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Aurier is raw but has something about him, although Trippier is better right now.
Massive rose tints regarding Walker though. We did not sell an elite defender, and here’s the people who watch him every week.
Sounds like Walker pre Poch to me:
Kyle Walker : 2018/19 performances
Massive rose tints regarding Walker though. We did not sell an elite defender, and here’s the people who watch him every week.
Sounds like Walker pre Poch to me:
Kyle Walker : 2018/19 performances
I think we will be looking for a replacement in the summer. His attempt at giving Everton the equaliser nearly worked
He actually finds it impossible to go a whole 90 mins without at least one brain fart.
BT Sport pundit Rio Ferdinand brands Kyle Walker a ‘liability at the top level’
Could be the Trippier thread on here.
Agreed...Trippier has overtaken Walker in the England team too. He is a far superior attacker and footballer in general, and defensively they are par.
Trippier without pace is Trippier...a top 3 CB. Thats just facts....look at the table over the last 3 seasons.
Might be some conjecture here but I truley believe Walker without pace is a Blackburn player...he´s had two top seasons in some 11 years, and we royally milked City for every penny and ended up with Aurier and Moura for the money.
Aurier can be something, but his game is still clearly suited to European football. Needs to adapt to the PL, but given time, he´ll get there...Im not so sure he´ll get that time though, but you never know.
I'm not the one trying to upgrade 6 or 7 positions.
I'm suggesting maybe 3 or 4 players in - but even that's probably a max for the first team, I'd prefer one to be a 'one for the future' (Dele or Foyth type signing)
Your stance on the selling side of things (in recent posts) paints a different picture...
...Or are you cool with an even smaller squad next season?
No to the last question, if anything a tad larger.
More out than in as Janssen needs to go, but already replaced by Llorente, N'Koudou needs to go, never played much, and probably replaced by Moura.
But I'd like to see a couple of Spurs youth start to be brought through, and the likes of Skipp and Walker-Peters play more than this season.
So squad is actually same size for established players (ie excluding Janssen and N'Koudou who jointly made about 2 appearances) but fringe players Skipp and Walker-Peters playing a bigger part and introducing one or two youngsters making between them maybe 15 - 20 appearances (but only a couple of starts)
Aurier is a very similar package to Walker, just the younger version. Good athlete, but not very bright, and their technique, concentration and composure go a bit doolally when put under pressure at either end. If you think back to where Walker was pre Poch, that's pretty much the Aurier we bought.
I think Aurier would no doubt benefit from a proper run of games, like any player, but I think if we gave that run of games to KWP, he's got the potential to even better than both Aurier and Trippier.
But the criticism Trippier gets is ridiculous, especially when you put into context the other Rb's in this league and around Europe. There's so few Lahm's, Alves's and Syrna's these days.
+ Dembele's already gone. Meanwhile, Skipp & KWP are already in the squad.
Are there any other academy lads ready for a senior call-up? (I suspect it'll be another year or so til we see anything of Parrot... Anyone else realistically on the horizon?)
5, 6, 7 senior players out vs 3 or 4 senior players in = smaller senior squad.
Ultimately, all I'm doing is urging caution; there's only so much business you can sensibly achieve in one window in terms of:
- No DOF so it all falls to Levy (fair to say he'll be particularly busy again this summer thanks to the stadium opening, so juggling act required),
- Player integration/gelling (see Magnificent Bale 7, Brenton's Liverpool & Everton more recently) is far from a given.... Also Poch typically takes best part of a year to break players in.
I'd still say that losing Jansen and N'Koudou is not a smaller squad - provided you define it as a useable squad, If N'Koudou had not been on loan he still could not have been registered in CL squad as there is not room, and same for Janssen.
But aside from Janssen and N'Koudou, I'd suggest Vorm (out of contract this season and wanted to move on last summer) probably needs to go to be replaced by an HG goalkeeper (query to GK coaches is whether Whiteman or Austin is ready to step up as 2rd GK), Wanyama (unless he rediscovers his 15/16 form) is also probably on the 'hit list; as he's not played much this season due to injury (and same last season) to be replaced by a fit player.
So that's 4 out of the door who are only marginally contributing to the squad this season.
So its only after these have gone (to be replaced by a 3rd GK and a fit outfield player v injured player) do we get into the question of who else needs upgrading.....and indeed the integration questions you rightly ask.
One of the advantages of bringing through youth is that the 'integration' period is relatively easy as they know the club, but what they do need is coaching to make them better players.
There's a few youngsters who could fit the bill of stepping up including :
Jack Roles (19) AM who is top of both goal scoring and assists charts for u23's. Not picked by Poch yet, query whether he thinks he's not robust enough (but has played 4 Checkatrade games v mens sides in League 1 and League 2), IMO probably as robust as Skipp.
