Johan Lange - appointed

[OCD]

Luiz has been excellent in that role at times, mainly after lockdown and at the start of last season before his form dipped (as most others' did).

[Vegas]

It doesn't matter how you dress it up, we only have one defensive midfielder in the squad, Marvelous Nakamba. Any other option is players out of position.

We go again..

Smith obviously doesn't agree with you and sees Luiz as the DM he wants to build around. He'll be judged on that this season I think.

Yep. Smith sees it as DM Luiz, with Nakamba as back up. Then SJM, Sanson and the young ‘uns further forward. Fair enough - let’s hope it all comes together.

[chrisw1]

I really like Luiz, just feel his best position would be box to box and not pigeon holed as our out and out DM.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

It doesn't matter how you dress it up, we only have one defensive midfielder in the squad, Marvelous Nakamba. Any other option is players out of position.

We go again..

Smith obviously doesn't agree with you and sees Luiz as the DM he wants to build around. He'll be judged on that this season I think.

For sure but it does beg the question why were we so interested in JWP? Two defensive midfielders? If so, once again, Dean and I don't agree.

[Mister E]

Smith obviously doesn't agree with you and sees Luiz as the DM he wants to build around. He'll be judged on that this season I think.

Smith sees Luiz, McGinn, Ramsey Major and  - presumably - Sanson as all-action MF who can pass, tackle, intercept, cover and score. I honestly think he believes that this approach obviates the need for a specialist DMF, except under specific circumstances, when he uses Nakamba. Even JWP would have fitted the above model (pass, tackle, intercept, cover and score).
At least, this is what I've come to believe in the absence of any evidence that a DMF was coming into the squad.

[Risso]

Smith obviously doesn't agree with you and sees Luiz as the DM he wants to build around. He'll be judged on that this season I think.

Smith sees Luiz, McGinn, Ramsey Major and  - presumably - Sanson as all-action MF who can pass, tackle, intercept, cover and score. I honestly think he believes that this approach obviates the need for a specialist DMF, except under specific circumstances, when he uses Nakamba. Even JWP would have fitted the above model (pass, tackle, intercept, cover and score).
At least, this is what I've come to believe in the absence of any evidence that a DMF was coming into the squad.

If he does believe that, then he’s wrong, and I believe he’ll pay for it with his job, before this season is out.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Smith obviously doesn't agree with you and sees Luiz as the DM he wants to build around. He'll be judged on that this season I think.

Smith sees Luiz, McGinn, Ramsey Major and  - presumably - Sanson as all-action MF who can pass, tackle, intercept, cover and score. I honestly think he believes that this approach obviates the need for a specialist DMF, except under specific circumstances, when he uses Nakamba.

He had McGinn playing there until it became at a bit embarrassing watching all the goals he was scoring for Scotland, so moved him further up the pitch.

[john e]

Mister E makes some good points though for me
I don’t believe we have to rigidly have all the positions absolutely specialist in their own areas but nothing else
A bit of total football never did anyone any harm If you have the right players to play in it

Nakamba is our archetypal defensive midfielder but he’s not good enough to pass the ball therefore we’re not looking for just a defensive midfielder we are looking for a good footballer
It’s laughable that people think JWP is a defensive midfielder he’s  a box to box midfielder that presses and is great at delivering The ball into dangerous areas and of course free kicks

I think it was Hooky that also made some good points on the transfer thread in which defensive mid would improve us and of course the ones we all know about would be hundred million quid and not gettable
And they are not just defensive mids they are all bloody good footballers as well

You need all round good footballers today to play in midfield and if you get enough of them and get the right ones it doesn’t matter what you call them they will do the job

[JJ-AV]

All of Luiz's good form has come as a lone pivot. I'm not saying he's not had bad games there, but he struggles higher up or next to McGinn IMO.

[paul_e]

Smith obviously doesn't agree with you and sees Luiz as the DM he wants to build around. He'll be judged on that this season I think.

Smith sees Luiz, McGinn, Ramsey Major and  - presumably - Sanson as all-action MF who can pass, tackle, intercept, cover and score. I honestly think he believes that this approach obviates the need for a specialist DMF, except under specific circumstances, when he uses Nakamba. Even JWP would have fitted the above model (pass, tackle, intercept, cover and score).
At least, this is what I've come to believe in the absence of any evidence that a DMF was coming into the squad.

True but, unless he's playing with Nakamba, Luiz is almost inevitably the deepest of the 3. I suspect it's because Luiz is pretty good at winning the ball back (but not as good as we'd like) and then has the technical and passing ability to create space and shift the ball forward on the break. When we were all worried he was going to get called back to Man City it was because he was doing that regularly but around the time of the covid outbreak his form dropped off a cliff and we saw little more than flashes of it for the rest of the season.

