Laughable Chimp

I forgot we're even in a transfer window

Nah, Watkins is great and call me crazy but I still have hope in Davis as a backup, well more than I do Taylor as a backup. And if worse comes to bear, we can always put Traore up there. He has experience as a forward and his goal talley this season has been pretty great so far.

When I read that we were probably playing our youngsters, I thought Smith was just rotating the players and giving the entire matchday squad a much needed rest. I'm kind of excited though, to be able to see some of these supposedly highly rated youngsters in action.

What has Mings done exactly in the past few games that put him so high above Hause? In the last 2 games Mings has gotten a red card and been "arguably" at fault for a goal, been lucky to not concede a penalty and another card for the elbow on Pogba and its not as if he's been stellar for the season so far either. In the meantime, Hause has barely if at all put a foot wrong in all the games he's featured for us this season and has strengths(particularly his heading) that exceed those of Mings. Meanwhile, Mings's mistakes get constantly excused away. This has been true since last season as well. I wasn't that big a fan of Konsa either but the amount of times where I stopped myself and said "Konsa couldve done better" when we conceded a goal pales in comparison to the amount of time I've said that about Mings and this has continued through to this season as well. Every defender makes mistakes, but is it really a coincidence that his mistakes seem to be the most "spotlighted" and the ones that lead to goals conceded? I don't mind people saying Mings is the better defender of the two but at least form wise, its clearly not out of the question for Hause to come in for him. I swear some of you people rate Mings more than he rates himself and that's really saying something.

Found this interesting article on ACL injuries on football. https://barcainnovationhub.com/recovery-time-of-the-anterior-cruciate-ligament-injury-in-elite-football/ In particular, these lines stood out as most interesting. Smith has talked about Wesley having had complications in his knee after the surgery which probably explains why he's been out for so long and most likely at least twice the average downtime after ACL reconstruction quoted above. I'm far from a sports doctor, but none of this looks good at all. As in, if he were in his late 20s I could genuinely see him straight up retiring from this injury. Not only does the injury itself seems to be particularly debilitating for players to continue performing at the highest level, the fact that Wesley's recovery has been particularly problematic does not bode well.

Mings?

I disagree. I think he's got the ability to get into good runs and be in good positions for chances. I think we can all remember several times last season where we banged our head against the wall due to a Keinan miss, but I think that's also implicit proof that he's at least getting into these positions in the first place. I do think that he really needs a run of games at this point and a loan would be optimal. But we're simply far too light up front atm to afford to let Davis go.

What? I'm sorry but that reasoning is garbage. There's just so much wrong with it. 1- You can't judge a defender based on clean sheets, its a team effort. Its not like goals or assists. 2- He's played the most games out of all our defenders in 2020 easily so of course he's going to naturally have more clean sheets than the rest.(which btw, I doubt is actually that much different to our other centre-backs especially when adjusted on a per-game basis). 3- I don't know who this Garth Brooks is, but if he's making a 2020 team of the year or 2020PL team of the year, using Mings's supposed superiority to his own team-mates as the reasoning for his inclusion as opposed to the rest of the league or all top 5 leagues is absolutely asinine. If he's making an Aston Villa 2020 team of the year, it would make a lot more sense I guess but a lot more uninteresting. Well just googled it, turns out he's not. Its a PL team of the year. The blocks point is slightly better than clean sheets but is still very flawed. Honestly, this stinks off "I haven't watched Tyrone Mings play at all but he got into the England team last year and people are hype about him so he must be good. Let me google some stats which support this opinion." And proceeds to fail to find many good statistics Mings(I'm not saying Mings is a bad defender here, just that his defensive statistics aren't really that great) and is forced to use these bottom of the barrel ones.

Muh Leadership. Which conveniently is something so intangible that its impossible to deny nor quantify exactly how useful his "leadership skills" really is.

