Summer Transfer Rumours - Deadline Day p446

king addick said:

Oggy Red said:

ross1 said:

Pavoren007 said:

ross1 said:

Until a new striker is obtained or Leaburn is fit, why not move CBT into middle with May and play Edun on left. Solve left defence problem, I will leave others to say about CBT as a striker 

Edun not sufficiently fit/up to speed quite yet. Same situation as Jones who took a couple of weeks behind the scenes to catch up before he was introduced. Suspect Peterborough away is his target, same as Taylor.

I think our squad will be a lot fitter this season from the off compared with previous seasons. I would play Campbell or Kanu up top with May come Saturday, not Kirk. 

Still not solved defence problem on left, if Edun not fit, play Thomas

Thomas is at least mobile, sufficiently athletic but he's not a LWB. We may get away with it as a very short term fix, but it's not ideal.

Based on Saturday, id be starting him ahead of Ness as a CB. He looked a lot more assured that him and carrys the ball out well.

On the left yes, with Ness on the right. He’s much better there. 

Oh Eddie Youds... said:

On the basis that we only have one striker, no left footed CB & Edun isn’t ready to play, we should play 433 on Sat:

AMB

Asiimwe
Hector
Jones
Thomas (ok as a standard left back)

Dobbo
Camara
Fraser

Campbell
May
CBT

Worked well for us last season and will prevent us being massively exposed down the wings as per Aberdeen.

Also allows our most dangerous player to focus on what he is good at & actually be a winger.

I can’t see Holden scrapping 3-5-2 just because of one bad game. Last week we matched a strong championship side playing the same system. We’ve worked on it all pre-season and until Saturday it was going well

sinceiwasyoung said:

Oh Eddie Youds... said:

On the basis that we only have one striker, no left footed CB & Edun isn’t ready to play, we should play 433 on Sat:

AMB

Asiimwe
Hector
Jones
Thomas (ok as a standard left back)

Dobbo
Camara
Fraser

Campbell
May
CBT

Worked well for us last season and will prevent us being massively exposed down the wings as per Aberdeen.

Also allows our most dangerous player to focus on what he is good at & actually be a winger.

Would like to see this line-up on Saturday. 

So would I but sadly as other poster said. Can’t see anyway that DH is going to after literally almost the entire pre season playing 3-5-2 suddenly go after all that first competitive game we’re playing 4-3-3 just can’t see it happening. 

NabySarr said:

Oh Eddie Youds... said:

On the basis that we only have one striker, no left footed CB & Edun isn’t ready to play, we should play 433 on Sat:

AMB

Asiimwe
Hector
Jones
Thomas (ok as a standard left back)

Dobbo
Camara
Fraser

Campbell
May
CBT

Worked well for us last season and will prevent us being massively exposed down the wings as per Aberdeen.

Also allows our most dangerous player to focus on what he is good at & actually be a winger.

I can’t see Holden scrapping 3-5-2 just because of one bad game. Last week we matched a strong championship side playing the same system. We’ve worked on it all pre-season and until Saturday it was going well

You may well be right ....... but we've identified some big issues, because with 3-5-2 we're lacking specialist players to suit the system in 3 positions:

1) LCB ...... in 3-5-2 the LCB ideally needs to be left footed. Right footed LCB can be hopelessly exposed on the counter, particulary without cover when the LWB is caught upfield.

2) LWB .... we need a left footed specialist LWB, with good pace and engine, tracks back and defensively capable. When he's fit, that's Edun.

3) Striker/target man ......... physically capable of holding up the ball, making sure it sticks up front and relieving pressure on defence.  Vision, link up play, mobility and knack of scoring goals is necessary also. We're not going to see the best of May otherwise, with Leaburn injured.

Otherwise, 4-3-3 suits the players actually available for Saturday.

LargeAddick said:

FULLERpromise said:

sinceiwasyoung said:

Oh Eddie Youds... said:

On the basis that we only have one striker, no left footed CB & Edun isn’t ready to play, we should play 433 on Sat:

AMB

Asiimwe
Hector
Jones
Thomas (ok as a standard left back)

Dobbo
Camara
Fraser

Campbell
May
CBT

Worked well for us last season and will prevent us being massively exposed down the wings as per Aberdeen.

Also allows our most dangerous player to focus on what he is good at & actually be a winger.

Would like to see this line-up on Saturday. 

So would I but sadly as other poster said. Can’t see anyway that DH is going to after literally almost the entire pre season playing 3-5-2 suddenly go after all that first competitive game we’re playing 4-3-3 just can’t see it happening. 

More than likely the team that started was his favoured potential line up with maybe 2-3 positions up for grabs. As even if we got a striker in now he like Taylor and Edun they won’t be thrown straight in I believe.
                     

I'm sure any striker signed this week would at least make the bench.

I don't get the attitude from some of its ok Edun, Taylor etc will be fit in a few weeks. Points in the first couple of games are just as important as any others this season, you dont get more points as the season progresses. A good start is imperative. We finished 30 odd points off automatics last season, that's a hell of a lot to overturn.

And about 7 of the starting 11 will be from.last seasons piss poor effort.

Yeah, but Large, if the manager has seen or been told the new players aren't ready, it's hardly worth the risk of injury or wrecking them if they're not yet  physically up to the intensity of a League match.

Oggy Red said:

NabySarr said:

Oh Eddie Youds... said:

On the basis that we only have one striker, no left footed CB & Edun isn’t ready to play, we should play 433 on Sat:

AMB

Asiimwe
Hector
Jones
Thomas (ok as a standard left back)

Dobbo
Camara
Fraser

Campbell
May
CBT

Worked well for us last season and will prevent us being massively exposed down the wings as per Aberdeen.

