Laughable Chimp

His xA90 is good too though. Its not as if he's just defensive.

Well last years champions lost 3-0 to a Watford who would later get relegated and I think this Leeds team is better than that Watford team.

I think the team is good enough to challenge for the title tbh. Calling it now.

Whatever happens, left back is the next priority position so if possible I'd like for us to be able to sign someone there. He doesn't even have to be an improvement to Targett, just a good enough backup to replace Taylor.

I don't think more competition was the reason Trez upped his game. Its not as if he was starting every game last season either, his position had always been under threat and I doubt Traore coming in was suddenly the kick in the pants he needed to put in more effort to be better. Particularly considering effort was the one thing we could never fault him on last season,.

You know, I started this comment trying to dispute the idea that he's a target man, but honestly he fits the target man mold more than anything else. Its just he doesn't really fit it very well imo. To use FM lingo, its like he's playing as a target man with a support duty. But i feel like you need a proper strike partner to play that role or some wide forwards. That meant Wesley ended up playing with early last season El Ghazi and Trezeguet a lot and that may have made him unable to perform his role very well. I'm not convinced he was used properly last season and it could be we were trying to pigeon-hole into a target man role because of his build and height. But he's not very good at winning aerial duels and his heading is abysmal from what we've seen so far. I'm not convinced his future for us is as a target man and his odd playing at times during early season may be evidence of this. He often times looked like he wasn't even a centre forward, like he wasn't exactly sure what he was supposed to be doing on that pitch for us, perhaps confused at the instructions he was asked to be carrying out. It could be he's just shit, but he really did have some name to him when he came from Belgium so I don't think that's it. And he's exhibited other skills that aren't I would immediately associated with a target man. The other role I could see him playing is a deep lying forward, but his key passes stats are actually pretty low. Of course key passes aren't everything in the offensive side and there's some data which supports the idea that he is okay at build-up play. Surprisingly good at long passing but surprisingly poor at short passes gives me mix signals on this. I do however dispute the idea that he is a good presser. All his stats which may suggest that he was a good presser(tackling, interceptions, passes blocked, etc) are all on the low side. I do feel like he did up his pressing around before he got injured however.

Here's what Smarterscout(same guys that predicted Samatta would be shit for us) has to say about he's performances so far in the RW position. Improved across the board, but particularly in his defensive contribution and ball retention. The fact that his defensive quantity metric has gone to 99 aligns with the fact that Trezeguet is currently the winger with the most amount of attempted tackles per 90 in the PL. 50% more than the next best Richarlison.(Ignoring sub appearances because those are a bitch to go through). All other relevant defensive stats are also really high for a winger aside from passes blocked which is still pretty decent.

He's currently number 18 in whoscored ratings for PL players this season which is already mighty impressive in of itself. Then you consider also that he only has one assist and 0 goals despite being a winger. Meaning that he managed to achieve this high rating almost purely through other means.

We're not exactly a team that takes the pedal off the gas once we get a comfortable lead do we? We keep going and going. And I feel like this is why our victories have been so large

I know this is probably going to go against the narrative of praise Smith is going to get here.(and honestly, he deserves praise for this result l But you can't tell me he subbed off Trezeguet for any other reason than he felt like he had to use a sub eventually. He's subs are so formulaic that I genuinely think I can write an algorithm tracing when and who he's going to sub on or off each game.

I didn't know we had such a highly rated young right-back coming through. But still, Kesler is only 17 and hasn't even been out on loan yet. I think its a bit too early to expect him to slot straight into our 25 man squad even by next season. In the mean time, I think Guilbert should definitely be backup.

I don't want to argue against your general point against statistics point. I think that's a point that we're just going to have to agree to disagree. But more specifically, do you think Conor's open play assists last season were unimpressive? The 2 assists in question were Wesley's second goal against Norwich and the second goal against Palace at the tail-end of last season. If you don't remember them exactly, there are highlights of those easily available on youtube.

Its true though. Even if you don't trust expected assists to be accurate here, he still had 2 actual assists in open play last season. That might not sound like much, but Jack had 3 open play assists and played near 4 times the amount of minutes Conor did last season. Like, Jack only had 5 assists total last season. Its not a large amount. I'm not trying to argue that Jack and Conor are similar level players, but if you look purely at their assists per minute ratio, even just in open play, they're about the same level. And that's being generous to Jack here. Edit: My bad, Jack had 6 assists instead of 5. Point still stands though.

