I suspect all of our January plans were ruined in the space of about 25minutes against Burnley. Before that game I think they'd probably pooled all the money available on adding another body in midfield and then picking up a loanee striker (Giroud was being linked and I'm sure there was a story a month or so back that backed it up). Losing Wes and Heaton meant a complete rethink with a half scouted Samatta, a gamble on Reina being capable of a swansong and then 2 wild punts to replace kodjia and give us the extra midfielder. None of that excuses Drinkwater being so unfit that we should never have gone through with it but I think it is why the window felt like such a mess.
Interesting it's gone along similar lines of Wyness saying you needed 3 teams to become effective top half prem team. 18 that got us up at Wembley included Green, Jedinak, Whelan and Adomah. Then we just about stayed up last year with Hourihane and Hause starting 20 + games each and now hopefully likes of Barkley, Martinez and Watkins will push us on to best season in over a decade.
where is Drinkwater now ?
Quote from: SoccerHQ on October 20, 2020, 02:56:38 PMInteresting it's gone along similar lines of Wyness saying you needed 3 teams to become effective top half prem team. 18 that got us up at Wembley included Green, Jedinak, Whelan and Adomah. Then we just about stayed up last year with Hourihane and Hause starting 20 + games each and now hopefully likes of Barkley, Martinez and Watkins will push us on to best season in over a decade.The reason we needed the 'stay up' team was because we made such a fucking horrible mess of the promotion team, thanks in part to Wyness. I'd have preferred to go the Newcastle and Sheff Utd (and likely Leeds) route of skipping a season in the relegation battle by having a core of the team in the championship that were good enough to step up. Having the sign half a squad in the short summer after the play offs was definitely the worst way to handle promotion (as Fulham had already shown). That aside, as I've said before I always took that line as more of a justification for us appointing Bruce and playing his agricultural bullshit when a lot of fans wanted us to start building a club style as part of the promotion push.
Newcastle had 15 points by end of December in their first season up and that was with world class manager and squad that got nearly 100 points when promoted
The second was a coaching issue more than the signings, we weren't as fit as we needed to be to play how we wanted and we were tactically naive. Between those 2 we dropped a huge number of points late in games this season we've already picked up 4 points with late winners, it's a huge turnaround and isn't solely due to new signings, the whole attitude of the club is better because we now 'know' we belong.
Quote from: SoccerHQ on October 20, 2020, 04:33:04 PMNewcastle had 15 points by end of December in their first season up and that was with world class manager and squad that got nearly 100 points when promoted Blimey, I remember that now. I'd stopped bothering to look at the PL table, and when hearing that they'd recorded their first win in November, I think, I had a look and was staggered to see that they weren't even bottom, let alone cut adrift as I'd expected. I'm not completely certain, but I've a feeling that that solitary win lifted them clear of the bottom three at the time.
Looks like Axel had a great game for Yanited yesterday.