[Ads]

All of Luiz's good form has come as a lone pivot. I'm not saying he's not had bad games there, but he struggles higher up or next to McGinn IMO.

In Brazil they call in the steering wheel I think.

On form, he's a very good defensive midfielder.

[Risso]

All of Luiz's good form has come as a lone pivot. I'm not saying he's not had bad games there, but he struggles higher up or next to McGinn IMO.

In Brazil they call in the steering wheel I think.

On form, he's a very good defensive midfielder.

He's a good midfielder but I don't think you could accurately describe him as a DM due to how weak his tackling is.

[SoccerHQ]

It does seem strange that we've done so little in the weak European market, pretty much all the signngs have been known quantities and the youngsters presumably scouted by the Acadamy team.

Yep. I like the players we’ve bought, but it’s all quite obvious. Buying the player with the best stats from the Championship is what we did 4-5 years ago with Hourihane at the time, and Ings is this year’s Bent, although hopefully better.

I'll hold my hand up and say I'd never even heard of Leon Bailey, not that I really pay attention to German football, but that was a complete surprise to me, and didn't not feel like a normal 'villa' signing.

The same can be said of Sanson, though we've not really seen much of him yet.  Those two definitely appear to have a 'Lange' fingerprints on them.  Whether they'll be proof of how good Lange is, remains to be seen.

Yeah, me too. Don't watch German/French football but genuinely hadn't heard of either until they were linked to us. We shop a bit higher up the food chain than Copenhagen, so it's not surprising that the "surprise" players are ones that people who pay attention to those leagues have heard of.

Also, I'd say we've got a different focus to Copenhagen at all. It sounds like player development will be a big part of our setup, so bringing in players that are in that 16-20 age bracket who we think will improve massively with the right coaching & loan moves makes perfect sense. I'd be surprised if any of the youth team players we've brought in have been specifically targeted by Smith, even if the first team ones might have been more influenced by him.

It's hard to say, of course, because it's all behind the scenes stuff but I think Lange's influence is something we'll see over 5-10 seasons. Think we'll also see more left field signings from abroad when the production line is properly rolling and you're seeing multiple academy players breaking through.

If you look at Chelsea, they spent £97m on Lukaku, which at first glance looks like them throwing money around like it's a billionaire's plaything.  But then you look at Abraham, Tomori and Zouma who were sold for £80m combined, two of whom are youth products, the other signed from France at 19, and you realise this is one of the ways they avoid FFP issues.

Our annual Match-day revenue is about £25-30m a year I think, so you can see how making £20m a year from selling youth products is seen as an important part of our long-term health.  And I don't mean that as in "we're now a business that is designed to sell footballers at a profit", I mean we can only play 14 on any given matchday, and if we have 6 promising youth players come through at once, it would be great to get £20m for the ones we can't fit into our squad, and then only keep the very very best of them.

I love nothing more than seeing homegrown players making it in the first team, but we have about 15 in every age group wanting to do that, that's 15 new players every year getting to an age where they want to play. If we can get one or two of those in and around the first team each year, and sell a couple of the others for a few million, we'll be doing absolutely brilliantly.

Think Chelsea sold Guehi to Palace for 20m aswell. 20 year old CB who did well at Swansea last season, has England under 21 caps so straight away he's in that 10m + bracket.

Our equivilant is Revan who's played one game and been loaned to Weymouth and Northampton so does limit what fee you can get if that's the standard of clubs we're letting him go out to.

Connor Gallagher is probably someone they'll get 20m + next summer way he's started at Palace. In last three seasons his loans have been Charlton-Swansea-West Brom-Palace so clear progression each time.

Again similar player here is Jacob Ramsey. Had a good loan at Doncaster and then we've given him a proper chance in first team squad for last 18 months. Problem is if he dosen't kick on as suddenly he's in his early 20s and a loan spell dosen't look that attractive so then we have to sell him for knockdown fee.

Just something we need to get better at really.

[London Villan]

Having 3 in there is fine, if you are playing 3 up front, which we won’t. Or if we do we’ll have some unhappy bunnies either because they are on the bench or out of position.

[Dante Lavelli]

Luiz has been excellent in that role at times, mainly after lockdown and at the start of last season before his form dipped (as most others' did).

Let’s not forget there was a spell where he was fcuking amazing in that position.  He was like having two players.
If that guy doesn’t materialise then I think we need to put three in midfield and drop one of watkins/Ings/Buendia/Bailey (Traore/El Ghazi)