Bjorn Engels - Goodbye and good luck

[paul_e]

Well Knight gets more stick than he probably deserves because we bought him, a very average premiership defender to push a future England captain and serial winner further down the pecking order and eventually forcing his departure

That's not really true though....Knight was bought as a backup player but played more due to likes of Laursen getting injured if I recall. As a backup player I don't think he was too bad. MON rated Curtis Davies higher than Cahill, that was the decision he got wrong.

I'm not surehow anything you've posted disproves anything SB said, he claimed he pushed Cahill further down the pecking order which led to him being sold, that's objectively true and doesn't require Knight to have been signed as a first team regular. This is exactly the same argument for why we need to be careful not to put too many barriers between the current youth players and the first team bench. We have a lot of players with massive potential who are improving quickly we shouldn't sign average squad filler to block their path.

[rob_bridge]

Well Knight gets more stick than he probably deserves because we bought him, a very average premiership defender to push a future England captain and serial winner further down the pecking order and eventually forcing his departure

That's not really true though....Knight was bought as a backup player but played more due to likes of Laursen getting injured if I recall. As a backup player I don't think he was too bad. MON rated Curtis Davies higher than Cahill, that was the decision he got wrong.

Knight was brought in as back up especially as Laursen had had a lot of injuries, that season he didn't so MON shifted Mellberg to the right. Yeah letting Cahill go was the big mistake for half the money and wages we paid Davies

[Drummond]

Bowery, Boulding, Bradley, Makoun....

[eamonn]

In a recent interview he gave to the Belgian press he said he and his wife were happy in Brum, his son was enrolled in primary school there and had settled well. A shame Dean never gave him a look-in after Lockdown but in fairness to Konsa and Mings, they have led by example since "Project Restart". I wonder will we bother get a replacement for Bjorn. They'll know that they are just back-up, possibly even behind Hause in the pecking order. Maybe one of our U23's could step-up if required?

[paul_e]

In a recent interview he gave to the Belgian press he said he and his wife were happy in Brum, his son was enrolled in primary school there and had settled well. A shame Dean never gave him a look-in after Lockdown but in fairness to Konsa and Mings, they have led by example since "Project Restart". I wonder will we bother get a replacement for Bjorn. They'll know that they are just back-up, possibly even behind Hause in the pecking order. Maybe one of our U23's could step-up if required?

I think part of the problem has been injuries. He was out from the restart until Christmas which was easily enough time for Mings and Konsa to form a top partnership and for Hause to establish himself as the 3rd choice. From there it's hard for a guy who hasn't played for the best part of a year to force his way in again. I doubt there was anything more to it than he'd dropped down the order whilst he was out and Smith was honest enough to tell him he was unlikely to play so he took the option to move on and went home to raise his family.

Cover is difficult, I'm not sure any of the kids are ready to play a run of games but as you say it's hard to know who we could sign.

[SoccerHQ]

Well Knight gets more stick than he probably deserves because we bought him, a very average premiership defender to push a future England captain and serial winner further down the pecking order and eventually forcing his departure

That's not really true though....Knight was bought as a backup player but played more due to likes of Laursen getting injured if I recall. As a backup player I don't think he was too bad. MON rated Curtis Davies higher than Cahill, that was the decision he got wrong.

It was the season we moved Mellberg to RB basically to play Knight alongside Laursen (who played pretty much every game that year). Davies was in and out and then did his achilles at Arsenal.

Cahill barely figured and was off like a shot in the January and who can blame him, a decision that did serious long term damage considering all the money we spent on more CBs in next few seasons.

[Border villan]

On Pravda; he has officially left.

[rob_bridge]

Best of luck. Like the others who left they all improved our squad and team at the time of signing

[N'ZMAV]

Well Knight gets more stick than he probably deserves because we bought him, a very average premiership defender to push a future England captain and serial winner further down the pecking order and eventually forcing his departure

That's not really true though....Knight was bought as a backup player but played more due to likes of Laursen getting injured if I recall. As a backup player I don't think he was too bad. MON rated Curtis Davies higher than Cahill, that was the decision he got wrong.

It was the season we moved Mellberg to RB basically to play Knight alongside Laursen (who played pretty much every game that year). Davies was in and out and then did his achilles at Arsenal.

Cahill barely figured and was off like a shot in the January and who can blame him, a decision that did serious long term damage considering all the money we spent on more CBs in next few seasons.

Probably comes down to the fact that MON was a funny buggar

[London Villan]

Did we really need laursen, mellberg, knight, davies, cahill… let alone the four or five full backs too.

[dcdavecollett]

MO'N should have persuaded Cahill to be more patient and wait for his chance. If he was in full-on martinet mode when the discussion was held, he probably didn't do that and just made him available.

McLeish, no mug, wanted to take him to the Sty. Sid was pissed off about this and was delighted when GC subsequently went to Bolton instead.

Within weeks of this move, Curtis Davies ruptured his Achilles at Arsenal and was out for the season. That would have been Garry's chance!!

Since then we have heard that, had Houllier stayed on, one of his priorities would have been to bring back Cahill from Bolton.

[wittonwarrior]

Players careers are determined over a few games - Unfortunately Bjorn made a few errors in a short space of time and lost confidence.  At the time was a much more high profile player than Konza  Good luck to you however Bjorn.