southbankbornnbred wrote: ↑16 Feb 2025, 10:14Sir Alf" wrote: ↑16 Feb 2025, 09:44 Good summary Nutsin. Potter reverted to a back 4 and got central midfield wrong relying on the slowest double pivot central midfield in the Premiership. A back 3 seems a better fit but also when Paqueta dropped deeper we had 3 in the central mid and stopped Brentford having so much space to run into when they countered. As u say, Paqueta has to play deeper with the game ahead of him.
Not writing Potter off yet but he has to learn we cannot play a 2 person central midfield of Alvarez and Soucek and that Mavro in a 4 man back 4 us going to be risky. Hopefully wont see either mistakes repeated? Main other thing we need is Ferguson and Todibo to get and stay fitYeah, interesting summaries, Alf and Nutsin.
I also think it’s far too early to judge Potter. These are not his players and there’s just no way he’d have signed most of them. I’m not saying he’ll rip it up at West Ham (who knows), but his teams don’t generally look like us right now.
This old, slow and tired squad has a LOT of problems. But by far the biggest problem I can see is in central defence.
Nutsin summed it up nicely: “Mavrapanos still getting in the side as a starter makes you wonder just how good he must show at practice all week because on match day he is always one of the worse players on the field.”
Its not that Mavrapanos is any good - he’s fucking terrible. A mistake waiting to happen. It’s just that we don’t have any depth, and the other centre halves are also woeful - or injury prone.
We’ve spent (or agreed to spend) a small fortune on some absolute dross. Kilman is the worst £40m footballer I’ve ever seen. He has the turning circle of an oil tanker and regularly gets destroyed for pace over ten yards - let alone 20+. It means we can’t really play, or get, high up the pitch quickly enough. So he forces us to play a way that Potter probably doesn’t want. Absolute waste of that huge outlay. Slow, off the pace mentally, and too easily exposed because of it. His saving grace is that he doesn’t really make “mistakes” like Mavrapanos - and he is a battler. It’s just that his physical attributes are poor for the modern Premier League, where opponents are often athletes more than footballers.
Mavrapanos was in excess of £20m. We've agreed to spend £34m on Todibo, who is a good player but injury prone - and clearly nursing his way through the season. And we spent £30m on Aguerd who started well, deteriorated under Moyes and then got loaned out by a hopeless manager who had no idea what he was doing.
Thats £125m worth of “talent” and we’re catastrophically poor at the back.
Fixing that will take some doing. Who, for example, will want to sign Kilman at his fee/wages - unless it’s a move like a return to Wolves for half the money?
Moyes and Lopetegui royally lumped us in it.
I also have to say that Sullivan - and the departed (and largely over-rated) Steidten should hang his head in shame over the Kilman deal. How a chairman and technical director could let a new manager sign somebody so obviously limited for £40m and then put him on astronomical wages and a seven-year contract, is beyond me.
Club chairman rightly and wrongly get blamed for a lot of things - some within their control, some not. But that Kilman deal was akin to falling asleep at the wheel.
Club chairman rightly and wrongly get blamed for a lot of things - some within their control, some not. But that Kilman deal was akin to falling asleep at the wheel.
nothing worse than playing against teams where players switched position or role. Fortunately at that level it rarely happened. We have to recruit for the future which means speed in centre mid for transitions. Its the key I think?
