Thug

And... we suddenly look brighter

McGinn has played a couple of nice passes to Watkins. El Ghazi put in a nice ball to Traore and but for a last ditch tackle may have scored. They’re just better than us We’re second to every ball. We need a little more control in midfield, I would like to see Sanson on.

This is going to be 4 or 5 nil

Maybe explains his dip in form recently. I have an odd feeling that this might bring a few players out of their shells a little bit. He’s so good that it’s natural to try to find him at EVERY opportunity, was getting too obvious. Might do us a little good to find a plan b

Sorry. it’s just that you quoted and replied to a post that was comparing AEG to RB

I’m calling this out as social media bullshit.

If you replace the word ‘winger’ with ‘midfielder’ in your post - you’ve just described Ross Barkley. Nobody is suggesting that AEG is a ‘star’. All they are suggesting is RB isn’t one either. And when you boil it all down, AEG is more effective than RB at both ends of the pitch. No ‘catch 22’ about it.

Depends on which definition of dive you’d go with, but if it’s the definition ‘obviously exaggerating an impact to borderline embarrassing, but I don’t care because every other player does it’ then never mind the season, could give you 3 from every single game.

To be fair, his first 2 games he was solid. But if you go back and have a read of the Leeds game comments...

I would love to see a moment of aggression from him. So far all I’ve seen in the form of aggression is his pathetic attempts at a tackle by putting both his hands on the oppositions back and gently push them.

No he’s not. And Ross Barkley is hardly a Bruno Fernandes. I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make.

Check the stats I posted earlier. We get pushed further into our own half, we have less possession, we have less shots and we concede more shots, and we concede more than twice as many goals when he plays. I don’t know why people think that if you’re not creating enough, you need to throw on more attackers. You can have 6 of them on there, but if you can’t get the ball to them, it’s not going to help. We had 4 shots against Brighton, they had 26. We didn’t need more attackers on the pitch, we needed more control of the game. Defence isn’t the problem - they managed to keep a clean sheet by some miracle. Our midfield was allowing them the space to work shooting opportunities. There were 2 midfielders running around like blue arsed flies, and one that watched the game go by offering nothing at either end. The balance is wrong, and should have been changed MUCH sooner than when it was.

When u see our centre forward chase their winger into our corner flag and tackle him, I have no doubt that RB not tracking is not an instruction from management.

In response to the play if fit clause: Trevor Sinclair was on talksport talking about this in general. He said that often parent clubs will insert a clause along the lines of ‘if he plays, we pay his wages, if he doesn’t - YOU pay his wages.’ He was talking about it in the context of when a young player is sent on loan, and how it can harm a dressing room if the player doesn’t pull his weight in training or on the pitch - yet starts ahead of those putting in the effort. He spoke about how these clauses can be counter productive, and do nothing to encourage effort. I’m not sure if this would be relevant in an established player - and I suspect it’s a managerial decision, maybe partly influenced by how much we are paying for the privilege of him being here, partly by blind faith in his ability to improve, and partly in the hope that we could entice him to stay permanently by making him feel a big part of what we’re doing.

Energy, power, desire, skill. Samsung is going to be a fan favourite.

My biggest criticism, believe it or not, is not of him, but of Smith for starting him. He shouldn’t be starting, based on the stats above, and also by what is plain to see with the eye. Now, the stats actually show that we do better without him, even before the injury - but My eye told me different. We looked good then, but now is a completely different matter. He absolutely should not be starting, for the good of the team, and for his own confidence. We don’t need a number 10, and if we did, there many better (more consistent?) ones out there. I am 100% convinced that our problems at the moment is that our midfield is getting over run - and my eyes tell me (even without stats) that one of our three midfielders just isn’t cut out for the job. We have enough firepower in Watkins, Grealish, and Traore. We don’t need a fourth. We get enough shots (indeed MORE) without a fourth dedicated attacker. shoe-horning him into the team makes us less able to get the ball up to the front, less able to keep the ball out of our third, and as a result we concede more shots (almost 40% more) and concede more than twice as many goals. The problem isn’t necessarily Ross Barkley, the problem is that putting him in the team upsets the defence/attack balance - to a demonstrably significant amount. He just can’t provide the necessary help to our other 2 midfielders. The answer is either to have a more dedicated defensive midfielder to make up for RBs lack of input, or to replace RB with a more defensive player. The answer for me has to be the latter with our current personnel, and Sanson replacing him will improve us vastly in my opinion. The alternative is Jack back to the middle with AEG back on the left - but he has consistency issues of his own. I think he can’t be part of a three man midfield, and possibly trying him out as part of the front three is an option worth considering before we tick this experiment off as a complete failure.

You think he’d be more, or less effective?

No you didn’t. But I find it interesting that you don’t find these stats interesting, whereas you find the other one interesting enough to post here.

Lol. ’so many variables involved in each game’ yet you are the one who posted that ‘interesting’ stat about all of Watkins goals coming when Barkley was on the pitch. Make up your mind dude.

Ok, so I was actually interested in this whole Watkins Barkley stat, so (yes very sad of me) I took the time to go through all the WhoScored? Stats to see whether there was any logic to this. Here is a very interesting xcel sheet of our stats with and without Ross in the team. Conclusions: We score 8% more with him, but concede a whopping 160% more. We take 37.2% more shots, and concede 34.5% fewer shots WITHOUT him We are in the opposition third 8% MORE and in our own third 13% LESS WITHOUT him. Ollie watkins has 31% MORE shots per game WITHOUT RB in the team. The final column shows the WhoScored team rating. Again, we play better as a team (statistically) WITHOUT RB in the team, by a considerable margin. We average 52.51% possession without him, and 45.93% with him (14% MORE) We average 1.89 points per game without him, and 1.46 points per game with him. Projected Season totals RB Starts: P 38 F 64 A 55 GD +9 Pts 55 RB is Out: P 38 F 59 A 21 GD +38 Pts 71

Yes very interesting indeed. I say we test it out again by leaving Barkley out of the team for the next 10 matches and see how many Watkins gets.

You’re missing the point. This is a team game. It’s not an individual game. It doesn’t matter if RB scores a cracker in the last minute if for the rest of the game he’s doing sweet FA. You could argue that having someone else in his position may have meant we had better control over the whole game, and may well have gone on to win by an easier margin. Since when does the final touch before the ball ends in the net count as the winning contribution? Let’s say Douglas pulls off an amazing last ditch tackle, and plays the ball to Jack, who then runs the entire length of the field, beating 5 men, rounding the keeper and squaring the ball to Ross who taps it in resulting in us winning the game 1-0 in the last minute. By your logic he just won us 2 points. Wouldn’t matter if for the rest of the game he’d just stood around doing diddly squat. So when I say ‘by that rationale..’ I mean if I apply your logic. So YES, it’s an exaggeration to say AEG has won us 15 points, as it was wholly intended to be. I’ll give you the two points he won us against Leicester. That was all Barkley. But I’d knock a few points for all the matches where he’s been invisible.

By that rationale, el Ghazi has won us at least 15 points.

This is the bit that really puzzles me. He dragged off El Ghazi at 45 minutes. Barkley was just as poor in that game. The difference is that in the 5-6 games prior to that AEG was on fire, and in this game he was out of position. Barkley has been dogshit since the Liverpool game, but continues to be given minutes. This persistence with playing loan players until they find form will ruin our team morale.

To be fair tho, although I’ve been one of his biggest critics, today is not the day to single him out. He was no more shit than a few others out there.