TWar

So back on topic, I think RLC would be a good creative force. I think our team really miss a Tadic style player. I wonder if there was any truth in claims we were in for Brooks, he could do a job.

It's not a very satisfying answer but I think a players leadership qualities isn't something that can be accurately discussed. Honestly I think the only people who know how much impact JWP has as a leader is the other players, it is almost impossible to parse out his impact on things, Ralphs impact on things, another particularly vocal player ect. Maybe he's great as a leader and was instrumental in our great run and the shit run now has nothing to do with him. Maybe he is a shit leader and the great run was in spite of him and his lack of leadership is whats hurting us right now. I don't think we will ever know. One interesting thing I will say, I was listening to the Peter Crouch podcast (well worth a listen if you haven't yet) and he spoke a little on the changing role of a captain and he said that the "guy who yells a lot" captain is really going out of style and the best captains set an example with their actions and workrate, and JWP's workrate is phenomenal. The real yelling at the players role tends to come from the manager, generally. The other thing said on that podcast was that fans like it when players are very talkative on the pitch as it seems like leadership but from a players point of view if players are being super chatty then normally it's because something is going majorly wrong so players see a team talking a lot as a sign that they are on the ropes. Owing to this I wouldn't really hold the fact he isn't barking orders at our fullbacks as a massive negative either.

Yeah I guess its not really counter attacking if you want to split hairs, its more winning the ball high, but I think SKD ment our style is to quickly look to attack after gaining possession rather than breaking teams down when controlling the ball. Which is a valid point, it is really a big struggle when teams just sit deep and let us have that ball like Newcastle did.

RLC is a very good shout tbf, dunno if we could afford to buy him though, could just be another loan. I think we have tried to address that lack of creativity but Djenepo, Redmond, Walcott, and now Minimino all haven't really performed as well as we would have liked for various reasons. I think longterm Djenepo is our best hope in that position but if we have any money to spend I would love a truly quality creative force. Even if it means selling Vestergaard and bumping Salisu up to the starting line up I think it would do us a world of good.

Yeah the links that have come out so far I have seen have been to Danjuma and de Frutos, seems we are in the market to improve upon the other 10 to play next to Armstrong. Great news imo, we have been abysmal at creating chances basically all season.

Doesn't make Pep wrong though. I think statistically jwp is amongst the best in the world and people who have a knowledge of such things tend to hold him in high esteem. Pep is a very stats based, modern manager so it makes sense that he'd sit up and notice when someone performs so far above average at a given thing for so long.

Some saints fans and Pep, possibly the best manager in world football. There are quite a few others too.

Yeah you are right, I suspect JWP stats are a little skewed by the fact he doesn't try to score from 30+ yards very often and instead drops it in the box for defenders to attack. By only trying from an easier range it probably helps his numbers a little bit.

To be fair, that chart is from 2019, back then people probably would have brought his name up, he has had an unfortunate time of things since then whereas JWP has only improved.

I get what you are saying, football is a beautiful emotional game and what you remember should be really important. But when it comes down to it it is a results based business and you pick the one who puts the ball in the net the most times and right now JWP is close to best in the world for that, and Ronaldo have never even come close. In fact Ronaldo has a worse free kick rate than Mark Noble IIRC. Free kicks are a weird skill and don't exactly correlate to your overall quality all that well. Also I think you would be surprised about other fans response to JWP, if you look at any given reddit thread about him things like "basically a penalty for him", "best in the league", "Ward-Prowse or Messi?" get said an awful lot. KdB is a fair shout, his conversion rate is actually very good, him and TAA were the only players ahead of JWP for set piece goals (so including assists from corners and the like) last season, he was behind JWP for FK conversion rate but not by a large amount at all. At that point is probably preference.

It's a good question, unfortunately the athletic article that states his hit-rate doesn't say unfortunately. You are probably right that it is an absolute tonne more. I'd say it's unlikely him taking more would lead to a lower %, if he is a given quality his % should represent that. The only issue I guess is a smaller sample size but I think 77 FKs over six years is probably enough to accurately judge JWP's quality.

