weedman

I think it's one of those short term pains for long term gains kind of decisions, a bit of time at RB and in a couple of months we don't need Jedinak at CB as AT can play there I never really rated RDL before he came but in his smattering of games he's definitely been better than I expected. He's nowhere near Elmo though and as a backup I'd like Bree, he's not as good, but at least he should improve in time, so I fully agree with shipping RDL out as we really don't need him in the short, medium or long term (once Bolasie is fit and Elmo is no longer needed as a right winger)

Maybe he's just not good enough? We may not see that on a match day but they train every day so plenty of time for manager and coaching staff to get an idea, it's not like we shipped him off straight away he's been training with the first team for months. See the Tuanzebe thread for my thoughts on him as a RB, but in a nutshell the Championship is a huge step up from youth or reserve team football and he seems to be struggling with the physicality of the players against him, putting him at RB until he learns to deal with that and he's not as exposed as he would be at CB

I think that's more the time, rather than the games. Having 6 weeks before the season starts with no meaningful games is time to get in players, get them integrated into the team, used to the tactics (which, before any comments, we do have, there's just obvious debates about their effectiveness and/or prettiness), training etc, it's certainly a more settled time than in the middle of the season where there's no real time to implement anything, it's just game, 3 day break, game, 3 day break etc The games just get them match sharp, most first team players will avoid potential injuries, not overwork their muscles to prevent strains, avoid big challenges etc etc, younger or fringe players are more likely to try and impress, so I guess it stands to reason sometimes they'll look better than the other players around them

I've said it before and I'll no doubt say it again, but as good as he did look in pre season (and he did play well), pre season means nothing. It is solely there to get players a bit of match fitness. Performances mean nothing, all anyone at the club will care about is the running stats for each player. Some players will be brilliant before going back to the norm the second the season kicks off, others will look awful but suddenly be back firing in the actual season. Even this year Hutton blazed past a few players before looking up, composing himself and sticking a beauty of a cross bang into Andre Greens path, that's right, an accurate, measured cross from Hutton resulting in a goal for Green, and speaking of Green, he scored about 40 goals or so* this pre season and played in the championship and could barely control the ball Pre season means nothing except match fitness *number of goals may not be accurate, I didn't check and just made it up, but he did get a few!

Pretty sure I've responded to this exact comment about a year ago but the olive branch WAS handed out in much the same way as it was to your favourite player, it's just one of them upped their game, trained hard, got fit, lost weight and actually made an effort to rectify his mistakes, the other one is Ross McCormack, who did none of those things, even skipping training with an excuse on a par with "the dog ate my homework" and continued in much the same way. However, despite that was still brought back into the team the following season, given his chance in pre season, where the whole purpose is to get fit and ready for the upcoming season, and CONTINUED showing zero effort or interest in playing, clearly nowhere near fit to play, before being dropped again and shipped out on loan to a league no better than league 2 (at best) where he scored a few penalties and generally failed to achieve much at a standard where if he had any chance of contributing to our team he should be absolutely destroying Where is the evidence that he isn't being supported? Have you ever heard the expression "you can't help people that won't help themselves"? Anyway, I'll be back in this thread later to respond to you demanding to know why Ross McCormack hasn't been given another chance when Gabby was

Pretty sure it's "37 JT", so we can consider this fake news

Well it's all speculation anyway, maybe he's just not good enough but we panicked with our impending administration and "everyone for sale" and he was brought in as he was available, knew the club and we had no money for anyone else

Well I'd imagine the plan is to help him for when he's CB for us later in the season...say the plan is for him to be CB from Jan, that's still half a season there which will help us for the run in, although I'd hope he'll be ready earlier than that as we are desperate for bodies there

Getting him used to the physicality of the league so he's actually ready to play CB when we need him to? At the moment he's being outmuscled and out jumped by everyone because he's not used to these sort of players getting at him, you can't get away with that at CB, maybe after a couple of months at RB he'll get used to it?

This is my theory as well, like you say, it's the only thing that makes sense

And yet it is entirely his fault that we don't have any defenders? ?

Tbf I'm actually OK with that midfield but only against certain teams, like it or not for a lot of games we'll need a dedicated holding player, be it Whelan or Jedinak or Thor or whoever, but it's the defence, it needs a ball winner in it or the midfield will be irrelevant as they won't get the ball, this is why Jedi plays over Tuanzebe there for the time being I like Hourihane, he's like a poor mans Championship Lampard, but he isn't really involved in our play at all until he pops up with a goal, he can be a passenger and you can't really have that from a midfielder regularly, McGinn looks very similar and clearly those two will rotate throughout the season

And what happens with that team when the opposition play the ball forward in the air? I don't see a single player in that team capable of consistently winning ariel duels (Chester would be the best, but he's not exactly amazing at heading) and at least 50% (most likely more, I haven't looked at the numbers) play considerably more long balls than we do, that teams getting bullied out of the game imo

Man Utd did...