Its always been about greed. Whether they charged a fiver or charged 50 dollars.

Its not secret that I'm a big fan of Conor, I think he provides something unique that our first 11 doesn't despite his clear deficiencies. Nakamba can't pass or possibly do anything else footballing related well, but he can tackle and he can intercept. I believe he was one of the highest in the league last season in these statistics. Hause is an absolute monster in the air even if he's bad at directing those headers and is the worst passer of any of our defenders I can't really say much bad about Engels. I think he's more than capable as cover for us if he isn't injured. There was a reason he was first choice for us along with Mings at the start of last season and I remember lots of people feeling very optimistic about this partnership. The only bad game I remember him having for us was against Leicester. Elmo is arguably one of the best crossers of the ball in the PL. He's just a bit old and lacks some pace. Davis has all the attributes of a striker aside from finishing. And Traore was a 19mil pound signing from Lyon and had some decent stats whilst he was with them. Many of the players on our bench have some clear deficiencies in their play, that's why they're on the bench. But they also have their strengths, strengths that have at varying times become valuable to us during the course of last season. I don't think we should expect to have several gamechangers on our bench, we're a team that finished 17th last season for god's sake, we shouldn't expect to have that luxury. But I do think the players on the bench can provide value to the team, as they have done so in the past when called upon. They're not worthless is what I'm saying, and we should call upon them more if we need to.

The idea that the current joint second top assister in the PL(whilst playing one game less than everyone else mind you) is not PL quality is laughable.

I do think his open play contribution is a bit underrated here. Defensively, fine he's a liability. But offensively he contributes even outside of setpiece opportunities. Conor only had 1 goal and 3 assists for set pieces last season. Even if you remove all that, he still has 2 goals and 2 assists from open play. His open play xA90 was much higher than any of our other CMs last season and equal to Grealish's open play xA90 last season.

Been trying to get a better idea of Luiz's style of play. Its intriguing me that we've basically had a player play an entire season with us and we're still not really sure what his style of play actually is. The one thing that I think we all agree Luiz has is technical ability. But technical ability by itself doesn't tell us much. I think part of the problem with Luiz is that he's almost like a jack of all trades. He doesn't do any singular thing particularly well or often, at least he doesn't do them well or often enough to define his role. But he's not terrible at any particular thing either. -He does contribute defensively, but no where near enough to be called a destroyer or holding midfielder. -He's passing is okay, not great, not terrible. -He's not high-scoring or high assisting but he does have a couple of goals and assists and can chip in with an occasional long shot. -He's not lazy or static on the field but he's definitely not our midfield engine covering every blade of grass. -One of our lower end set-piece takers. Not first choice for a free kick or corner taker, but does take them when our first choices don't. I do think Luiz has talent and as mentioned before, his technical ability is there to see. But I don't think his assets are being used to the best of their abilities. Whether that's on him still figuring his own playing style out or Smith not properly utilizing him, who knows.

I still think he's good. Maybe its me being biased because I want him to come good, but I do think he contributes to the team more than Samatta, Wesley or Davis did even in a match like this. Its his movement that i really enjoy seeing in a striker, something that I rarely if ever saw with Wesley or Samatta.

Yeah. overall I'm willing to chalk this up to a bit of a freak result. Ward Prowse had 24 direct freekicks last season and only scored 2 of them. He had 2 of those today and scored both of them.

Smith never subs off Mcginn or Grealish in a league game, no matter how badly they play.

No shots, no successful dribbles and 4 unsuccessful touches. Bad day at the office for Mcginn

Yeah, Luiz definitely isn't a destroyer. Thing is, I'm not entirely sure what he is either. I used to think he was a great passer, but his passing stats aren't very good either. They're not bad, but they're definitely not particularly good.

Looking at Nakamba's history, I didn't realize we bought so many ex-Brugge players in one summer. Wonder if there was any specific connection we have with Brugge.

Its a valid criticism. His decision making was suspect and he could easily have done better at this exact point. That doesn't diminish everything he did up until that point, but the greatness of what he did previously shouldn't diminish the criticism of what he did at this point either.