Evann Guessand

[Baldy]

Decoy - 'lure or entice (a person) away from their intended course, typically into a trap'.

Guessand does bring energy to the team and puts in a shift. But his footballing skills need a lot of work.

Can only guess that Unai considers Guessand as playing a pivotal role in his strategy. All players have to be marked and Guessand does hug the line, cut inside, get in the box and also carry out his defensive duties. Perhaps Unai is treating him as a disruption to the opposition, a decoy. Who is going to mark him, the full back, midfielder, a center half? This can cause confusion and create spaces for others to exploit.

We have tonnes of quality and creativity throughout the team and maybe Unai puts more emphasis on Guessands 'nuisance' value than he does his current footballing skills.

Unai is a tactical wizard and the results speak for themselves.

Perhaps I am being to polite.

[Drummond]

He works really hard, follows instruction and Emery is happy with him.

He often has a couple of players on him, which creates space elsewhere. I'm interested to know just what Emery demands of his forward line; often they don't take risks, even Cash doesn't push as far forward as he could and I think it's all about the shackles placed on them by Emery.

[JUAN PABLO]

Defensively his numbers are really good , tackles , blocks and interceptions but his passing , oh my McGrath , my goldfish could pass better .

Maybe RB is his only chance , lets hope it all clicks .

[Percy McCarthy]

Decoy - 'lure or entice (a person) away from their intended course, typically into a trap'.

Guessand does bring energy to the team and puts in a shift. But his footballing skills need a lot of work.

Can only guess that Unai considers Guessand as playing a pivotal role in his strategy. All players have to be marked and Guessand does hug the line, cut inside, get in the box and also carry out his defensive duties. Perhaps Unai is treating him as a disruption to the opposition, a decoy. Who is going to mark him, the full back, midfielder, a center half? This can cause confusion and create spaces for others to exploit.

We have tonnes of quality and creativity throughout the team and maybe Unai puts more emphasis on Guessands 'nuisance' value than he does his current footballing skills.

Unai is a tactical wizard and the results speak for themselves.

Perhaps I am being to polite.

It’s a good point, but if I was the opposition coach, I’d leave him alone until he either tackled himself over the touchline or crossed it for a throw-in on the other side of the pitch.*

*half joking.

[paul_e]

What I thought was really clear last night is that he plays a lot deeper than whoever is on the left so we end up in a really odd shape a lot of the time.

It's something like this:



With Guessand very much a wide midfielder and Sancho the only real winger. we do the same with McGinn but he also tucks in a little more to make it even more a 4321.

As this is clearly a shape that is both intentional and trained for (and thge only point we lost it was for 5mins after McGinn came on), then I can see why a defensively sound player on that side is an advantage.

[Bent Neilsens Screamer]

There are quite a lot of players under £30 million that are a lot better than this bloke. It’s a dud.

I think it’s the fee that’s bothering me, especially considering the financial constraints we were under during the summer. I reckon, on what we’ve seen so far, at least half the players playing in the final third in the championship could do an equally good job at half the cost.

[brontebilly]

Decoy - 'lure or entice (a person) away from their intended course, typically into a trap'.

Guessand does bring energy to the team and puts in a shift. But his footballing skills need a lot of work.

Can only guess that Unai considers Guessand as playing a pivotal role in his strategy. All players have to be marked and Guessand does hug the line, cut inside, get in the box and also carry out his defensive duties. Perhaps Unai is treating him as a disruption to the opposition, a decoy. Who is going to mark him, the full back, midfielder, a center half? This can cause confusion and create spaces for others to exploit.

We have tonnes of quality and creativity throughout the team and maybe Unai puts more emphasis on Guessands 'nuisance' value than he does his current footballing skills.

Unai is a tactical wizard and the results speak for themselves.

Perhaps I am being to polite.

You are being very kind. A footballer in that position should be able to do all that and have a decent touch, through ball, cross, able to drop into the middle, a shot from outside the box....Guessand has none of that. Not even sure he has much nuisance value as he's easy to dispossess. That's for 30m at a time we can't afford to making big transfer mistakes.

Yet he still offers more than Sancho and Elliot combined.

[eye digress]

With Guessand, I find myself trying to see the upside between games (he's contributing to a winning team, right?). Sadly, the optimism evaporates on contact with reality. He looked very poor, yesterday.

That said, my cab driver this evening lived in Nice until recently, and, as a very well informed footy fan (huge fan of Bouba), went to watch the club several times last year. At the mention of Evann, his eyes lit up: "great player" was his verdict, emphasising in particular that he was "as fast as a rocket" and "amazingly strong, an animal" - basically, all the things you would conclude on watching his YouTube reel.

Would have liked to have gone into more depth with him, but sadly spent the last 20 mins of the journey explaining what "competition winner" means.