Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - Dan

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 138
1
General Football & Sports / Re: Anything England Football
« on: March 25, 2024, 09:42:02 PM »
This is by no means the best england side in my life time but it is relative to the other nations. Think back to that 2002 and 2006 world cup the golden generation we were still comfortably miles worse than the Italians, French, Germans, Brazilians and Argentines possibly even the Dutch.

Now by relative terms arguably besides the French we are the best side on paper. [I know we don't play on paper] a lot of the big hitters the Germans and the Italians don't have the persdonel they have had over past years and even the south American giants aren't all that. Don't think a good side has won the world cup since Spain 2010 the last few it's all been very marginal

Edit: to the point we are not the best ever but we are relatively and Southgate is blowing our chances at using our slight advantage. Next world cup has even more sides and more knock out so becomes even harder to win. He should have gone after he fluffed it v Croatia in world cup and if anybody had any doubts he should have gone after surrendering a 1-0 lead to Italy that was awful

This kind of proves my point about ignorance of the wider footballing world. That Croatia team had Brozovic - Modric - Rakitic in midfield, not one of England's midfielders in the squad was even close to their quality on the ball. You have that level of disparity in midfield you're going to be in trouble. But somehow, because its Croatia, and we're England, it was a crime we didn't beat the better team on paper.

The Italy game is a bit similar. It's not that we couldn't have won, or couldn't have done better but we lost on penalties to a team on a world record undefeated run with a midfield that was far superior to ours. You have the far superior midfield, you probably control the game. That's just the reality of football.

2
General Football & Sports / Re: Anything England Football
« on: March 25, 2024, 09:14:12 PM »
The discourse about England is so heightened and usually pretty ignorant of the rest of the world. The England side is good, no doubt about it, top 10 in the world. But the spine is pretty weak, and teams with weak spines are never going to be favourites for tournaments. Whichever way you cut it, England don't have a top centre back to pair with Stones, and neither do England have even a good midfielder to go with Rice in midfield.

It's a flawed team that people have overrated due to a good few years between 2010-2018 when the squad was largely straight up bad. Because its no longer that, people jumped from "worst squad ever" in 2018 to thinking we were the best squad on the planet a couple of years later. Doesn't stack up. At the moment France have clearly the best squad in Europe, England's squad isn't really better than Portugal or Germany's. Then Italy, Netherlands, Belgium are all a bit behind but none a gaping chasm to us.

Southgate did a good job in 2018 and 2021. Average in 2022. Remains to be seen for the Euro's. Overall he'll go down as a good England manager with flawed in game management, albeit people overrating the sides he had. The 2018 side got revised from "worst England squad ever" at the start of the tournament to people blaming him for losing the world cup semi final in extra time, which I guess shows the ridiculousness of it all.

3
West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Tom Fellows
« on: March 22, 2024, 07:48:40 PM »
Fellows assisted England under 20s first 2 goals in a 5-1 win over Poland. Assisted our ex academy player Iroegbunam for the first.

4
West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Brandon Thomas-Asante
« on: March 13, 2024, 10:21:12 AM »
BTA is there or thereabouts an average championship striker (with the potential to get better), which makes him by far our best striker. He was in a bit of lull before his injury, as much I think due to over reliance on him this season thanks to injuries elsewhere. I find it hard to see how anyone could possibly have watched Wallace struggling up front in recent weeks and genuinely thought BTA wouldn't be an improvement.

5
West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Under 23's / Academy Thread
« on: March 12, 2024, 06:16:44 PM »
Difficult to tell at this point whether Villa even care about the signings or if its a "lovers scorned" situation from Hopcroft and Harrison. Their level of recruitment from our academy is unprecedented.

6
West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Carlos Corberan
« on: March 01, 2024, 10:41:14 PM »
Pipa clearly isn't rated, he's played 210 minutes for us all season despite being fit. He was a last minute cheap loan signing to add another body to the squad, most likely because we were out of options and had to rely on Corberan's contact book.

7
West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Last Six Games
« on: March 01, 2024, 10:30:44 PM »
Just need to keep our heads. 1.45 points a game gets us to 75 points, which you would think should be enough (although Hull and Norwich have been in annoyingly good form). To put into context, the last 11 games of last season when we didn't even do well and our season fizzled out we got 15 points.