In his last six years with us in the league Ward-Prowse has scored 11 times from 77 attempts, giving him about a 15% hit rate across his career. Ronaldo has a 6% hit rate across his career (says the atlantic) as of 2020, since he has not scored one since then it seems likely that has probably gone down a little bit. JWP across his career has almost three times the hit rate of Ronaldo. Whether he would start for a team like peak united or real is another discussion, and a very quick one as he definitely wouldn't in his wildest dreams, but he is definitely a more proficient free kick taker than Ronaldo. Incidentally here is a list of free kick accuracies for different players between 2015 and 2019 in europe. There are a lot of players on there who are worse players than Ronaldo but they are all much much better free kick takers. Truth is, in this specific aspect of football, Ronaldo is not that great. He more than makes up for it elsewhere obviously.

Honestly, when it comes to free kicks Ronaldo isn't even that good. His hit rate across his career has been pretty average to be honest. I'd put many mediocre players above him in terms of free kick ability, but that doesn't mean they are better than him in general.

Who is the better free kick taker, the guy who bashes in 2% of the free kicks he takes in a beautiful sensational fashion or the guy who bangs in 25% of the free kicks he takes (as JWP has this season) in a consistent and reliable fashion? Football isn't about doing beautiful things occasionally, it's about being proficient consistently. You don't get extra goals for how nice they look.

Also Partey had a release clause, they desperately didn't want to sell him at £45m but were forced to and had to have a mad scramble to replace him as it basically happened behind their back.

I think JWP is a fantastic player. Also English and has one of the best fitness records in the league (having played something crazy like 90 games in a row). Honestly think given the long contract we would be looking at something in the £50m range outside of COVID time and £40m range now. I agree though, built the team around him, don't sell. He is worth more to us than the money IMO with the role he plays.

Wasn't mentioned yesterday with all the talk of England and Scotland but Bednarek played 90 minutes in a 3-3 draw with Hungary. Didn't watch the match but they conceded three goals despite having 64% possession so probably won't be too thrilled with that defensive performance.

I think Taki could be an interesting one. He can finish really well and has some intelligence in front of goal which is a trait no one else in our team has except Ings and Armstrong, especially not Theo. Theo is better at most other things though and Taki is very shaky passing and retaining possession. I can maybe see a situation that we sign Taki for cheap (8m or so) as Ralph sees his raw abilities and wants to shape him as a player like he has for Armstrong and JWP.

Yeah not looking forward to it to be honest with you. Fingers crossed for the takeover I guess.

I don't think he will be to be honest. We need four "10's", and four forwards. At the moment I think Redmond is seen as a forward so we have Ings, Adams, Redmond and Tella as forwards and Armstrong, Djenepo, Minimino, and Theo as tens. At the end of the season I think if we sell Ings we will be down three players (Ings, Minimino, and Theo). Depending on whether Ralph thinks Nlundulu is up to it that's atleast two signings. For me we will probably aim to retain one of Theo or Minimino and also sign a forward to replace Ings, keeping Obafemi/Nlundulu as our 8th choice effectively where we move players between the two roles to fill gaps before playing them.

I thought Theo was a good move to be honest. By the sounds of things he was low wages and this was likely seen as a bit of a "try before you buy" situation. If he had stayed fit I think we'd probably be offering him a contract (albeit with fairly modest wages) as we wouldn't have to pay a transfer fee. Since he has gotten injured though I think maybe we will look elsewhere for someone a bit younger. The signing of Minimino probably means he is our new "trialist".

Looked OK I thought, didn't get much service. Armstrong looks like a totally different player for Scotland, looked well off it, although I did only tune in for the second half.

This is already paying off! 😂😂

Thanks to this comment I have just found out about the existence of the ignore list. This should make viewing the forum infinitely more enjoyable. Shame the mods can't just ban people who make every thread about the 9-0 loss or how much they hate Ralph.

Depends on the manager, depends on other results. Should a manager who lost 7-2 to a side who just avoided relegation be under pressure when his team should be favourites for the league? No, because it's Klopp. Context is important. If a manager does well for a long time they earn some leeway.