tajjuk

No I criticise Wood because he's crap and the stats just support that. I know very little about Jackson, I am not supporting his signing or dismissing it because I just don't know enough about him. My point was people have been dismissing potential signings they don't know much about and then suggest complete trash hash been PL players because of 'experience' or other nonsense. I'd rather play an untested kid who might be good, rather than a confirmed not good PL player that will want high wages and get demanded a high transfer fee. He is not an upgrade on Che in the slightest he was complete rubbish for Burnley BEFORE Newcastle bought him, he's scored 3 in 21 for Burnley, two of which I think were pens, he just confirmed he's crap since and Wilson is injured often so Wood has had plenty of games and all it has confirmed is he's not very good. Wood is a limited target man, who iirc took Burnleys pens as well which inflated his goal tally (similar to how Toney's goal tally gets him over rated by many when like 40% of his PL goals have been pens) and had a Burnley team playing direct football specifically to his strengths and even then at his peak he was scoring like 10-12 at best and that was like 3-4 years ago. Signing Wood is basically like turning into Everton.

I feel the people who are dismissing Jackson then suggesting Chris Wood would be a good signing are rather undermining their arguments. Wood is crap, hence why he doesn't play for Newcastle and (5 in 39 for them) and had 3 in 21 for Burnley before they bought him, and he's now 31.

This guy looks terrifying, not sure he's the best finisher as there are a few moments in there where you can't tell if its a cross or a shot, but he should cause all sorts of chaos. He'd be a handful for any defence and looks like he'd win plenty of freekicks, plus would obviously be a big threat from JWP set pieces. Quite raw but certainly a lot of base ingredients to work from.

Not sure Moffi is necessarily out of budget but I reckon his value has hit more than we are willing to pay for him. £30 million for a guy with 32 in 83 in the French league where it's very difficult to assess quality, I think that is quite a gamble at that sort of money. Just on Ings btw, whilst his time at Villa has not been great, he has 6 goals in the PL this season from just 819 minutes, which is a goal every 136 minutes, so basically 2 in 3. And until very recently that has been for a poor Villa side that was struggling. If the fee/wages were right I wouldn't be against it, he should fit in well, brings experience, already knows many of the players, used to the league etc. Villa I presume looking for a permanent move rather than a loan, but wouldn't pay them more than about £15 million and he can't expect the wage we offered him before he left. Depends how much humility he has I reckon.

It's mental though, that is where the market is. This is a young promising player, from outside Europe's top 5 league, hasn't really proven himself. He's pretty similar to league/experience to us signing Mane. Yet these players are now jumping straight to the bigger clubs for absurd fees. And PL clubs buying at massively over inflated prices screws it up for us as well, as any foreign club will see 'PL club' and like double the fee they were happy to sell for.

Chelsea have signed Mudryk for £89 million, on an 8 1/2 year deal! A guy that has just 8 caps for Ukraine and has just 12 senior goals, bonkers amount of money.

I seriously don't get why people doubt him considering how well he has done, especially under different managers and different roles, despite us being consistently poor for about 3-4 years. (As someone above said his corners are good but we barely have anyone to attack them, none of our defenders in recent times have been excellent at heading/jumping, whilst also being aggressive). People also forget he's a top pro, he is intelligent, IIRC Ralph called him his manager of the pitch because he always carried out his instructions on the pitch so well and instructed others. If he's told to play a certain way, he'll play that way, probably that is often too his detriment. He's also added some bite to his game over recent years, bit of sh*thousery, he's definitely a bit stronger and bit harder in the tackle than he used to be, he's never going to be great at this because of his size and build but he's got enough about him as long as you are not relying on him to be the main defensive mid which he isn't now Lavia is there and we are playing a three. Plus he works for days, barely ever seems to get injured, is able to put in a shift week in week out, playing multiple games full 90 minutes. That in itself is a unique talent, to be that fit, cover that much ground and constantly keep it up throughout a season. Then as we have seen when he has some licence to get forward, he can make intelligent runs, he's composed, got a very good strike on him, can pass the ball well both short and long, and even has a very good cross on him. He's got clear weaknesses, mainly physical, he's not quick, he's not tall and he's not particularly strong but I feel multiple managers have never really got the best out of him, probably because he's an intelligent and reliable player which means he can do multiple roles well and carry out instructions, almost too much of a good pro he's just fitted in and done the role ask of him. Even filling in at right back pretty damn well on several occasions. We had a short spell under Ralph where we utilised him in the inside channel so he could put some wicked crossed into the back post, most notably against Spurs, but then barely seemed to try it again. He's had a few games in the past where he had a bit more licence to get forward in the box more and he scored a few goals only for him to quickly get shoved back again. It's good to see Jones recognising that this guy is our best player, let's maximise the use of his talents and get the best out of him. I also disagree that big 6 clubs wouldn't have him, I think they would love him. He wouldn't necessarily be a guaranteed starter but he'd play a big role I think. A guy who works that hard, is extremely technically proficient, world class set piece taker, who barely gets injured and is able to play at a high tempo level in back to back games maintaining that intensity, who is also intelligent on the pitch and is able to carry out the manager's instructions to a tee and is able to play multiple positions to a good level. Plus is English for registration stuff, a model pro, and a leader. Of course they would want such a player. Just don't think they would want to pay the £60-70 maybe even £80 million to prize him away from us and I don't think he would make a fuss about leaving. City paid £50 million for Phillips and JWP is better than him IMO, look how much Liverpool have valued a player like Milner and used him so much. Suppose we will see if we do end up getting relegated, where he ends up.

