Laughable Chimp

https://barcainnovationhub.com/recovery-time-of-the-anterior-cruciate-ligament-injury-in-elite-football/ Good article on the topic

I hear Benteke is out of contract this summer...

Engels, Wesley and Nakamba were signed as part of our Belgium contingent I believe. Maybe more that I'm missing. Pretty sure we had some scout in that league. It would be interesting to try and decompose who exactly were mainly responsible for which group of signings. I mean it would be purely speculative, but I think we can make some decent guesses. Brentford Boys(Probably Smith) Konsa, Watkins, Jota. Belgium Connections(Suso?) Engels, Wesley, Nakamba Championship loans(Smith?) El Ghazi, Mings, Hause Chelsea loans(Probably Terry) Drinkwater, Barkley Commercial signing(Suso?) Trezeguet, Samatta Underrated PL players Heaton, Targett, Martinez French connections(Lange?) Sanson, Traore Emergency Loan(Could be anyone really) Baston, Reina I don't believe all our players were actually signed with a view to how they would fit in the team, Wesley being the prime example. I think our signings are mostly trying to find good, underrated players and trying to fit them into our team. At most, it would be the Smith signings who I expect would be most suitable to how he wants the team to play. I also would say whoever is responsible for the Championship loans signings is probably responsible for the underrated PL players group too considering both Mings and Hause were underrated PL players too.

If I were to ever write a story following a football team with a ragtag bunch of wacky personalities, the centreback who seems to be more interested in music than football but is unaware that he is actually terrible at it would be one of those characters I would include. Would be good comic relief.

No. The way its designed, getting 7/7 would be average, hence why its called expected goals. You're expected to get that amount given the amount of chances you had, getting less would be disappointing. Getting more than that would be good. At least in terms of finishing ability, not necessarily in terms of actual goalscoring. Although in Wesley's case, there is a considerable difference between what his xG is depending on the source you use so I wouldn't really use the stat to discuss him.

Drinkwater Mk 2

Was looking through Okay Yokuslu's stats and he seems like a proper DM with great defensive stats. Tackles, Interceptions, Pressures, Aerials, Blocks, you name it, his stats on all of them are good and in some cases pretty exceptional. Celta Vigo don't seem to want him and going on the Baggies forum they seem desperate to keep him. Would love it if we stole him from them. Also dude stands at 6'3. I was gonna say his passing stats this season seem concerning but I think that's just a result of him playing in a team like West Brom. HIs passing stats in several seasons with Celta Vigo are good.

I feel like I've seen enough of him already. He may have only played for half a season, but he played a lot of minutes before he got injured and he looked poor most of the time. Of course nothing is certain about the future, shit players may suddenly turn to great players the next season and vice versa. But when you factor in the horrific injury as well, I just don't think a universe where Wesley suddenly becomes good enough as a likely one. And to be clear, I don't want to get rid of him, there's no point in doing so. But if there's any hope of recouping what we paid for him, its going to be by send him out on loan and hope he impresses enough to actually challenge Watkins one day. Because I doubt sitting on the bench and being brought on for the final 10 minutes occasionally for the next season is going to do anything for his development. Watkins is too important to the squad that Smith just never subs him off. If we want any hope of getting him to his potential, or even back to where he once was if the injury has affected him that badly, its going to have be on loan where he can have a run of games.

First of all, he scored 5 goals and his goal record is mediocre at best. He had an average strike rate of 1 goal every 350 minute, that's not even average. And his goal scoring is the best thing about him. Are we watching the same player here? Unbelievable option as an alternative back up? He's no where near the striker Watkins is. How difficult is it to understand that we don't think a player who was never very good to begin with for a team battling relegation, probably won't be good enough for a team that's trying to get into the top 10 after being sidelined for more than an entire year with an injury at what should be a crucial time in his development? Of course nothing is certain about the future, but what's so absurd about that opinion?

