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The Midfield Three


Delphinho123

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16 minutes ago, Kiwivillan said:

From what I can tell having a quick look last season 4 times we played Nakamba McGinn in mid 2 pairing with Luiz not starting, we beat Arsenal and  Leeds 1-0 and Spurs and Chelsea. The first 2 Barkley played and I've already said how Buendia is massive upgrade on Barkley. 

What's the problem based on those results? Is it because of meaningless Stoke friendly?

If we are being honest, as enjoyable as it was winning those games, we were lucky to beat Arsenal, Leeds and Chelsea. We were dominated in all of those matches and were reliant on missed chances and good goal keeping/defending to win. 

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Watkins
Buendia
Grealish
New
McGinn
New
Cash
Konsa
Mings
Targett
Martinez

Is what the recruitment team should be looking at. Personally, I’d like Bailey to come in and we play Buendia as the 10. We then just need to find a better no.6. Bissouma would be the dream signing in this position for me. 

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27 minutes ago, Lord Willard said:

Are people happy with Nakamba, McGinn and Hourihane starting the season? 

Well no but I imagine those three players will quite possibly never take the pitch together. As things stand with DL and Sanson not options I think it would be Nakamba and McGinn behind Grealish, Buendia and Traore. But I also think we will bring some more in.

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10 minutes ago, Adam2003 said:

Well no but I imagine those three players will quite possibly never take the pitch together. As things stand with DL and Sanson not options I think it would be Nakamba and McGinn behind Grealish, Buendia and Traore. But I also think we will bring some more in.

And you're happy with the Nakamba and McGinn pairing?! 

Because I'm not, that's not a PL central midfield, nowhere near the quality required 

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5 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

And you're happy with the Nakamba and McGinn pairing?! 

Because I'm not, that's not a PL central midfield, nowhere near the quality required 

Well I said I think more players will come in so don’t think it would be an issue but if that’s our lineup for a few games while we wait for Sanson and Luiz to come back then I wouldn’t think it would be a major disaster. 

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If we genuinely want to challenge for Europe then we need to sign two more starters in our central midfield (unless Buendia plays as a 10).

That’s just the way it is. Our current team isn’t good enough in the middle of the pitch to finish higher than 8th. We finished 11th last season and a large part of that was because at no point during the campaign did Smith know his best 3 in the middle of the pitch. Every now and again we’d look ok in there and it would work but it was always an uncomfortable watch. 

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12 minutes ago, Delphinho123 said:

If we genuinely want to challenge for Europe then we need to sign two more starters in our central midfield (unless Buendia plays as a 10).

That’s just the way it is. Our current team isn’t good enough in the middle of the pitch to finish higher than 8th. We finished 11th last season and a large part of that was because at no point during the campaign did Smith know his best 3 in the middle of the pitch. Every now and again we’d look ok in there and it would work but it was always an uncomfortable watch. 

I think that was partly because of what was in front of them.  On the ball AEG and Trez weren't strong / good enough (and Bertie a bit too mad!) to provide easy options for them.  Consequently they either passed to Jack (who was heavily marked) or looked to release Ollie down the channels.  Off the ball AEG, Trez, Ross and Bertie weren't strong enough defensively and so left the other 2 with more work to do. 

However, I think we have gone past McGinn's ceiling already (even with better team mates around him) - he's too predictable on the ball and off the ball he holds a guy up until they offload the ball and then he just lets them walk right past him when often they then collect a return pass.  I think Doug has a higher ceiling but he needs to be the playmaker rather than the disrupter.  The team's win ration when Nakamba was on the pitch were impressive last season but I really don't think he is anything other than a CM in a bottom half PL / top 6 Championship team.  Probably good enough for the squad but I can't see him getting much game time if we are really pushing the top 6 places.

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1 hour ago, Delphinho123 said:

Personally, I’d like Bailey to come in

He's legitimately worse than Traore defensively and you don't like Traore because he's bad defensively. At least Traore scores against good teams. Most of Bailey's goals last season were against relegation or bottom half teams i.e. a flat track bully

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2 minutes ago, Kiwivillan said:

He's legitimately worse than Traore defensively and you don't like Traore because he's bad defensively. At least Traore scores against good teams. Most of Bailey's goals last season were against relegation or bottom half teams i.e. a flat track bully

I don’t like Traore because he’s rubbish at most things. 

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1 minute ago, Delphinho123 said:

I don’t like Traore because he’s rubbish at most things. 

That's grade A bullshit. 7 goals 7 assists in 2300 minutes is phenomenal first season no pre season etc. Goal in each game against Manure plus Leicester and Chelsea. 

Bet you'd never heard of Bailey a week ago. 

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5 minutes ago, Kiwivillan said:

That's grade A bullshit. 7 goals 7 assists in 2300 minutes is phenomenal first season no pre season etc. Goal in each game against Manure plus Leicester and Chelsea. 

Bet you'd never heard of Bailey a week ago. 

I like him but there's more to football than those stats though

If traore can find consistency in his 2nd season then he'll be great for us 

His problem in year 1 was that his inconsistency wasn't game to game it was touch to touch, never seen a guy take a world class first touch and a pub league second like him before, strange strange player, part of why he's fun 

But if it's not this summer then it'll be next summer that we try and find someone better than him 

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9 minutes ago, Kiwivillan said:

That's grade A bullshit. 7 goals 7 assists in 2300 minutes is phenomenal first season no pre season etc. Goal in each game against Manure plus Leicester and Chelsea. 

Bet you'd never heard of Bailey a week ago. 

If Traore was so good, we wouldn’t have broke the club record transfer fee on a player that plays in the same position as him. Nor would we then go and bid £25m on Bailey who plays…. In his position.

Luckily, the management team knows where our deficiencies lie and want to sign players that will push us on from our 11th place finish. 

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.......................Martinez.................

Cash......Konsa...Mings.....Targett

...................Nakamba.....................

..............Ramsey......Sanson..........

Buendia........Watkins.......Grealish

I'd play this team.

May seem harsh on McGinn but he's been really poor for a long time and he has got to earn his place back for me.

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10 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

.......................Martinez.................

Cash......Konsa...Mings.....Targett

...................Nakamba.....................

..............Ramsey......Sanson..........

Buendia........Watkins.......Grealish

I'd play this team.

May seem harsh on McGinn but he's been really poor for a long time and he has got to earn his place back for me.

Ramsey is shit(so far). His biggest/only good attribute is his pressing and we already have enough of that with Nakamba.

Put Luiz in, and this coming from someone whos very far from his biggest fan. 

Mcginn's and Sanson's stats seemed too similar when I checked. I don't think both can play together.

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It seems quite obvious right now that it should be Nakamba + two others. McGinn will undoubtedly be one of them, at least to start the season.

I suspect the other will end up being Grealish. It's where he wants to play, and with better players outside of him it may well be where he should play if we are to be at our most effective as a team. If a Nakamba can lay the ball off to a Grealish, his lack of progressive passing isn't really a concern.  

The rumours (see Percy) were that we wanted ESR to play on the left. All other solid attacking links have been to wingers. So it's probably safe to count Grealish as one of your 3, IMO. 

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