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You'll win nothing with kids...

Maltese Falcon

Maltese Falcon

Niko Kranjcar
... and for all the criticism Lawro has received, he was and is absolutely right!

Because the likes of Beckham, Neville, Scholes and Butt came into a team of leaders. Pallister, Bruce and Irwin at the back; Keane in midfield and Cantona up front.

Look at us yesterday. Where were the players who could rally the team when the chips were starting to fall?

You look at the back and although Walker, Toby and Vertonghen, have all been around for years, there is not one leader among them.

But at the end of the day, "it's the midfield, stupid" Dier? Bentaleb? Mason? Lamela? Eriksen? Chadli? They have the stiffness of a bowl of jelly and less combined Premiership experience than one of Norwich City's journeymen.

We started fine against United but on the very first setback, wilted like a weed in the sun

We were cruising against Stoke and then as soon as we hit a pothole, the whole team just crumbled.

Our next target is a 21 year old with 45 top flight games. A youth based "philosophy" is fine and dandy; however to expect a team of kids to succeed in the Premiership, with an equally inexperienced and naive manager, is simply suicidal.
 
I don't get it, I thought we as a forum in general was in agreement we were developing a young squad which would mean we might suffer dips in performance short term. If we still kept our position around top 6 in the meantime then great, but focus very much on the long term. We arguably overachieved by finishing 5th last year, and this season we so far deserved a point at Old Trafford only for an own goal to deny us and a draw against Stoke - whilst we should have won and not thrown it away, a better result than last season...disappointing nonetheless.

Whilst it's clear our squad reshaping hasn't finished for this window yet, a couple of additions in obvious areas and we will be a real threat. In both games we showed areas of real promise, but you can't expect it all to come together this early.

In short, I can't believe we are having these annual posts coming in so early and I haven't a clue what your expectations are but considering our size and budget,you might have to reassess. PS we are two games into the season.....two games!
 
yeah the club is going down this youth policy so its pointless to keep knocking the mistakes which come about mainly due to low game mileage/inexperience
 
Gutter Boy said:
Perhaps it needs mentioning that it's 24 years since we've won anything major with our usual blend of older journeymen
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I was about to say that we would not win anything with the type of experienced players that we could afford either. At least with kids we have a chance if people can be patient and hold their nerve.
 
We talk about progressing with the youngsters but when we have another season now of no top 4 challenge and win nothing eriksen vertonghen and lloris will all want out and Id imagine levy will sell. We'd simply be going backwards of we let them leave.
 
We're treading water until we get some consistency in the club from the top down and ideally new money from the stadium

The problem we have is that our expectations are naturally to go one better and that champions league, but our financial position means that is incredibly hard

I said it a while back that we have to aim to be the best pound for pound fighter in our league

Playing younger players isn't the issue its the lack of obvious leadership and overall depth across the positions

The latter can be rectified with signings... Making players into leaders however is something we have struggled with for years. We had Ledley as captain yet the guy hardly spoke a word!!!
 
Maltese Falcon said:
... and for all the criticism Lawro has received, he was and is absolutely right!

Because the likes of Beckham, Neville, Scholes and Butt came into a team of leaders. Pallister, Bruce and Irwin at the back; Keane in midfield and Cantona up front.

Look at us yesterday. Where were the players who could rally the team when the chips were starting to fall?

You look at the back and although Walker, Toby and Vertonghen, have all been around for years, there is not one leader among them.

But at the end of the day, "it's the midfield, stupid" Dier? Bentaleb? Mason? Lamela? Eriksen? Chadli? They have the stiffness of a bowl of jelly and less combined Premiership experience than one of Norwich City's journeymen.

We started fine against United but on the very first setback, wilted like a weed in the sun

We were cruising against Stoke and then as soon as we hit a pothole, the whole team just crumbled.

Our next target is a 21 year old with 45 top flight games. A youth based "philosophy" is fine and dandy; however to expect a team of kids to succeed in the Premiership, with an equally inexperienced and naive manager, is simply suicidal.
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RAWK likes this.
 
Gutter Boy said:
You can, but you need patience

I can see this team challenging for the league in about 2018
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The problem is that this team will not be together in 2018 if we don't qualify for the CL in the mean time..... I think Lloris and Eriksen will go in a year's time if we haven't done so. We'll then probably have one more chance to do so before Kane decides to move to a club where he can get winners medals.

Personally I think that an experienced, wily, old holding midfielder would've ensured that we came away from yesterday's game with a win. He would've closed down the space Ireland was getting to operate in and probably kicked him up in the air a couple of times as well. Alternatively a proper centre forward who could hold the ball up and allow us to get up the pitch would've helped yesterday. When Kane went off we had absolutely nothing up front and Stoke knew it. They could commit forward and not have to worry about over committing, perhaps with N'Jie now in the door we can use his pace to exploit that scenario on the counter attack?

I see yesterday as 2 points completely thrown away due to not having our signings in place before the game. I wonder how many points we will miss out on our goals by come the end of the season?
 
Two games in and 4 points dropped. It's hardly the first time that we've not won at home in a game where we should have but certainly not the end of our aims to make the champions league.

Yes we will probably lose erikson, Kane and lloris before we are in our new stadium but we need young players ready to take their places. A tough ask but I'm happy to try something else as the journeymen route is what everybody else is doing.

Nevertheless, I would like to see a few experienced (past their best) leaders in the squad just to show the younger players what is required to win a league or champions league.
 
glasgowspur said:
If eriksen wants to go then he can. But I don't see anyone better than us wanting him.
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Agreed, unless he turns it up a notch or two he won't attract interest from the Bayern/Real/Barca tier of teams and there's not a lot of teams in the next group which i imagine he'd leave us for tbh
 
We are one point better off on these 2 fixtures than last year.That said the second goal we conceded was a bit disappointed given the emphasis Poch has put on defence.In both games we beat ourselves.That will happen with kids and Kyle Walker from time to time .Nothing to be worried about at all.
 
TBH though, we do have senior players. Walker, LLoris, Vertonghen, Dembele, Alderweireld and Chadli are all senior players and should be able to guide the younger lads.
 
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