MotoMkali

The reason we concede isn't because of the wingers it is because the midfield 3 give the ball away as soon as we win it back. This puts us under constant pressure and is why we concede late in games because teams eventually get lucky no matter how good defensively we are.

Think he picked up a knock in preseason and put in some weight. He looked a lot slower in the cup games this year than he did playing for us last year. Hopefully he can get fully fit and regain his mobility.

I think wes is too big for his own good. He is so big he doesn't get rewarded for small niggling fouls on him but when he does it back or just uses his strength it is instantly a foul. It is why he has fouled the 2nd most so far this year. He definitely needs to be more crafty with his strength but when he gets the ball to feet he is quite good at getting his body in the way and playing decent football provided the defender doesn't go through him which is never called for the foul. He does well at getting into good positions in the box but we need to find him more frequently in those good positions so he has a chance at getting decent shots off. He has only taken 22 shots but has scored 18% of them which is better than any of our other players by some margin. Maupay for example is only scoring 11% if his shots so he would probably be doing a lot worse if he played for us.

Our last 4 games, Liverpool, City and Wolves. We would still have lost against Liverpool and City if aguero had decided he wanted a bit more of a challenge. As for wolves we were without grealish and the only player who created chances for others was el ghazi. Of course he struggled. However against Brighton wesley got a pass to assist a bunch of good hold up play and chasing down. Wesley fairly challenged for a header which their keeper flapped at letting us score which was then wrongly denied. Wesley in other words has had a huge impact on those games.

A guy was saying he needed to score more which I disagreed with. Hopefully against the barcodes we keep the ball better and start using wesley as a link up man.

In case you hadn't noticed. Teams in our position don't have 20 goal a season striker except for Benteke. Last season callum Wilson scored the the most goals outside the top 6 with 14. Wesley is currently on track to hit 13 so I would say he is doing fine in that department.

Complete and utter bs. Wesley has shown he is good when we play nice football in games like Brighton, Norwich and Everton. He got good service and performed excellently. Hogan never performed well for us and never seemed to fit in with the squad. As for you saying wesley is lazy I think that is silly. I think wesley doesn't have much confidence and needs to start the game well for him to get going. Again when he has performed well he has been running non-stop and people have commended him for it. It doesn't help that when he uses his strength he gets called for a foul. He is currently second in the league for fouls but hasn't received a single yellow card. He is clearly getting the wrong end of lots of 50/50 decisions and if he is the one who is fouled he rarely gets the call. And once again wesley has probably contributed to more of our goals than anyone but Jack. He probably has given us the opportunity to score more goals than our second striker SJM. Also everyone continue to label him as a big target man which he isn't. He hasn't held the ball up from long balls frequently but passes in behind or too his feet he has done admirably with and it isn't his fault we are playing him as a target man (and then assuming his target is 30 yards across because that is how accurate our long balls are)

Yeah you can win with average players. They just need to buy into the system and move so they are free for a pass we don't do that and we struggle.

I disagree he is struggling due to a lack of service. In the games he has had good service he has looked good and aside from that he has had key contribution to over 50% of our goals from open play. (4 goals 1 assist, 2 pass to assists, excellent hold up play for mcginns goal against spurs) 8 of 15

I disagree he is struggling due to a lack of service. In the games he has had good service he has looked good and aside from that he has had key contribution to over 50% of our goals from open play. (4 goals 1 assist, 2 pass to assists, excellent hold up play for mcginns goal against spurs) 8 of 15

Problem is they have come from dominant sides in weaker leagues. They never had to track runners so playing for us is probably the first time in their career they have ever had to it is no wonder there are lapses of Concentration plus a player like el ghazi wants to be able to counter attack which was probably our most effective tactic in the play off final. If it wasn't for keogh playing out of his skin el ghazi would have had 3 one on one's.

El ghazi up front if wes is injured assuming grealish is back. If not I think kodjia is only 1 or 2 games from returning.

No what I'm saying is we don't have the requisite heading ability to play floaty crosses. We need low balls that our midfielders and wingers can have a prayer of finishing not just wesley. Plus so far this year we have probably played 3 good "proper" crosses in but none have resulted in goals because heading is a harder skill to score with than volleys headers are way easier to sky. Also in case you haven't noticed wesley has made the same run to the front Post that he did against Norwich and arsenal, against both Burnley and wolves and in both games he was unlucky to not get on the end of it. The problem is we aren't really working it into useful positions for the balls we can score off of. We need to get to the byline and drill low balls in. They are the most dangerous balls in football. 1 touch from the striker it is in. A misread from the defender it is in. A parry from the keeper easy finish from the six yard line. Despite not doing this very often we have got 5 goals from these positions: wesley twice, grealish against brighton, mcginn against Burnley from trez's cross (+ his disallowed goal), and arguably targetts goal against Brighton was from this position although he went fro the shot but he still scored. And you have a missed wesley run against wolves, 2 hourihane strikes against Brighton etc. This has contributed to a third of our goals despite us probably only attempting maybe 10% of our shots from these scenarios. Also they help win corners which we have been struggling to do this year being the 4th worst at it.

