Dr_Pangloss

42 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

My employer is actually okey about that stuff, but my clients are not. I simply can't take time off being sick cause everything stops up and it affects a lot more people than me. 

That's what they call a 'single point of failure'. Not good.

LOL

5th is a pretty pathetic position for a club that size and budgets to be honest.

9 minutes ago, gwi1890 said:

Can’t see why he cant play wide forward from time to time similar to Mandzukic 

A player with not a great amount of pace and is generally a hold up specialist to play wide forward? Don't think so.

Barry will be in the squad if he's good enough to be there given resources, that's Smith's determination to make, complete moot point and not worth talking about.

13 minutes ago, Mazrim said:

I don't see why Barry shouldn't be considered a signing. He's one of the best players in his age group in the country and possibly wider afield. It was a considerable outlay and he could be in match squads very soon.

Its important to allow him time to bed in but sure, a signing. As in, he was signed and cost millions. What other criteria do you want?

He cost £800k didn't he?

OGS really is a big **** word removed, absolute despise him, a **** total con artist.

edit wrong thread

Maguire is an horrific player

OGS is a **** word removed

5 minutes ago, villakram said:

"looking Presidential"

Think branding/image and the attention span of your average voter. 

Lots of images of handshakes with various well known and important global leaders and CEOs, one after the other, after the other. Then Trump gets to admonish or praise as the mood requires to ensure the media remain in his palm. I'm not sure the average person pays much attention to the details of Trump's impromptu press briefings.

And (absent something mental), in a week or so Trump is going to get a grand victory moment, followed by a political rally tour courtesy of not being impeached. That'll be fun, thank you very much Nancy!

This was always going to be the outcome which made the entire thing a charade and one that could backfire quite heavily on the Dems. I pointed this out a while back and it didn't go down that well here but I'd wager this is precisely what is going to happen.

I'm happy for him being visibly upset at being subbed, shows he cares and wants to be on the pitch. It's not as though he was throwing a tantrum or throwing his shirt at the manager or anything like that. 

27 minutes ago, Mat Kendrick's Dentist said:

Lucas Biglia is being shopped around atm. Would be a great, experienced midfielder to bring in on the cheap imo. Far more ability than any of our current (fit) CMs.

Would be up for that. Would be like when Leicester signed Cambiasso in terms of impact IMO 

Wesley's 60 odds mins against Burnley is better than anything El Ghazi has done. Fair play to El Ghazi for trying his best but he has been pretty much useless as a striker, doesn't have presence, doesn't make good runs, can barely remember an effort on target that he has had since playing there, it's just not his position at all whatsoever. 

16 hours ago, LakotaDakota said:

all that does is show how completely meaningless that xga stuff is, only 7 of them are within 2 goals scored totals & 3 of them within 2 goals against. some of them are well in to double figures off. May aswell just roll a dice to predict the score rather than take any notice of that. Out of the 60 things they could get right 7 are there or thereabouts correct. Seems to be as much use as Lawros predictions on BBC, & would say even those are more accurate...

xga is another bullshit metric that has no practical relevance and means pretty much **** all.

Just now, Tomaszk said:

Bowen no. He'll cost £15m. We ain't got that right now.

Also Callejon, no. He's on £100k a week at Napoli. Maybe on loan but he's playing a decent amount for them, not like he's not getting any games. He'd be an insanely good signing.

How do we know this?

We demonstrably looked at Benrahma and Maupay in the last window, at the very least Maupay was looked at in addition to everyone we signed and there's a sense Benrahma was too.

His performance against Fulham was extremely poor, could be a factor as well.

19 minutes ago, Kiwivillan said:

 It's clear from Smith comments after match that he expects Targett and Fred to do that. Elmo one of the best crossers in the team but we don't want him as can't do the Fred role as well

But the likes of Trezeguet often operate in a wide position in this system and he can barely deliver. So not really clear based on actual performance and observation.

We just need to go on a 5 game winning run.

6 minutes ago, HeyAnty said:

Id be going all out for a very pacy winger if i was Smith.  We lack so much pace when we break, which there will be plenty of, when playing 3 at the back..

We do need a winger but need someone who can cross the ball. 

I think they will still go up. They haven't invested much this season which is surprising, talks now of Che Adams coming in which would be a good signing. Bamford as the main man up top is a limiting factor, he's not a top Championship striker and has no pace.

5 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Probably not exactly the right thread for this, but I didn't want to start another.

I was just musing this morning that we're presumably going to be looking at another very big player turnover in the summer. I imagine we will be wanting to release, loan or sell Kalinic / Nyland / Elmohamady / Taylor / Engels / Chester / Lansbury / Hourihane / Jota / Hogan and probably Keinan Davis as well if we buy another striker. 

Seems about right.

Engels is a mystery, ideally we'd be keeping him but he has fallen massively out of favour for whatever reason. Jota might be useful to keep around to play in cup games but I would prefer us to promote some of our better young players.

I look at Trezeguet and really cannot see a place for him unless he's happy to be like a 3rd/4th choice winger.

His awareness in the centre of the park at times is extremely poor. It was his poor header back to Mings which really, should have seen Mings sent off as a result of a handball, Luiz just was not aware of the run a Watford player was making who read the header. He has lost the ball in the centre of the park on several occasions again due to a lack of awareness and it has cost us before.

For me this is his biggest weakness, the good news is that it should be straight forward to improve. There's certainly talent there but he's not quite ready to be a regular starter at this level IMO.