I think he should be given another chance. His achievements in France are really nothing to sneeze at. Put it another way, if we signed a right back with his kind form this summer, a lot of us would be pretty happy with it. Hell, his rating right now is way higher than Traore's and Sanson's were and a lot of us were pretty optimistic about them despite the relatively high fees we paid. Meanwhile, we're getting this guy essentially for free if you want to look at it that way. On another note, I don't like how some fans completely disregard a player's loan performances. As if, if they didn't perform for their club, they are trash and what they do at other clubs doesn't matter it will never change their opinion. Not that I think Guilbert was poor for us, I actually thought he was one of our best performers last season. Regardless of that though, when you have a player who is doing very, very well at a high level in this league or another, I don't care how poorly they played before, that suggests that there's potential in there and its worth persisting with them.

That's true for this game, but Mcginn's passes on average create more chances than Luiz's this season. The fact that he has double Luiz's assist rate kind of speaks for itself. Even when you look at just shot creating actions for live passes which considers passes before the final pass as well, Mcginn's rate is considerably higher than Luiz's. I don't think this should be controversial at all. Its clear Mcginn contributes more to our attack than Luiz with or without the stats. And probably has to do with the different roles they play.

The pass accuracy discrepancy is because Mcginn is always looking for progressive passes to break through the defence whilst Luiz's role is to keep things ticking over. That's how its always been with them although its particularly worse this time because Mcginn was playing in the Barkley position this game whereas Luiz and Ramsey sat deeper. There's a reason why Mcginn has one of the highest assist rates in the league for a central midfielder despite his passing accuracy being so low.

Just really hard to make predictions right now without knowing what will happen with transfers. All I'll say is, the squad we have right now is definitely at least a mid-table squad and if we do invest considerably, we should be expecting a higher position. Although I also think money is no guarantee and we shouldn't be too disappointed if we don't manage to progress further next season. So long as we don't do too badly

Still, really not good enough to be in our first team and quite frankly, I don't think he'll be ready for a long while, if ever. I know we shouldn't expect too much from youngsters but I'd expect at least a single trait you could hang onto and be able to say this kid something special to become a good player. I really can't say there's anything to hang onto with Ramsey. I'm not sure what type of midfielder he's supposed to be. And we've seen him play for a bit now too.

You think playing 2 strikers out of their best position and putting in a Wesley who had been sidelined for more than a year and was never that impressive when he was playing would sort out our front line?

For a right back, the average is very approximately about 1 red card every 9000 minutes. Guilbert's numbers is so far 1 red card every 6000 minutes certainly above the average at least.

Those are some mighty high expectations imo. I guess it really depends on the summer signings we make but i would generally be satisfied if we finished in midtable again but I could take finishing in 11th, 12th or 13th. I don't buy into this, continuous progressive march forward we should have every season. Most clubs don't continuously keep moving forward and I wouldn't expect Smith's position to be untenable just for being slightly worse than last season's performance.

I think he was just really tired and as a result ended up being careless.

Villatalk ever since we got Martinez

His interception stats are shit too.

I never said he didn't improve. I said that his improvement wasn't as good as some made him out to be. Also that his improvement was largely contained within that couple of games. Also I don't really agree with a lot of that article anyway. It reads like how I would write an essay when I realize I already have a conclusion and I'm trying to bullshit my arguments to reach that conclusion.

He was never that good post covid lockdown. He had like a couple of games right after the lockdown where he performed very well in at a time when the rest of the team including Jack were performing poorly. But people are hyping up those couple of games way too much. I distinctly remember arguing with someone who insisted he was the most in form player in the league. I'm sorry but not even close. You'd think he was single handedly winning games for us. Hell, Hourihane was more instrumental to us during that post lockdown run considering he was directly involved in 70℅ of our goals during that run and he gets treated like crap on here, nothing like the praise this guy gets. He was mediocre the rest of that season and he's been mediocre this season. .

Yeah but that's not saying much. The vast majority of players will be very good on their day. The problem is how often these days actually are.

I mean, they're not gonna care how well he plays for other teams, they're gonna care how he plays for their team. Of course they're gonna really like Depay consider he's scored 19 goals and 10 assists for them this season.