TWar

High press will work fine if we have adequate squad depth. If anything we showed it was very hard to counter in the first half of the season and latter half of the previous season, if it was that easy to counter then it wouldn't have served us well for so long. Also other major teams play the high press to great effect like Leeds and Liverpool. It's only major counter was we sustained a bunch of injuries and the replacements were awful. I suspect we will make a fair few signings and then implement it again. Regarding the goalkeeper rotation thing, I'll believe it when I see it. Sounds to me like a motivational thing to make the keeper who is playing play better as they will feel like their spot is constantly under threat. I also think it is pretty likely we will bring in a keeper, given we have two on the last year of their deals. Sell Forster, give Macca a 1-2 year extension, and sink some money into a new first choice, my money is on.

Thats not the worst starting 11 to be honest, could do with a better keeper and left attacking mid but it looks decent. Walcott or Elyounoussi probably start over Tella in midfield as he is a lot better up top. Depth is awful, we need an extra CB, fullback, and ideally attacking mid as Tella should be a forward and Armstrong is our fill in 4th at center mid. And that is just to make us have two players in every position, the quality of some of our depth options ie Stephens, Long, ect is very poor.

Yeah it only really hurts us if we are trying to pay a release clause as those are expected up front mostly.

It's not great, but as you say it is for a pretty poor team who don't see a lot of the ball. Also he creates a lot of chances, but they aren't finished particularly well by the people Fulham had up top.

Absolutely, Redmond tears lower league sides apart as seen against Bournemouth, Pompey, ect. he just isn't up to prem standards. Minimino was quality in the Austrian league and Djenepo was in the Belguim league. Hesketh failed to impress in league 2 and Sims in league 1, much lower standard leagues than those mentioned above.

Well they are a good side which has made the CL four out of the last six years and made the semi finals in 2019/20. They also finished second in the German league this season, as well as 2016/17 and third in 2018/19 and 2019/20. They are also, however, a new side therefore people who haven't updated their knowledge of football in the last 20 years will struggle a bit to recognise them for their current size or relevance as they didn't exist before 2009. I guess that's why you see them as a bit "hipster", most people just discuss them a lot because they are quite good and a relevant side in Europe.

RBL aren't a hipster club, they are widely despised by the football community for weaselling their way around 50+1. They are like the German MK Dons in their level of ire.

Another fun Lookman fact is not only is he 5th in the league for successful take-ons by a midfielder (behind ASM, Traore, Anguissa and Ndombele), he is also the 12th most fouled player in the premier league last season. Recipe for winning more JWP free kicks.

Winners: Belgium Runners Up: France Scotland get knocked out at: Group Stage Wales get knocked out at: Group Stage England get knocked out at: Semi Finals, easy run where everyone gets hyped and then we finally face a decent side in France and they batter us 4-1 or something Dark Horse (Furthest a team gets excluding England, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Germany, Portugal): Denmark Top Goalscorer: Lukaku UEFA Best Player: De Bruyne UEFA Best Young Player: Phil Foden (England)

Lookman had elite chance creation stats last season. 0.13 expected assists per 90, better than anyone we have in our team, 1.92 chances created per 90 again better than anyone we have. 0.2 xG per 90 too which is better than anyone in our side except Ings, Adams, and Minimino. Would be a cracking buy, still only 23 and Ralph has worked with him in his best ever season so clearly knows how to get a tune out of him.

I always thought he could have been given more chance with the first team but if he was any good he would have done better on his loans, he was playing at a very low level. Reed wasn't given a chance but he excelled on loan and made a name for himself and is now a premier league level player.

Apparently appallingly bad, says fans on reddit. I guess could be our back up on both sides if we could sign him very cheap but Perraud needs to be first choice.

Its both really, if you beat a man then you often can double up on the next man, however if the next man is unoccupied they can double up on you. It's about building numerical superiorities and finding space using them I guess. From what I understand anyway.

