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Summer Transfers Window 2020


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23 minutes ago, Rightdm00 said:

This whole idea of bringing Jack back to the midfield glosses over the main reason he ended up in the front 3 to begin with. McGinn.

McGinn is also an #8 who likes to get in around around the box. That was fine in the Championship. We dominated possession versus most teams.  That allowed us to get away playing hourihane as our DM some games. We tried that midfield 3 of Connor, Jack and John one time in the Prem.  First game of the season at Spurs.  Spurs played through us like we weren't there. 

We then tried Jack and John together a couple more games with a dedicated DM.  That didn't last long because a 10 man Arsenal side had no issue retaining or winning back possession.  Our one defensive minded MF had to cover the entire midfield by himself while Jack and John went forward. It left our back line over exposed and was the main reason we leaked goals before the Covid shutdown. 

Telling John to be more defensive removes the main reason you play him. You want him around the box finishing chances like against Arsenal and Burnley. Moving Jack out wide was about shoring up our defensively weak midfield. You could sign all the 30 million pound wingers you want and that issue would remain. We would need a Kante level DM to accommodate Jack and John playing together in a midfield 3. Douglas is great but if he was at that level, ManC would have already activated that buyback clause. 

You want Grealish in the midfield, sign a strong, alethic box to box midfielder like Mckinnie. Pair that signing with Jack and Douglas and you have a top ten Prem level midfield. I'm a huge fan of McGinn, so for me Jack needs to stay out wide so we can fit both in our starting 11. 

 

So for me the main reason Jack ended up on the left was because of how rubbish our entire front three was.

The Mcginn thing is a part of his learning. To me Mcginn is a box to box midfielder. Which means he helps protect the defence, bit is also quick to get forward and support the attack. They also have to close down aggressively. We can see he is perfect for this role. He just needs to be a bit more savvy when choosing when to sit and when to go.  We know Jack will help out defensively so as long as we don't defend deep we won't leave many holes to exploit. 

The problem with  Mcginn and Jack was the tactics which were to counter attack. You can't really afford to have Jack in the middle if that's your approach. When you counter you have to drop deeper and allow teams into your half, this meant Jack was pinned back into his own third far too often, plus a propper ball winner is more useful as countering is all about winning the ball back in own half then attacking directly with pace. Jack is not suited to this. Jack was very selfless last season. Whether centre or left the tactics weren't to his strengths.

It's all about the tactics. If you play a slightly higher line you can press more effectively, keep the territorial battle further up the pitch. In which case you need midfielders that are comfortable under pressure, good passers, and hard workers. A midfield of Jack, John and David ticks all those boxes. The problem for us when we tried to do this was our wingers were wasteful in possession and offered very little penetration. Thus meaning we couldn't sustain pressure, and two of back 4 were slow (Engels and Targett), which left us vulnerable in behind.

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For most clubs in the world, us included £30m is a club record signing.

And with the economy in football imploding there will be very few clubs that can afford paying these fees this summer. To spunk that kind of money on a player this summer it has to be a key position (as it is for us) and it also has to be a player you are certain will be able to fit in and deliver. A usual season there would have been maybe 10-15 clubs interested (and with the money) in Sarr. This year it's probably less than 5.

And this goes for most players. We are extremely fortunate to (hopefully) have owners who are in a position to let us spend. No idea if we are in fact interested in Sarr thou.

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None of us have got any idea of who we’re looking at buying. The majority of links just look like a mix of rehashed old links, or they’ve been taken from someone’s suggestion and have snowballed. The rare genuine ITK’s aren’t around any more, and the likes of Gregg Evan’s don’t have a clue. Even people like Nixon and Percy only get to find anything out once it’s all been agreed and only just before it’s made public, if at all. 
 

There’s no reason to panic over lack of incomings just yet, there’s loads of time and it’s not like the club will just be sat around with nothing to do. Signings will happen, and they will improve us, I’m confident in that. 

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3 hours ago, Philosopher said:

OK so the Grealish left or centre argument is a simple one really.

In a team not seeing a lot of possession with no threat out wide, Jack has to play left. However if the team has quality on the wings without Jack playing left, and if that team gets a lot of possession you want Jack in the middle.

If you are ambitious the you sign 2 quality widemen and move Jack to the centre.  If you lack ambition you keep Jack left and pray no one decides to offer close to the asking price, because lets be serious here; Jack will not want to be here if we fail to show ambition and even more so if he can't play his favourite position.

We don't really have a choice.  Buy a quality front 3 and have Jack in the 8 / 10 role.

The Rachica link makes a lot of sense we definitely want him, he is perfect for our left. Particularly if you see Watkins and Wesley as our Centre forwards. It was mentioned in his thread that Rachica like to drift inside, run the inside left channel and break the offside trap. When you have a guy doing that they feed well of a link / Target man. When you factor the lack of pace our front line currently has, and how much we need a wide men like that it makes more sense. Then if you add in the fact Jack tends to drift left when played centrally you can see a lovely synergy on the left and centre attacking areas. If you factor in Watkins can play play on either wing as well as up front the movement and unpredictability of such an attacking forward line becomes apparent.

Then all we need is Buendia to play on the right, and we have a potentially top 6 standard attacking unit. You have 2 goal threats with a pace and power combination, and both technically proficient. 2 creators, one the most fouled player in the league that can dictate and control a game. The other adept at set pieces that has a chance creation record almost as good as Jacks and plays in our problem position. 

Plus all that for around 75m sounds like a plan!

batman masturbating GIF

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I wonder if players being away on holiday could be holding up a lot of moves. Plenty of players could have "signed" but not actually done it yet.

Edit: not just us. The whole market is very quiet.

Edited by Tomaszk
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Players being away will be the exact reason there hasn't been many transfers yet, it's no different from any close season, you never get many transfers in the month of June for example because everyone is on holiday. Even once they return, probably won't see much movement for another week or so.

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1 hour ago, Rightdm00 said:

This whole idea of bringing Jack back to the midfield glosses over the main reason he ended up in the front 3 to begin with. McGinn.

McGinn is also an #8 who likes to get in around around the box. That was fine in the Championship. We dominated possession versus most teams.  That allowed us to get away playing hourihane as our DM some games. We tried that midfield 3 of Connor, Jack and John one time in the Prem.  First game of the season at Spurs.  Spurs played through us like we weren't there. 

We then tried Jack and John together a couple more games with a dedicated DM.  That didn't last long because a 10 man Arsenal side had no issue retaining or winning back possession.  Our one defensive minded MF had to cover the entire midfield by himself while Jack and John went forward. It left our back line over exposed and was the main reason we leaked goals before the Covid shutdown. 

Telling John to be more defensive removes the main reason you play him. You want him around the box finishing chances like against Arsenal and Burnley. Moving Jack out wide was about shoring up our defensively weak midfield. You could sign all the 30 million pound wingers you want and that issue would remain. We would need a Kante level DM to accommodate Jack and John playing together in a midfield 3. Douglas is great but if he was at that level, ManC would have already activated that buyback clause. 

You want Grealish in the midfield, sign a strong, alethic box to box midfielder like Mckinnie. Pair that signing with Jack and Douglas and you have a top ten Prem level midfield. I'm a huge fan of McGinn, so for me Jack needs to stay out wide so we can fit both in our starting 11. 

 

A very good post imo.

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5 minutes ago, Tomaszk said:

I wonder if players being away on holiday could be holding up a lot of moves. Plenty of players could have "signed" but not actually done it yet.

Edit: not just us. The whole market is very quiet.

Quarantine might also be an issue, I know a lot done on phone and zoom but not easy for agents to jet everywhere so quickly now to finish deals

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