Quote from: Risso on March 06, 2021, 12:10:08 AMElmo has been the main factor in two losses in the three games he's started since Cash has been out. How much worse could it be? I'm not a fan of laying blame at an individual's feet, but I can't help feeling that if Cash played, we don't concede three goals that we did. But I don't disagree with the club's thinking on Guilbert. Yeah, ideally we'd have two fairly equally talented players on the payroll competing for every shirt and still be able to develop our youths, but we're only now emerging from a full decade of shit and we're not yet able to offer enough football for that to be desirable to players and club. I really do think it's just Sod's Law that a player that looked like he could run forever then picks up an injury whilst trying to step over a not particularly high blade of grass the minute his perennial understudy walks out the door.
Elmo has been the main factor in two losses in the three games he's started since Cash has been out. How much worse could it be?
I think you have to be realistic about what you can expect from a back up player. It’s someone who is, with the exception of teams in Europe, likely to only play 5-8 game a season at the most and be happy to do so. And they’ve got to be able to just drop into the team with a good performance as and when required which isn’t easy. Throw in the fact that we have only had four transfer windows in the Premier League and came up basically without a squad, it don’t think it’s horrendous that Elmo is currently our back up right back.To be honest, I’m not sure there are many great back up full backs in the league, other than at a few of the clubs in Europe. I personally prefer Guilbert to Elmo, but I don’t really think there is a huge different between them. I also expect that it’s fairly likely neither will be here next season anyway.
Quote from: Luke8 on March 05, 2021, 11:17:14 PMI think you have to be realistic about what you can expect from a back up player. It’s someone who is, with the exception of teams in Europe, likely to only play 5-8 game a season at the most and be happy to do so. And they’ve got to be able to just drop into the team with a good performance as and when required which isn’t easy. Throw in the fact that we have only had four transfer windows in the Premier League and came up basically without a squad, it don’t think it’s horrendous that Elmo is currently our back up right back.To be honest, I’m not sure there are many great back up full backs in the league, other than at a few of the clubs in Europe. I personally prefer Guilbert to Elmo, but I don’t really think there is a huge different between them. I also expect that it’s fairly likely neither will be here next season anyway.This is exactly my thoughts. The only thing I'd add is that we'll get more money for Freddie now, given his form in the French league, than we would with him sitting about on out bench (which looked like the alternative at the time). Elmo's off on a free regardless. From a purely financial point of view we've done the right thing in my book. We need to start moving on our backup players so we can replace them with higher calibre players.
I would say this is probably the hardest part of the step up from a mid-table to top six team. Having a happy balance of players in a squad, rotating them at times, but keeping them all on their toes and fighting for a place.
A mistake in hindsight. Nobody really thought this was a huge issue at the time. Two things will always be undefeated: Hindsight and Father Time
Quote from: Ian. on March 06, 2021, 11:54:48 AMI would say this is probably the hardest part of the step up from a mid-table to top six team. Having a happy balance of players in a squad, rotating them at times, but keeping them all on their toes and fighting for a place.Smith didn't even try though. More worrying he publicly scoffed at the idea of players suffering from fatigue only a few weeks back. If he had kept giving the likes of Hourihane and Guilbert minutes earlier in the season, we would be better served now. It might be a surprise poor result or two along the way but over a 38 game season it would balance out. A number of us were fearful of a MON style collapse around March from early in the season when Deano was refusing to even bring subs on. Anyway, let's see how today goes but Elmo will certainly be targeted again.
Quote from: brontebilly on March 06, 2021, 12:03:34 PMQuote from: Ian. on March 06, 2021, 11:54:48 AMI would say this is probably the hardest part of the step up from a mid-table to top six team. Having a happy balance of players in a squad, rotating them at times, but keeping them all on their toes and fighting for a place.Smith didn't even try though. More worrying he publicly scoffed at the idea of players suffering from fatigue only a few weeks back. If he had kept giving the likes of Hourihane and Guilbert minutes earlier in the season, we would be better served now. It might be a surprise poor result or two along the way but over a 38 game season it would balance out. A number of us were fearful of a MON style collapse around March from early in the season when Deano was refusing to even bring subs on. Anyway, let's see how today goes but Elmo will certainly be targeted again. There is no way of telling if that would be the case though. It could have benefitted us or we could have lost more games playing players that, even though I like them, showed on numerous occasions last season that they probably aren’t good enough. I’m not really sure exactly what people expected at this stage. We came up with barely half a squad, so the first season was spent rebuilding that. Now we have recruited to the stage the we have a pretty strong first 11/12. The next step is obviously to improve the rest of the squad - so replacing Elmo, Taylor, Davis etc.
I’m not really sure exactly what people expected at this stage. We came up with barely half a squad, so the first season was spent rebuilding that. Now we have recruited to the stage the we have a pretty strong first 11/12. The next step is obviously to improve the rest of the squad - so replacing Elmo, Taylor, Davis etc.
I'd prefer he was replaced by someone better than Cash.
Quote from: Lastfootstamper on March 06, 2021, 02:15:52 PMI'd prefer he was replaced by someone better than Cash. Then going on the above, we'd have to get rid of Cash.