The guy is probably jet lagged, he's been in the country what 3 days before that game, new country, new culture, new language, different weather (It's summer in Argentina pretty much, high 20s sort of weather, dropping to Liverpool in Jan where it must be single figures). So bearing all that in mind for him to even play shows he's got some character about him even if he was a bit ropey.

The freekick was good, but pretty standard for him he's that good at them. The other goal was much more promising, deep run into the box, great feet and composure. He's got the technical ability striking a ball to score more goals, just need to let him get further forward and it seems the change is letting him do that.

Chelsea playing FM in real life it seems. The Moffi rumours just seem agent type rumours to me, nothing concrete.

It's a first time shot at an angle that beats a keeper at the near post, it's a tough chance and a lot of those chances get missed all the time so the XG seems pretty spot on to me. It was a very good finish, I don't think you could ever call that a clear cut chance or even really a half chance. Both goals being low XG makes sense considering they are hard finishes, even accounting for the poor positioning the execution to lift it like that whilst on the run was very good so again a pretty low percentage chance. Alvarez's chance in front of goal makes sense for being the best chance of the game, he's 6 yards out with the whole goal to aim at and doesn't get a clean connection. Highly likely had Haaland had the same chance then he would have least got that on target I reckon. I do find the overall vitriol quite hilarious, the old men seem to get very touchy about it for no good reason, it's a pretty self explanatory statistic and makes sense most of the time. It's not perfect but it basically assesses how good the chances you got in the game were so you can see if you created decent chances, conceded decent chances, which is pretty helpful when analysing the game. As said above as with any statistics you have to view them in context and their will be caveats, like mentioned above a penalty miss and subsequent rebound can create a huge amount of XG, but the latter chance only comes from the penalty/save miss and if that is all you did in the game then it will create a false position, but it's a better guide than shots/shots on target.

So much projection and insecurity in one post. You sound like an old man shouting at a tv because he can't work out how to use the remote properly. Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean there is something wrong with it or anyone who does understand and is interested in should be insulted. The irony of you calling people spotty teenagers when you clearly need to do a lot of growing up yourself.

Was a very good finish, as someone pointed out in the match thread it was very similar to training exercise goal he scored in the youtube vid where Nathan Jones is wearing a microphone, so the sort of thing they seem to have been practicing. The run was also key as well, he comes from behind Walker on his blind side then darts back across him. He also had a nice control for an early chance and then spun but mishit the shot on the turn with his left foot. He seems to have a bit more clever movement about him, quite often Che doesn't get in the right places IMO, like the offside goal he was miles off when he didn't need to be and when KWP dragged that one late across the box, Che was on his heels. I feel a more natural goalscorer might have got something on that. IIRC when we signed Mara he was noted for outscoring his XG for a bad Bordeaux side, he didn't have a lot of full games but scored a decent amount of goals for them from not a huge amount of minutes last year.

Doesn't sound too serious, probably was just starting to up intensity and under used muscles sometimes struggle to initially cope. Hopefully the club are being cautious, especially given his age, as these sort of things can lead to an injury cycle if you don't let everything properly heal and build up strength.

I am not sure Ralph Mk2 style of football is particularly a bad thing anyway, at our best under Ralph we were aggressive and troubled some of the best in the land, the issue with Ralph was maintaining consistency and getting the most of his players, which reportedly was down to his distance from the players and man management issues more than anything else. The issues with Ralph were not his style of football, IMO it went wrong because he tinkered and changed too much away from his best brand of football, it was more his man management and that then impacted the team's consistency on the pitch to carry out his instructions, to the point where we became wishy washy with no style. An aggressive pressing team that gets in the face of the opponents sounds great to me, if Jones is trying to recreate that I have no issues, especially with a little more tactical flexibility to adjust as the game goes on and better man management behind the scenes. We know that these players at their best, playing aggressive pressing football can trouble anyone in the league and we got to the top of the table playing like that. Add in a sprinkle more quality in the final third to create a bit more and finish more often, and better man management going on and we should be successful with that style IMO.