Sam Sashoua (AM) 19 - appeared on bench last season, on loan this season to Spanish 3rd division side and first team regular there.
Tashan Oakley-Boothe (CM) 19 - Played well in pre-season 2017 and E u17 WC, started training with first team but lots of injuries since then missing pre-season 2018 and start of this season.
George Marsh (DM) 19 - Seemingly a Poch favourite after playing most of pre-season 2018 and making FA cup appearance. Limited technically but a 'busy' DM
TJ Eyoma (CB) 19 - As Marsh. but technically much better, slightly slow but otherwise no obvious flaws/
Japhet Tangana (CB) 19 - Spent most of pre-season 2018 playing for E u19's but made the Girona match. Excellent header of call and possibly decent LB option ala Jan.
I'd expect to see most of these involved in pre-season 2019 - especially as that overlaps with Copa America to which we will lose AM's Moura and Lamela and CB's Sanchez and Foyth.
I'm not expecting all to make it, but good to give Poch a choice.
This stood out for me too from bluemoon:
It was the break that wasn’t that killed me.
You know the one where the ball fell to him from an Everton corner and he, one of our fastest players, began to race forward with 4 team members running into space to his left?
It was there, on a plate to take an opportunity. He stalled and passed back.
It’s the same every game. It’s why we lost at Newcastle- not because LB was idiotic but -because our RB chokes any forward momentum every time.
We win inspite of him.
Said this last week and took pelters. He is so risk averse at going fwd that he offers next to nothing in that regard. Add that to his shaky defensive play of late and we have a problem brewing
I find it bizarre that some people think Walker is better going forward than Trippier. Even Aurier has a better cross on him than Walker. Has Walker ever even crossed a ball, in the air?
Walker has always been a very flawed player. He's one of the poorest players at City these days.
Genuine props on the youth review, but dude this is all bit convoluted considering my point.
as per my previous post said:
Let's consider for a moment the very real prospect of losing 1 or both of CE & TA this summer too or got forbid any other seniors we'd rather stay...
One can only do so much business in one window.... There's a mild scent of Fifa in the air.
If one or more of our stars want leave, then we need to deal with it - and that may mean we do less other business than we had hoped to do in order to properly replace the stars,.
But one possible reason why nothing happened last summer is our plans assumed Dembele and Alderweireld were definitely leaving, and when that didn't happen, we were caught out.
Moral of the story, enter TW with a plan to improve the squad, but have other plans available in case one or more players we prefer to stay (or their agents) decide they are leaving.
Indeed.
You could prob add Rose and maybe Llorente to that list too, but if anything, rather than being "caught out" surely their staying made it less vital that we did recruit????
I maintain it's a combo of limited funds and there being no-one we wanted being available for a feasible price.
What I would say is that if CE specifically leaves, it likely changes our plans completely in as much as tinkering with the fringes of the squad is suddenly forced to take a back-seat to ensuring we start the season with a suitable degree of creativity; be that by virtue of long-winded pursuit of a high caliber target at an agreeable price or a major revision of the way we play in order to put the creative emphasis on different positions.
Re the bit high lighted in blue - I meant our transfer strategy last summer could have principally been a 'reactive' strategy ie, to wait until Alderweireld/Dembele/Rose/whoever left and then chase through a list of possible replacements.
Problem we found was that when none of the expected happened we, for whatever reason,. didn't have plans for many 'positive; strategies' to enhance the squad and nothing came off for us. Agree could also have been money and limited value available. But IMO we could have bought a good young player (eg Brooks £12m) had we had him in our plans
I absolutely agree that if CE or TA leave we may find most of our energies are taken up with their replacement. But that shouldn't mean we plan everything around their going - we should always have a few plans of our own which we may execute whether or not the likes of CE or TA moves on.
I suspect Grielish was our guy in a similar vein.
We may mourn Brooks, but perhaps he'd have seen B'mouth as a better bet of regular football and gone there regardless (I can't begrudge any young player that thinks this way... "Back yourself" can be a bit too simplistic in some instances).
As for what we didn't do there was probably a degree of 'sell before we buy' involved as well... Cash flow concerns aside there's a logical benefit to knowing your true budget before you embark on any spending... e.g. Hypothetically if Dembele had already gone resulting in a bigger kitty, maybe we'd have bid 'harder' for Grielish.
Who knows! ....If/what/maybe: The pitfalls of being on the outside looking in.
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He was dropped for like 3 games after a poor performance against Palace, he's played in every game since, he's preferred to Danilo. In fact, only Sterling (1 more game), Laporte (5 more games), Bernado Silva (3 more games), Fernandinho (3 games) have played more than him in their entire squad this season, hardly proving the claim he's the poorest players at City!