Summer 2022 transfer rumours (Gilbey loan confirmed p513, a signing falls through last minute p541)

Garrymanilow said:

Cafc43v3r said:

Almost all the players we have had in the last 2 years, to me come under the definition of;

"You won't get promoted if x is your y, but x being your y doesn't mean you can't get promoted".

I think if you look at Bowyer's squad, and to a lesser extent Powell's, Curbs play off team as well, you probably had 10ish players like that.  If not more.

They all had "not good enough for a promotion team" players as well.

What we really lack is players that "if you have him in the side you have a chance".
We need 5 of them.  Until we get them we are going no where.

I said at the end of the 20/21 season we need to replace out 5 worst with 5 "best" players.  I don't think we have 5 "worst" any more, but I don't think we have 5 "best" either.

I think that's spot on. I think it's the general excessively online culture the world has developed that brings with it a potential negative in anything. We're all probably thinking about it too much and having too much of an opportunity to talk about it. Every time we make a signing there's a negative post with a criticism - often justifiable - and that sparks a debate. It's inevitable now. I think about the positivity there was with the Powell squad taking shape and how it would probably be lookd at now with the increase in data knowledge and the ability to go on another team's forum and find the posters who never liked that player and absorb their negative opinion. Look at that Powell squad

Hamer - unwanted by a second division club, 28 L1 appearances across two loan clubs. Morrison - run out of town by Sheff Weds. Taylor - Jut one L1 season, why hasn't he played higher? Hughes - unwanted by a L1 club, old. Stephens - coming off a big injury, perfect for us etc. Hollands - free players? Where's all the Jenkinson money, pay a fee Slater. Green - L1 relegation player. Pritchard - non-league player, Pardew all over again. Yann - well to be fair the Yann signing got a fair bit of flak at the time. Of all our signings that season I'd say Wiggins was the only one where you couldn't possibly find a fault and it was very exciting. It felt like there was less of that at the time because I think we were all just less terminally online, and that allowed us to wait to see what the players had to offer rather than panicking about where they came from. A lot of those signings were game-changers for us though. We'll have to see if the new signings are. If O'Connell shores up our defence, Sessegnon offers defensive strength and progressive play, Payne creates and scores, Fraser rediscovers his form in a new system and CBT benefits from playing higher up then we might be looking very good. I think we're still a goal-scoring gem on the wing away from being a real promotion threat but we've got players in the squad who could be more than the sum of their parts if the system works. One of the problems we've had the past few years is Bowyer's style was all about the mentality of his players, and then Adkins and Jackson were more hand-wavy let's try and do some goals in their style. A good system well drilled and implemented can bring more out of the players you have than having 11 superstars on the pitch, especially at a lower level.

Cafc43v3r said:

Dazzler21 said:

Redrobo said:

Dazzler21 said:

So I think we have the following contracted as first team players for the season: 

Goalkeepers
31	Nathan Harness	GK
13	Craig MacGillivray	GK
1	Joe Wollacott	GK
Defenders
28	Sean Clare	RB/RWB/CM/CB/ RM?
?	Mandela Egbo	RB
24	Ryan Inniss	CB
5	Sam Lavelle	CB
6	Eoghan O'Connell	CB
2	Steven Sessegnon	RB/LB
Midfielders
23	Corey Blackett-Taylor	LW
4	George Dobson	CDM
8	Jake Forster-Caskey	CDM
21	Scott Fraser	CAM
11	Alex Gilbey	CM/CAM
7	Diallang Jaiyesimi	RW
14	Charlie Kirk	LW
12	Conor McGrandles	CM
10	Albie Morgan	CM/CAM
19	Jack Payne	CAM
Forwards
22	Chuks Aneke	CF/SS (Super Sub not 2nd Striker)
33	Miles Leaburn	CF
9	Jayden Stockley	CF

To me this points to a need for:

A dynamic forward
with pace and technical ability (What Chuks was meant to be) instead of the super sub, injury prone big lump he has become. They don't need to be 10 ft tall. 

A proper left back 
maybe a young one on loan or an out of favour player, to be back up & competition for Sessegnon who starred as the primary there against Accrington. Clayden isn't it and I don't know if any of the other younger players are yet. 

A Right Wing option to challenge DJ 
we have Kirk and CBT on the left (with Clayden an option too) and DJ on the right. Personally think there's potential for any decent dribbler/crosser to play there as cover, but we need a proper intentional option. 

We also are going to want other players, but I think the above three are the critical ones that we need to get right. I'd say the forward is probably the most important on the list. 

Egbo has played right wing and was apparently very good.

Yeah but that means we're again shoehorning Clare in as a RB. 

Probably because he is the best right back at the club.  The sooner people accept that the better.  It sounds like the penny has dropped with him.

paulfox said:

BR7_addick said:

Obviously the striker requirement is key, think most agree with that.

However after Saturday I’m fairly concerned defensively.  I know it’s only the first game, and you can read into stats too much, but the expected goals data said the game should have ended 3-1.  And we did let them have an absurd amount of shots (albeit majority off target).

It’s a funny thing how stats are so heavily relied upon,and yet so often don’t correspond to the actual results. So yes I’d say most definitely stats are read into too much, they never allow for the human aspect of things, which is why we keep watching the stupid game and why we are never 100% correct all the time.