Adams is joint 6th for big chances missed with 9. Behind Jesus, Toney, Salah, Haaland and Nunez. Not sure what defines a 'big chance' but there you go, most of those players will generally be getting a lot more chances than us. For example Che has had only 34 shots in total, Haaland, Nunez, Salah and Jesus have all had 50 or more. They have all had more than 20 shots on target as well, Che has only had 13.

He's a facilitating forward, the issue is we have been using him as the main goals focal point as we don't have that main goals scoring forward.

Exactly he's human and it's just a game at the end of the day. Some of the criticism of him was over the top and frankly nasty for no real reason, as if the guy had turned up to make the club fail on purpose. Like others have said he deserves to bite back, he was getting a lot of criticism before he'd even managed a game ffs. Also I doubt he really think's the Forest performance was decent, he's clearly not an idiot and showed last night he's very tactically aware. More likely he's deflecting criticism from the players, we have a very young squad and they have been in relegation form for basically a year, confidence in that team was clearly low and he's been trying to build it up. Hopefully these two wins have done that and you can see a few more players playing with a smile on their face and enjoying their football. Turning round a team in that sort of malaise is hard to do, like he says there is no magic button, it's clearly taken a while. A bit of luck in the Palace game certainly helped I think, a win however it comes helps and then that led into last night's performance where it was a win and an excellent performance.

Orsic is very quick.

Hopefully the missing link we've needed in midfield for years, that goalscoring attacking mid. Should in theory provide good balance in a midfield 3 with JWP and Lavia.

Yeh I think he could be the kind of player who is first choice for a club like Real Madrid in the future. It's doubly baffling that he didn't go to the World Cup considering how pedestrian and ponderous Belgium's midfield was. --------------------------------- We need a PL win, two cup wins no doubt helps the confidence of the squad but getting a PL win is important as is getting off the bottom of the table. If we play like that we should win, it's just Everton away never seems to go well, it's the same as Newcastle away, both clubs (until recently with Newcastle) that we should have a good chance of beating away but it never seems to happen, they get good luck, fluke some decisions etc.

Their whole model is pretty fubar if we go down. They have set up (are setting up) this multi-club model with this 'flagship' PL club at the top, it doesn't work so well if that club is stuck in the Championship. Plus we have just done a big overhaul of the playing staff, clearly they have big expectations (and thus big money) in mind for the likes of Lavia, ABK, Baznu etc. when they move one, but if they all suddenly leave because we get relegated for cut price fees (potentially relegation release clauses) and others like Salisu let their contracts run down then a lot of their initial investment has gone to waste and they have to start again, attracting a lower calibre of good young players. All balancing this with trying to get a club promoted out of the championship, which is hard. It seems they basically want to create a talent factory, akin the Red Bull model, with am over arching scouting system and the best players working their way through the clubs to Saints, for them to then perform in the PL and sell on for big profits. Relegation makes all those plans more difficult, so propping up the team with some spend in January is them probably thinking it protects the project long term. Plus Orsic was pretty cheap and Alcaraz fits the model, he's a young player who will hopefully improve, so I don't expect us to break the model. I reckon if we get some older players they won't be very expensive, they will be more Orsic levels. Which I reckon rules out someone like Ings.

Jones speaks fluent Spanish, it was mentioned in quite a few articles. Then there is obviously Selles, Cabellero and Larios. I'd also presume Salisu must know some Spanish as well having lived in Spain for 3 years.

He's not exactly a goalscorer and doesn't seem to be playing regularly for Rennes this season, only 260 mins in the league and only 1 start (no goals and or assists either). Seems to be one of those highly rated talents that hasn't quite put the talent consistently on the pitch. He'll probably win quite a lot of freekicks for JWP though.

I'd say basically this. I am pretty sure Orsic has always played off the left most of his career for Zagreb, cutting in and shooting with his right foot. He's basically a less good right footed Arjen Robben. Considering he has decent stature and is a pretty well established player I can't see us playing him out of position. Really the signings (plus those coming back from injury) need to push the likes of Adams, Armstrong (A), Perraud, Maitland-Niles etc. out of the team as regular starters and then we have improved depth and options from the bench. Orsic, Acaraz, new striker, plus then Tino and Armstrong hopefully getting fit and firing should change the dynamic of the whole team.