Don't underestimate the quality of an Elmo cross. Edit: Decided to use whoscored stats to calculate and rank the crossing accuracies of players this season for the hell of it. Seemed fun to do. I'm only looking at players who are averaging at least 1 accurate cross per 90 minutes and have played at least 500 minutes(which sadly disqualifies Barkley who has put in a remarkable 42% crossing accuracy in his 455 minutes this season so far). Also if the 2 players happened to have the same crossing acccuracy rounded to 2 significant figures, the one that put in more crosses total is ranked higher. 1-Jamal Lewis-45% 2-Andros Townsend-37% 3-Mason Mount-37% 4-Pascal Gros-35% 5-Luke Shaw-34% 6-Aaron Cresswell-32% 7-Tom Cairney-32% 8-Leandro Trossard-32% 9-Kalvin Phillips-32% 10-Vladimir Coufal-31% 11-Arthur Masuaku-31% 12-Gyilfi Sigurdsson-30% 13-Matheus Pereira-30% 14-Son Heung-Min-29% 15-Tariq Lamptey-29% 16-Lucas Digne-28% 17-James Ward-Prowse-28% 18-Bruno Fernandes-28% 19-Eberechi Eze-28% 20-Pedro Neto-27% 21-Antonee Robinson-27% 22-John Fleck-27% 23-Jarrod Bowen-26% 24-Kevin de Bruyne-25% 25-Ben Osborn-25% 26-Dwight Mcneil-24% 27-James Maddison-24% 28-Ben Chilwell-24% 29-Matt Phillips-24% 30-Trent Alexander-Arnold-23% 31-Bertrand Traore-23% 32-Reece James-22% 33-Raphinha-22% 34-Ashley Westwood-22% 35-Andrew Robertson-21% 36-James Rodriguez-21% 37-John Lundstram-20% 38-Jack Harrison-18% 39-Adama Traore-18% 40-Willian-14% Cash isn't on the list because whoscored lists him as having only 0.9 successful crosses per 90. But his crossing success rate is 24% regardless. Obviously Elmo isn't on there due to how little he's played this season but his crossing success rate last season was 33%

You're missing the point. The point is, that people have agendas either way and if anything, the fact that Mings has been such a pivotal player in our recent history is why fans are more likely to flock to his defense and be blind to his flaws.But having such a view isn't any better than overly-criticizing the man either. So its kind of hypocritical to take the moral highground The Mings supporters are always in here full force whenever he's had a good game praising him and taking shots at the people who criticize him and no one seems to care. Yet its not okay for the anti-Mings crowd to come in here when he's had in their opinion a bad game without being accused of having an agenda? And to be clear, this is roughly true of every player thread here. Near everyone has an agenda.

There are also people who jump into this thread immediately when he has a good game to praise him and take shots at the people who criticize him. Lets not act like both sides don't do it. This is roughly true of every thread on a player in here. People have nailed their colours to the mast on their opinions on certain players and will take the very first opportunity to rub it in when evidence is presented that supports their opinion. Its just one side will praise the player, the other will criticize him. Neither has the moral highground

I'd let go El Ghazi.

Trezeguet

Funny, I had the exact opposite opinion.

I feel like impressing in training is overrated. The most important thing is the player's performance in previous actual games. You don't drop a striker who scored a hatrick the previous game because he didn't impress in training sessions. I'm not saying impressing in training isn't relevant to selection. But it should be more in the vein of making themselves an option instead of trumping everything else.

If he was playing for a Champions league team, I think he'd be one of the candidates for a Ballon D'Or

If Hause puts in another good performance next game(which he'll have the chance too), I think I'll solidly be in the Hause starts in place of Mings camp. But if Hause starts having bad games again, I'd like Mings to come in again. Or Konsa for that matter if it happens to him. Isn't it great to have 3 centrebacks who can all come in for each other when any one of them is off form?

This, so, so much.

With the property market the way it is right now, we definitely got a bargain.

Yeah, just unlucky again. Goals will come, not too worried.

That would require us having a reputation for developing players and at the very least consistently finishing top 6. The former will take time and both are far from guarantees.

Yes, and most of them were comfortable saves for the keeper.

Retook the top spot on whoscored's rating system from Harry Kane with this performance. Imagine that, Jack Grealish may genuinely be the best player in the premier league. He's number 3 out of the top 5 leagues so far, only behind Messi and Lewandowski.

Still have no idea what people swe in him. Saw him get muscled off the ball several times by a west brom player.