If we have an 'attacking' central midfielder it should really be him. He is just so good as a CAM and is probably better at it than mcginn. It would also make mcginn drop deeper to pick up the ball which can only be a boon

To be fair a lot of people voted for him only because of the goal and because they had to vote for someone not that they thought he was particularly good.

In my opinion josh King is the better of their 2 strikers. He doesn't get quite as many goals but I think he does more overall towards contributing to their game plus Wilson takes penalties so his goal tally is a little inflated.

It doesn't require amazing players but I requires lots of off the ball movement to take advantage of the extra man in the middle currently we are not doing that and because of that we are struggling.

Yeah but you can't get big chances if you can't get the ball in position to create them. I think it is due to the fact that we make sloppy mistakes in the middle of the park (helps us concede them as well) but @KenjiOgiwara thinks that it is because we lack the final ball.

My point wasn't that he will or won't be great it was that throwing him under the bus at this point in his career is ridiculous. He is the equivalent of probably a 17 or 18 year old in terms of technical ability. Also aside from his 2 goals (excluding Norwich game) wesley got a pass to assist at Brighton, Everton and held off Davison sanchez for mcginns goal. In other words excluding the Norwich game he has been a key piece in 42% of our goals and if you exclude set pieces that is the equivalent of 50% contribution rate which in my books is pretty good. Once again completely underselling what he has contributed to our campaign. Let's face it we have been generally poor when getting the ball up the pitch and too our players feet in dangerous positions. Against wolves wesley probably got the ball what 3 or 4 times in their final third and only once in a good position for a shot (twice if you count the ball he couldn't quite get on) which I'm sorry whilst he should have hit the target was a pretty good effort.

Heaton should not have made that error. No professional keeper would. King was about 5 yards from the ball when Heaton was a foot away. If he just went in with gumption he easily gets the ball and the game is a different complexion. On top of that Phillip billing should have been sent off and whilst we don't have a great record against 10 men Bournemouth played the same way as they would have with 10. Aside from that we have constant unforced errors and we need to do much better as a team in retaining the ball. They are mostly unforced due to our lack of movement and predictable nature of we try and play it out from the back. It either goes out wide or we hoof it. So wingers can gamble on the passing lanes and will frequently come out with the ball. This is what happened against wolves and Brighton with Gross' shit shot and I'm sure plenty of other times that I can't remember.

First of all el ghazi has already had 4+ good games this year in the prem in 10. Which isn't bad considering if you want a winger to be good every game you have to sign heung min son or raheem sterling. Was good against arsenal (got an assist and was among our most dangerous players going forward), Norwich (obviously), wolves by far our best player with nakamba and if others had been on the ball we could have easily got a result, Liverpool 85 brilliant minutes of creating chances and tracking back with 1 lapse in error that plenty of full backs would make let alone an attacking minded winger, and obviously last 20 minutes against Everton and was the only player who wanted anything too happen. Wesley has had 3 good games this year which obviously isn't much but in those games we rarely played long balls (which we have begun to do constantly) players were close to him and running in behind and he either received the ball to feet or for him to run onto. We haven't been doing that the rest of the season and that gives me reason to believe that unlike Hogan we aren't playing to his strengths. Hogan never had a good game for us and was a waster. Wesley on the other hand is a hard worker otherwise he wouldn't be where he is today who is still in his formative stages as football player. Most players at his age have been in professional academies for at least 12 years (Jack has been at villa for nearly 20 years) wesley on the other hand is behind by about 5 years on a player like keinan so he is not likely to have the same level of skills as them however he has great finishing ability inside 12 yards and has been a key player in 7 or 8 of our 17 goals so that is pretty good contribution from a player who people say we may as well be playing with 10 men. Edit: At 7 years into his footballing career Jamie Carragher was still playing as a striker and what he is probably one of the best ever England defender and certainly one of the best of the premier league era.

Winger/forward combo for me. El ghazi is a good enough winger. Most games he won't do much but when he does do something we tend to have easy victories because he is probably our only player who doesn't rely on jack to create for him. Plus I think wes will do better with a change in tactics so he plays more of a false 9 than target man like he did at brugge. After that I would like us to sign a true box to box midfielder with size and pace. Currently there could be quite a few options berge and kessie as well as someone like exequiel palacios from a Brazilian side.

None were headers though. They were low bouncing balls that our attackers could volley in or the defenders struggled to deal with. We currently do not have the size note the skill in the air to be playing high crosses into the box. The only 'proper' cross was against Norwich where wes chested the ball down and turned and finished.

Steer targett and guilbert are all good enough for me. Wesley is also good enough as a back up and probably as a main striker once he has refined his craft.

We seem to concede a lot of long range shots so a lot of them get blocked but because we have probably conceded somewhere in the region of 80-100 long shots it equates to around that amount of goals.