8
Albion Matchday Forum / Re: After Match Debate
« on: March 01, 2024, 10:02:45 PM »
Huge win. We were comfortably the better team till the silly penalty then understandably it was nervy. Before then Coventry were limited to pot shots from distance, although even after the penalty we didn't concede any major chances.

It'd be huge disappointing if we aren't able to close out a play off spot from this position we've got ourselves into.

9
Albion Matchday Forum / Re: In Game Chat
« on: March 01, 2024, 08:26:15 PM »
Good start but we look fragile defensively. Far from convinced Pieters is a good match up against a huge physical player like Simms, he usually struggles against very physical problems. Bartley would probably cancel him out better.

10
General Football & Sports / Re: OFFICIAL CHAMPIONSHIP THREAD
« on: February 27, 2024, 01:56:14 PM »
Burnley absolutely walked the Championship last year - you could argue they've been a bit naive with the way they have gone about things this year, but I would expect another strong performance from them.

I don't know if it follows  that easily, the only teams relegated with less than 28 points who've won automatic promotion the following season were us in 03/04, Sunderland 06/07, and Norwich 20/21.

It's not easy to shake off as bad a season as Burnley and Sheffield United are having. The squad they came down with was much better than their current one, and Kompany is no longer fresh and new also.

11
General Football & Sports / Re: OFFICIAL LEAGUE 1 and LEAGUE 2 THREAD
« on: February 27, 2024, 12:09:13 PM »
Reading are having a near miraculous season to be avoiding the relegation zone with all their issues - 18 points deduction and still 3 points above! This after handicapping themselves by signing David Button as their keeper too.


12
West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Alex Palmer
« on: February 26, 2024, 06:34:44 PM »
Interesting comment. Which of the rest of our current first team squad would you also describe as "average"? And which would you describe as "above average" or "below average"? I'm interested in where you rate Palmer compared to the others.

I said he's average at pretty much everything, that makes him a decent keeper at this level. As players go. I'd prefer that to say, an excellent shot stopper who's awful with crosses (Sam Johnstone). Jed Wallace is probably the most similar outfield player. Ok at most things without really excelling at any aspect.

13
Albion Matchday Forum / Re: Pre Match Chat
« on: February 26, 2024, 01:57:58 PM »
Huge game. We haven't really been good enough in these games against the teams we're competing with for the play offs in terms of getting over the lines with wins recently. A draw isn't a bad result in the grand scheme of things, although with Hull and Norwich in top form we'll need to be keeping up the regular wins. The upsides of a win would be massive though, and go a long way to a fatal blow to Coventry's hopes.

14
General Football & Sports / Re: OFFICIAL PREMIER LEAGUE THREAD
« on: February 26, 2024, 01:53:12 PM »
Next seasons championship should be pretty open if we can stay competitive. Everton would just be another 100 point team if they came down thanks to points deductions.

15
West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Alex Palmer
« on: February 26, 2024, 01:50:01 PM »
He's average at pretty much every aspect, which makes him a decent championship keeper. I've seen absolutely zero evidence to suggest Griffiths is better in any aspect of the game, or would become better than Palmer with more gametime.

16
Albion Matchday Forum / Re: After Match Debate
« on: February 24, 2024, 02:29:58 PM »
Decent performance against the divisions second most in form team - who also have probably the best 11 outside the relegated teams, have to be realistic. An away point here is decent stuff. We didn't give much up, and really with better finishing we could have got even more.

17
Albion Matchday Forum / Re: In Game Chat
« on: February 24, 2024, 01:57:16 PM »
The last time Reach scored or assisted was May '22, really into the "definition of madness" bringing him on again and again. At best he puts in a 6/10 shift. Surely Swift or Weimann would be far superior options who actually have some track record of being able to score or assist goals for us.

18
Albion Matchday Forum / Re: In Game Chat
« on: February 24, 2024, 01:52:30 PM »
We have a strong bench for this level, hopefully we can be proactive and make use of it.