Its almost certainly not his job to make it happen, his job would be to identify the targets and tell whoevers job it actually is to make it happen what he wants, the actual negotiating wouldn't be done by the manager

In what way couldn't I be further from the truth? What have I said that is wrong? Blaming a plague of Bruceism for me thinking a player has been poor for us? He has been poor, that's not an opinion, its factual. There may be countless reasons for that but those are the opinions. The excuses you're happy to make for Tuanzebe are no more or less valid than the excuses people make for Steve Bruce He may well have tremendous potential, and in 5 years time who knows he could be playing for Real Madrid, but 1) that doesn't mean anything to us as he's not even our player and 2) he hasn't shown anything for us to suggest that is the case Potential for a player that is on loan is completely irrelevant to us, he's either good enough now to be our first choice CB or he isn't. From what we've seen so far, he isn't, so the fact that he may be in the future means nothing. If he was as good as people seem to think he wouldn't look so shambolic as a right back - the fact he's looked at his best when going forward and at his worst when being forced to defend would suggest he's more suited to RB anyway Also, I'm not writing him off, I said in an earlier post he may be being "eased in" at RB as he gets used to playing at this level, gets used to the physicality of players etc before being moved central later in the season, but simply not being Jedinak is not a good enough reason to play him at CB when he's made far more defensive errors himself this season

People seem so convinced that he's this incredible player based on virtually nothing, because he's from Man Utd and one of their fans that's seen him play reserve games thinks he's good? Being from Man Utd means literally nothing, I mean we signed a certain Djemba Djemba from them and he was actually a player they scouted, signed for millions and even played in their first team, Tuanzebe is just one of about 200 in their youth team, one that's so far away from first team action that when they're so short at CB that they've been linked with just about any player that's ever played there this summer they still had no worries about loaning him out. Their fans rating him when he's never actually played a meaningful game for them also means nothing, I mean our resident youth team expert seems to champion the cause of about 5 or 6 young players a year who will be stars for us but alas, it virtually never happens (don't mean any offense by that just making the point that reserve/youth football and competitive first team football are very different things and it's very common for a player to be a world beater in the youth team but not be able to make the step up) We can only judge him on what we've seen playing at the level he is now, which is a huge step up from what he's played before, and while he's not played too well in that period, it's very little for us to go on, so we have to trust those that have seen him. The coaches and manager at Man Utd have decided he's not good enough, and up until now the coaches and manager here have decided he's not good enough (at CB) to be a regular starter at least. From the (limited) games we've seen of him he has made a number of basic mistakes (far more than Jedinak, for example) and really doesn't look ready yet.

Tbf that was only widely reported the evening before deadline day, prior to that he was all but nailed on to sign by all accounts

Could the explanation not be that he's not quite ready, either not settled or whatever so is being eased in slightly out of the firing line as it were and will be moved back to the middle once his confidence improves a bit or once he starts to iron out the little issues he currently has? Give him a dozen games or so on the right then move him inside once he's fully up to speed and we have Elmo back at RB and Bolasie on the wing? I'm sure he has ability, but he's made a few pretty basic errors that would be far more exposed if he was CB so Jedinak probably the more sensible option in the immediate short term with a view to Tuanzebe moving inside as the season progresses, seems to make sense to me

This line of thought is hilarious, as if Steve Bruce is solely in charge of signing players and waited around until deadline day before calling up a manager and making a Levy bid for a couple of players, giggling, then saying "well I tried boss, guess we'll have to get JT now, mwa ha ha", ridiculous. Signing (or failing to sign) players is down to a team of people at the club, Mourinho isn't being criticised for his refusal to sign a CB is he? They needed one too, they failed to get one despite numerous bids, Mourinhos fault I guess? Man Utd had a lot more time to find targets than us as well We didn't get a CB, we needed one, that's the fault of Aston Villa, not Steve Bruce. I'd actually put most of the blame at the hands of Xia, leading us into the summer with no structure and no money, no plans and no direction, even when the new owners came in we were so short of staff we didn't have sufficient people to deal with these sort of transfers

Has Jedinak been that bad? Aside from that god awful back pass I think he's been less of a liability than either Tuanzebe or (dare I say it) Chester this season. In the match threads pretty much every time we've conceded a goal someone's put blame on Jedinak for it when I've been watching the same game and it's been nothing to do with him. Can't remember the game but there was one where Tuanzebe was easily beaten by his man in the air, then the striker got a yard on Chester who wasn't following him before scoring, and 50% of the posts in the match thread were about Jedinak being out of position, it's crazy, seems like he's become a scapegoat for everything wrong with our defence because he's not John Terry He's not the greatest defender in the world, and I would have loved to see him upgraded but it's really not as simple as "anyone who's naturally a CB would be better", and as far as the Championship goes he's not even that bad!

From my understanding of the summer fiasco, when the new owners came in it was too late to affect any real change, so SB was kept on to pretty much keep us ticking over until our structure and backroom team could be sorted then a new manager to come and be the "face" of that would be brought in, someone in the Dean Smith mould, a head coach rather than manager really (chances are I made up that last bit in my head, but it makes sense and correlates with the Henry links) Those structures still aren't in place, the appointment of a new CEO is a start, but we need more than a CEO. If their plan is to clean sweep us and get started on a proper plan moving forward, the manager should be the last one to go really, so I think he's here for at least a few more months to give the next guy the best possible chance of success, whether that be this season, next season, or in 10 years time To be honest it's a perfectly sensible decision, but it's going to cause disagreements on here because it means we're kind of in limbo for the time being, hoping SB keeps us "there or thereabouts" until we are ready to make the change

Given what transpired at the end of the season, why is everyone so convinced that we could have signed all these young up and coming (but still as good right now as the ones we did sign) players? I mean, players with good current ability (top compete at the top of the league), good potential and good sell on value aren't generally available for peanuts. Maybe signing older and loan players wasn't a choice, it was a necessity? Just a thought

What exactly is playing to his strengths? It seems to be that he only excels when he is clean through on goal 4 or 5 times a game preferably closer than 10 yards from goal and fingers crossed with the goalkeeper out of the game. From what I've seen he's only really useful at the end of games we're winning to chuck on up front on his own and have him chase the ball around and pressure the defenders, he doesn't seem to be able to actually do anything else. Who knows, maybe he'll come good, I just don't see it

Because clearly : attacking football = progressive tactically astute manager while defensive football = dinosaur with no clue about tactics