we let them move to a stronger league and then pay extra to buy them further along in their development.
We may be looking to move away slightly from that process now if we are committing ourselves to Mane and Salah being here for the next few years. The difficulty in raising money from transfer sales the last couple of years may have also got the board thinking that bringing in players earlier may a better decision. We can see the positive impact Jones, Elliot and Trent have had on the team.
I know the youngster had a trial or something at Anfield a short while ago so he has been on the radar a while. I think one of the twitter bods has been talking him up for the last 4 months or so.