19
Albion Matchday Forum / Re: In Game Chat
« on: February 24, 2024, 01:10:13 PM »
Not much you can do there really, Palmer maybe could have done a bit better but if someone smashes it in the top corner from that angle that's just how it goes sometimes.

Hopefully we can keep going, a draw isn't a bad result here. Important we don't lose our heads.

20
Albion Matchday Forum / Re: In Game Chat
« on: February 24, 2024, 12:54:32 PM »
Good start from us, should be leading. Fellows once again with a full back on toast.

Johsnton certainly has something also but hes inconsistent with his decision making, will be a good signing at the right price.

21
West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: System / Tactics / Personnel
« on: February 21, 2024, 08:30:39 PM »
kipre we should be looking to keep and Mowatt on a reduced terms contract.

The rest need to go. We need to cut the wage budget down drastically. If we were promoted probably keep only Kipre.

22
West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Yann M'Vila signs short term deal
« on: February 19, 2024, 04:57:24 PM »
On a short term deal hopefully its relatively low money gamble, although our track record with these kind of free transfers in recent years is absolutely horrendous.

Still, with Molumby out we do look pretty light in central midfield options, though im skeptical someone who last had a club last season, and is 33, is going to be able to add much in the short time we have left this season.

Dood suggesting this may be announced tomorrow

Said he's already training with us just had visa issues to sort.

I see he was wrong again (this post dates back to Thursday), but is there really any point keep quoting him?

How he has the brass to keep pretending to be ITK after that Reggie Cannon farce is beyond me. Let alone previous claims like Bartley had been released.

23
West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Ian Pearce
« on: February 16, 2024, 01:48:48 PM »
It's always difficult assessing exactly how much he's to blame but clearly we need to make massive changes in recruitment going forward. Our policy till now has been to lazily sign known quantities from the championship on very high wages which has lead to the very unsustainable situation.

Clearly though our market has continually been premier league reserves and the championship. That's a very small market to limit ourselves to - particularly when going forward, we will not be paying wages to attract the best players. We will need to look for value elsewhere, be that lower leagues, or abroad, but we've shown zero capability of doing that. Indeed I remember someone reporting from the Mark Miles fan meeting that the club was unlikely to make signings form abroad this season with the loosened restrictions on foreign players as we didn't have the set up  for it! How much of that is Pearce or from elsehwere I don't know, but its clear we're in a increasingly limited marketed and making it very difficult for ourselves.

Realistically going forward, player sales HAVE to be a pretty big revenue stream to allow us to be competitive at this level, but currently almost no one we sign appreciates in value. That has to change. To be fair to Pearce, the clubs recruitment has been terrible ever since Ashworth left, short sighted and largely far too reliant on high wage experienced players. We've been very, very poor at scouting potential the last 10+ years. We went from the leaders in the area (though, what could have been if Peace had backed Ashworth's scouting system as an investment, like its been to Brighton, instead of the penny wise and pound foolish approach we took).

24
West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Guochuan Lai
« on: February 16, 2024, 09:47:32 AM »
It is a wonder someone so staggeringly poor of  a businessman got into the position he was in in the first half place. The warning signs were there from day one when he massively overpaid for a club that the owner was desperate to sell, and would only retain its value by staying in the premier league. Except our only plan for staying in the premier league seemed to be going that pulís record of no relegations would last forever. Beyond that it’s clear he knew nothing about football, and has been continuously taken for a ride by terrible appointments of “football men”. He came in claiming we’d keep running sustainably, unlike a lot of terrible owners he never promised the earth, he was just incredibly incompetent at seemingly everything. It will I guess forever be a mystery of what he expected to happen owning this club.

Thankfully he at least sold us, taking on a massive loss, rather than holding on to the club was in the ashes . As bad as he was, you only have to look at the likes of reading to see it could have ended far worse.


25
West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Brandon Thomas-Asante
« on: February 13, 2024, 10:20:41 PM »
He's been fine this season, hje's just in a bit of a rut that all strikers go through. He's being overplayed due to injuries to Maja/Dike, but hopefully Weimann/Marshall can pick up more minutes going forward to share the load.

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 138