We should be all over this if Vestergaard goes. Absolute bargain.

https://www.hampshirelive.news/sport/football/transfer-news/southampton-transfer-romain-perraud-leeds-5508631 Still hopeful but won't be through till the end of the month as we are a way off. That does not sound at all hopeful.

The issue with a congested middle is that if you imagine two holding midfielders in front of two centerbacks and two fairly narrow wingbacks the areas in and around the box are congested. For example, imagine we are up against newcastle. If ASM manages to nutmeg JWP and run round him then the space behind him is likely occupied by a CB or Romeu as there is very little room to manoeuvre for an attacking player. The gaps are instead left out wider, forcing the player to cut wide and try to cross. Back in the day a 442 had 4 wider players and 4 central players behind the 2 strikers with a sizable gap between the more attacking CMs and the CBs, this allowed for gaps in the half spaces and between the lines which a tricky player can exploit. Nowadays people don't play with a 442, they more often play a 433, a 4231 (which we play a version of with the 4222), or with three atb. These systems don't leave gaps in the half spaces to exploit, and have center midfielders sat very deep with almost no gap between them and the CBs, making dribbling players a lot more challenging. Dribbling players is still a very important and heavily utilized skill but it doesn't occur from simply beating a man, you now need to set up a situation with an overload and then exploit it. Regarding ASM, I probably would swap him for those three but they are a very low bar. I wouldn't swap him for Armstrong and I would hope the midfielder we bring in is better than he is.

Gutted about Danjuma, would be my ideal target but I guess he is a bit expensive.

Hopefully just Brest trying to hurry us along but it does worry me, especially after reading about the James Maddison deal

Couple of unfeasible ones (Alli, CHO, Abraham, Van De Beek, Curtis Jones) and a couple I personally wouldn't want (Winks, Dier, N. Williams, R. Williams, Dan James) but I think its a good list, would love to see Romero, Guehi, Nketiah, Ake, Williams, Tuanzebe come in and all seem vaguely doable (except Ake maybe).

I think Bertrand always played pretty high tbh. We did have JWP sitting deeper I guess so you could say that constituted a back 3. This was in Bertrands second to last game for us (our 3-2 win to Burnley, embarrassing 3-0 loss to West Brom is not available) Still very much a 4atb though compared to the post Bertrand formation.

Well these are average positions throughout the game rather than a snapshot. I was just trying to show that clearly we have a different average shape when we lined up with three CBs and Redmond as a wingback than when we had 2 CBs. If you looked through all the games with Bertrand in the side I doubt you'd see any which exhibited that average shape.

People are capable of doing both, and I did watch the game it was clearly a 3atb as this suggested. Anyway, I have moved this post to the manager thread as it has little to do with Perraud.

Reposting this here as it is the correct thread for it, rather than the Perraud thread: For the record, since this "Ralph plays in one way, he never used a 3 atb" thing seems to be gathering steam, here are the average positions of the players in our last two matches, Fulham and Leeds (discluding west ham as it wasn't available) You can very clearly see that Vestergaard is playing at the base of a back three with Salisu level with Bednarek/Stephens. Redmond/Djenepo are clearly playing wide in the wingback roles and not in the very narrow "10 position" they normally occupy, playing at a very similar level to KWP. Below are two games from the beginning of the season for comparison. These two are earlier in the season against Fulham and West Ham. You can clearly see the attacking mid much more central, an obvious back two, and Bertrand much higher up.

Post moved to more appropriate thread.

I get what your saying, in actuality it is good to be able to do both, the threat of a pass can give room to dribble and the threat of a dribble can open up angles to pass. I was just saying the "give it to Matt" strategy of the past doesn't work so well with a compacted centre of the pitch, funnel out wide, tactical fouls on the half way line sort of play that football is now. Also regarding Saint-Maximin, yeah he has three goals and four assists this season and exactly the same last season. That means across the two years Redmond has one less g+a in significantly fewer minutes, Armstrong has two more g+a in fewer minutes, even Walcott only put up one less this season and he has played much less. ASM is the very definition of flatters to deceive for me. Flashy to watch but very rarely leads to anything.