Pelling1993 said:

Xg is the most useless stat in football 

Garrymanilow said:

killerandflash said:

Garrymanilow said:

Cafc43v3r said:

Almost all the players we have had in the last 2 years, to me come under the definition of;

"You won't get promoted if x is your y, but x being your y doesn't mean you can't get promoted".

I think if you look at Bowyer's squad, and to a lesser extent Powell's, Curbs play off team as well, you probably had 10ish players like that.  If not more.

They all had "not good enough for a promotion team" players as well.

What we really lack is players that "if you have him in the side you have a chance".
We need 5 of them.  Until we get them we are going no where.

I said at the end of the 20/21 season we need to replace out 5 worst with 5 "best" players.  I don't think we have 5 "worst" any more, but I don't think we have 5 "best" either.

I think that's spot on. I think it's the general excessively online culture the world has developed that brings with it a potential negative in anything. We're all probably thinking about it too much and having too much of an opportunity to talk about it. Every time we make a signing there's a negative post with a criticism - often justifiable - and that sparks a debate. It's inevitable now. I think about the positivity there was with the Powell squad taking shape and how it would probably be lookd at now with the increase in data knowledge and the ability to go on another team's forum and find the posters who never liked that player and absorb their negative opinion. Look at that Powell squad

Hamer - unwanted by a second division club, 28 L1 appearances across two loan clubs. Morrison - run out of town by Sheff Weds. Taylor - Jut one L1 season, why hasn't he played higher? Hughes - unwanted by a L1 club, old. Stephens - coming off a big injury, perfect for us etc. Hollands - free players? Where's all the Jenkinson money, pay a fee Slater. Green - L1 relegation player. Pritchard - non-league player, Pardew all over again. Yann - well to be fair the Yann signing got a fair bit of flak at the time. Of all our signings that season I'd say Wiggins was the only one where you couldn't possibly find a fault and it was very exciting. It felt like there was less of that at the time because I think we were all just less terminally online, and that allowed us to wait to see what the players had to offer rather than panicking about where they came from. A lot of those signings were game-changers for us though. We'll have to see if the new signings are. If O'Connell shores up our defence, Sessegnon offers defensive strength and progressive play, Payne creates and scores, Fraser rediscovers his form in a new system and CBT benefits from playing higher up then we might be looking very good. I think we're still a goal-scoring gem on the wing away from being a real promotion threat but we've got players in the squad who could be more than the sum of their parts if the system works. One of the problems we've had the past few years is Bowyer's style was all about the mentality of his players, and then Adkins and Jackson were more hand-wavy let's try and do some goals in their style. A good system well drilled and implemented can bring more out of the players you have than having 11 superstars on the pitch, especially at a lower level.

No comparison at all

That summer Powell went and brought players in who had done the business in L1 the season before (many from clubs who had finished higher than us) or even who had been in the Championship. And we paid fees for 3 players (Green, Stephens and Wiggins) all of which had done the business in L1. 

This season we've brought in McGrandles (a modern equivalent to Hollands as a decent L1 midfielder available on a free), a decent Fulham loanee and 4 players who looked good last season in L2. 

Yes there's some excessive negativity around. But surely blind optimism is just as questionable, when not supported by evidence both in terms of who we've signed, but also who our opposition have in their sides.

Not the point I was making at all though. What I was saying is that you will always have criticisms of players when they sign, particularly now, and there would have been more criticism and pressure loaded onto our 11/12 signings if we were making those equivalent signings today. If we're going into what you said though, I wouldn't say Dale Stephens had done the business in L1, he'd played two seasons there, part of one where he took in a L2 loan. O'Connell on the other hand often gets lumped in with these L2 player lists but has four seasons of L1 experience, he just stayed with his club in L2 last season ostensibly because of his relationship with the manager. Jack Payne has 6 seasons' L1 experience as well as one Championship season where he played 23 times for a team that won promotion to the Premier League, and one recent season in L2 after he went down in the Swindon sinking ship that couldn't have been saved by Leo Messi let alone Scott Twine. Joe Wollacott has 10 caps for Ghana and is about the age Ben Hamer was when he signed for us, about the age a keeper really starts to assert himself as a potential number one. These aren't just a bunch of L2 hopefuls, they're signings where we've capitalised on players who did well after going down a level lower than they probably should have whose contracts have expired. See, you can play the positive/negative game on any player but it's always reductive. There's not blind optimism, the negativity doesn't even have to be excessive, the point is that we don't need each player to be a world beater or need them to look like gods on paper, we need to construct a squad with some sprinklings of real quality that plays a way that brings the best out of everyone on the pitch. Players like Kish, Jon Fortune, Graeme Stuart and Hermann probably shouldn't have finished 7 points off the Champions league places but with a bit of quality from Di Canio, Jensen and [redacted] as well as graft from the rest in an organised system they were more than the sum of their parts. We can always find flaws in our incoming players, especially at this level, but we don't need to compare them to other teams and trawl through their histories, we need them to be suited to us in the system we're playing in order to move forward.

Pelling1993 said:

Xg is the most useless stat in football 

Chunes said:

Pelling1993 said:

Xg is the most useless stat in football 

I'm pretty sure it's used a lot in elite football to analyse where the highest quality chances are being created from and where they are not.