PaulC Posted October 7, 2013 Share Posted October 7, 2013 Signed for £4.5 million. Already thrown in & got the winner & 3 points for us at Norwich, contributed against Man City. I'd say stick with him-What else are you going to get for under £5mil? Balls were not "hoofed" up to him BTW. Guzan may have gone long at times but with the exception of Clark, our defenders played it out. Given the problems Clark had last season & the criticism he got for not dealing with situations, I'd say he could be forgiven for his safety first attitude at this point in time. I thought he cost £7 million I'm fairly certain it was 4.5. HairyHands said as much. The thing is that once the papers get 7 million in their heads there's no going back. No journalistic glory in saying "oh, actually it was only four and a half." ok Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeepDish Posted October 7, 2013 Share Posted October 7, 2013 He has been good once, decent once and bad once. Just as expected when buying players from abroad. Think Weimann was a lot poorer against Hull. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ulver Posted October 7, 2013 Share Posted October 7, 2013 Kozak had absolutely nothing to work with yesterday. THe service was disgraceful. There's not a great deal you can do with 100 thumped 80 yard passes when a defender is all over you. We haven't seen what Kozak can do yet because he hasn't had a chance. Apparently we already had a striker called Darren Bent who suffered from all of the above too Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P3te Posted October 7, 2013 Share Posted October 7, 2013 Kozak had absolutely nothing to work with yesterday. THe service was disgraceful. There's not a great deal you can do with 100 thumped 80 yard passes when a defender is all over you. We haven't seen what Kozak can do yet because he hasn't had a chance. Apparently we already had a striker called Darren Bent who suffered from all of the above too So we've cut about 40k from the wage bill and stood still for now. Not the end of the world that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AntrimBlack Posted October 7, 2013 Share Posted October 7, 2013 I have always thought that Kozak was bought as a back up for Benteke for just this eventually, not a replacement. I just hope I was correct. To be fair to Kozak, it is early days, and he is at least a useful additional to the squad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TRO Posted October 7, 2013 Share Posted October 7, 2013 (edited) The "service" debate is always interesting to me. It's like what comes first the chicken or the egg, is it poor delivery from the midfield/wingers or poor forward play in not giving them a decent targets to aim for? It's so easy and could be apt to blame the suppliers, but I'm also dubious about our movement up front. It's been a long time since we had good players that can do either of those skills. Edited October 7, 2013 by TRO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lapal_fan Posted October 7, 2013 Share Posted October 7, 2013 Beneke didn't pull up tree in his first 10 games, let's give the fella a chance to learn the language, settle in, get to know his team mates etc. I'm sure he'll be good for 10 goals a season this year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heid3ster Posted October 7, 2013 Share Posted October 7, 2013 The "service" debate is always interesting to me. It's like what comes first the chicken or the egg, is it poor delivery from the midfield/wingers or poor forward play in not giving them a decent targets to aim for? It's so easy and could be apt to blame the suppliers, but I'm also dubious about our movement up front. It's been a long time since we had good players that can do either of those skills. I was watching a replay of the Hull game (1st half) and our movement up front is non-existent. So much of our game is affected by this. We complain about passing backwards and relying on long balls and not having an AM to rely on, but the problem is our attackers are too static and too narrow. In the first half against Hull, we retained possession nicely, passed it out of the back, and then either Delph or KEA or Westwood would get the ball, see no movement in front of them, and go sideways or back again. This would continue for a little bit until Hull put a little pressure on, and then Guzan would go long. I don't think the problem is needing a tricky AM to unlock defenses. As much as it would be nice to have a more attack-minded center midfielder running forward and help creating that space, we already have three attackers on the field. Those three guys need to move into space and give our current midfielders (all of them capable of threading a through ball) something to aim for. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TRO Posted October 7, 2013 Share Posted October 7, 2013 The "service" debate is always interesting to me. It's like what comes first the chicken or the egg, is it poor delivery from the midfield/wingers or poor forward play in not giving them a decent targets to aim for? It's so easy and could be apt to blame the suppliers, but I'm also dubious about our movement up front. It's been a long time since we had good players that can do either of those skills. I was watching a replay of the Hull game (1st half) and our movement up front is non-existent. So much of our game is affected by this. We complain about passing backwards and relying on long balls and not having an AM to rely on, but the problem is our attackers are too static and too narrow. In the first half against Hull, we retained possession nicely, passed it out of the back, and then either Delph or KEA or Westwood would get the ball, see no movement in front of them, and go sideways or back again. This would continue for a little bit until Hull put a little pressure on, and then Guzan would go long. I don't think the problem is needing a tricky AM to unlock defenses. As much as it would be nice to have a more attack-minded center midfielder running forward and help creating that space, we already have three attackers on the field. Those three guys need to move into space and give our current midfielders (all of them capable of threading a through ball) something to aim for. When I wrote about the forward movement, my thoughts went back to little, Shaw, Yorke all players whose movement was perfect for any midfielders...now I see Sturridge and Suarez whose movement is also a magnet for the perfect through ball Just a thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turnbull Posted October 7, 2013 Share Posted October 7, 2013 I suppose the cross-shot from Tonev late on in the Hull game was a perfect example of how static we can be, there was plenty of space for someone to commit but nobody did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pelle Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 3 games and some are already writing him off. Patience is a virtue, my friends. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morpheus Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 Just on the movement issue which i totally agree with that actually must come down to the coaching and surely Lambert and his staff must see we're more than a little static at times and too easy to mark. While Kozak doesn't seem to have a turn of pace to quickly find space we should however have more movement running off him when he is the target man. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sharkyvilla Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 3 games and some are already writing him off. Patience is a virtue, my friends. I know it's daft. What exactly is the point of writing them off? Just some weird pleasure of being boringly negative at any opportunity. He's barely been in the county 15 minutes, scored a winner and contributed in other ways. He's not the finished product yet so I don't see why people judge him so fast based on he evidence of a lot of Lambert's other signings improving steadily on the whole. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qwpzxjor1 Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 I don't think anyone is writing him off. But we're certainly expecting a bit more from him as he develops and settles in. Benteke always had the advantage of having a fantastic natural instinctive for movement. When we signed him he couldn't shoot, but we've worked on that with technique training. Kozak appears to be the opposite, the fella can shoot, but his movement is either non-existent or he's moving to the wrong areas. It's a much harder thing to teach than shooting technique, but it can be done, and it's something which is only going to get better with experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villan_007 Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 (edited) From playing for Lazio and being the europa league top scorer to 3 games for villa and being labeled shit - only on VT Edited October 8, 2013 by villan_007 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaulC Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 From playing for Lazio and being the europa league top scorer to 3 games for villa and being labeled shit - only on VT He didn't get a single league goal for Lazio though. That is worrying! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villan_007 Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 (edited) From playing for Lazio and being the europa league top scorer to 3 games for villa and being labeled shit - only on VT He didn't get a single league goal for Lazio though. That is worrying! That had something to with Klose being the main man and him only starting 4 out of 18 games. Anyway I've bolded the bit you seem to have missed. Also what 2 in 2 for his country so far? yeah pants though Edited October 8, 2013 by villan_007 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliffy Biro Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 Prbably is you cant criticise anyones performance without being blasted for writing him off, yes we all know hes new and it may take time but does that mean people cant discuss the player in a thread that was made to do so without being ridiculed? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heid3ster Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 (edited) Prbably is you cant criticise anyones performance without being blasted for writing him off, yes we all know hes new and it may take time but does that mean people cant discuss the player in a thread that was made to do so without being ridiculed? I think "writing a player off" refers to posters who say things like "He'll never be good enough" or "he'll never be as good as Benteke" on the basis of about three performances. That's writing off. Saying "he didn't have a good game vs. Hull" is fair comment, or saying "he needs to work on link up play" or "he didn't win many aerial duels, needs to work on that" or even "he has a long way to go" -- all fair enough criticism. It's eminently possible to criticize a player's performance without saying "He'll never be good enough, I don't know why we bought him." It's an unnecessary snap judgment and it's been shown so often to be untrue with other players. Bacuna was written off after his very first performance and now people are singing his praises. EDIT: I may be conflating a couple of threads (Tonev's maybe?), as I went back a couple of pages and do NOT see anyone in this thread saying "He'll never be good enough." I might not have gone back far enough. Anyway, my point stands - it's possible to criticize a performance without writing a player off. Edited October 8, 2013 by heid3ster Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaulC Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 From playing for Lazio and being the europa league top scorer to 3 games for villa and being labeled shit - only on VT He didn't get a single league goal for Lazio though. That is worrying! That had something to with Klose being the main man and him only starting 4 out of 18 games. Anyway I've bolded the bit you seem to have missed. Also what 2 in 2 for his country so far? yeah pants though No obviously not pants. I hope he does come good. I haven't been totally convinced as yet but he's new to the Premier League and he should adapt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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