Also allows our most dangerous player to focus on what he is good at & actually be a winger.

I can’t see Holden scrapping 3-5-2 just because of one bad game. Last week we matched a strong championship side playing the same system. We’ve worked on it all pre-season and until Saturday it was going well

You may well be right ....... but we've identified some big issues, because with 3-5-2 we're lacking specialist players to suit the system in 3 positions:

1) LCB ...... in 3-5-2 the LCB ideally needs to be left footed. Right footed LCB can be hopelessly exposed on the counter, particulary without cover when the LWB is caught upfield.

2) LWB .... we need a left footed specialist LWB, with good pace and engine, tracks back and defensively capable. When he's fit, that's Edun.

3) Striker/target man ......... physically capable of holding up the ball, making sure it sticks up front and relieving pressure on defence.  Vision, link up play, mobility and knack of scoring goals is necessary also. We're not going to see the best of May otherwise, with Leaburn injured.

Otherwise, 4-3-3 suits the players actually available for Saturday.

I’m not sure it’s massively better suited? Thomas is more natural at LCB than he is Left back. May is not someone who plays well when he is up there on his own. We aren’t really suited to any formation at the moment, so I’d rather stick with the one we’ve been using (and done pretty well) and that we are going to use for the rest of this season

Get yer corey out (blackett-taylor) and stick him up top alongside May, come Saturday realistically who else is going to play there?

I am finding it quite amusing seeing people begging for us to play 433 before we've even started playing 352 after people spent so much time on here last season asking for 433 to be ditched in favour of 442. I don't know what it is about our fans always wanting the shape to change but we seem to always want to do something different. People get absolutely livid when we don't have two strikers on and Alfie May is not a lone striker. He needs a partner. CBT has spent a lot more games in recent years playing LWB than May has on his own up front and more than Campbell has played on the right wing. I don't particularly like him there but he'll do. Ness played left-sided centre half for us last season in a two, I think he'll be ok in a three. We had one dodgy pre-season game, we really shouldn't throw away all our prep for that. We might not have the squad fully completed yet but the better thing to do is to get the players playing the shape and patterns in competitive games and then improve on the players on the pitch rather than completely avoiding it all until we have the perfect line-up. I do think we need another centre half to add competition and reduce the pressure on Ness and we definitely need another striker. I'm not sure that we'll get another LWB in as Edun will be the main one and CBT will cover. Thomas is absolutely not a wing-back. It's not my dream to start the season with Kirk or Campbell up front but we will get another striker in before the window closes, in the meantime I'd rather we play a shape we've trained for and put someone alongside May to work with him rather than guaranteeing we're setting him up to have a bad afternoon on his own up there.

To be fair @Garrymanilow we haven't suited 3-5-2 in over 2 seasons.

No left back, injured right back, a lack of 3 central midfielders. 

We have the 3 midfielders to play it with Dobson, Fraser and then Taylor/Camara/Payne, Anderson to add to the central options but Blackett Taylor, Kirk, DJ and Campbell are not wing backs.

Edun is not fit
Egbo could suit potentially
Our other right back is having his first season in professional football 

4-3-3 with May, Blackett-Taylor and Campbell seems the most sensible option as we only have one centre forward fit for purpose right now.

Garrymanilow said:

I am finding it quite amusing seeing people begging for us to play 433 before we've even started playing 352 after people spent so much time on here last season asking for 433 to be ditched in favour of 442. I don't know what it is about our fans always wanting the shape to change but we seem to always want to do something different. People get absolutely livid when we don't have two strikers on and Alfie May is not a lone striker. He needs a partner. CBT has spent a lot more games in recent years playing LWB than May has on his own up front and more than Campbell has played on the right wing. I don't particularly like him there but he'll do. Ness played left-sided centre half for us last season in a two, I think he'll be ok in a three. We had one dodgy pre-season game, we really shouldn't throw away all our prep for that. We might not have the squad fully completed yet but the better thing to do is to get the players playing the shape and patterns in competitive games and then improve on the players on the pitch rather than completely avoiding it all until we have the perfect line-up. I do think we need another centre half to add competition and reduce the pressure on Ness and we definitely need another striker. I'm not sure that we'll get another LWB in as Edun will be the main one and CBT will cover. Thomas is absolutely not a wing-back. It's not my dream to start the season with Kirk or Campbell up front but we will get another striker in before the window closes, in the meantime I'd rather we play a shape we've trained for and put someone alongside May to work with him rather than guaranteeing we're setting him up to have a bad afternoon on his own up there.

I'm not particularly in favour of 4-3-3 myself and prefer the more fluid gung-ho of a 3-5-2 ...... but no matter how often the formation has been practiced, Aberdeen very easily exposed our playing of square pegs in round holes. Without specialist players to suit in some positions, we're going to be particularly vulnerable caught on the break - Orient will no doubt do their homework.

First rule of football: Don't get beat.

If our defensive play is a colander full of holes, then we need to sort the defensive strategies first. At least eliminate best we can glaring vulnerabilities.
Curbs would call it back to basics.

RonnieMoore said:

Callumcafc said:

We are only looking to fill 2-3 more positions, with a month left of the window.

Don’t be surprised if we continue to see a slightly slower period while we wait for the right targets to become available. There will be another flurry of activity at some point in August, just hard to predict exactly when that will be.

It’s better to have a Kermorgant available for 40 games than it is to have a Josh Parker for 46.

Not correct looking to bring in 4/5 players 

We will see..

You say we only had one dodgy pre season game @Garrymanilow BUT in reality….

1. Most of our preseason games were against crap lower league teams that didn’t have the quality to expose our 352 weaknesses.

2. The two teams that did have the quality both did expose our vulnerabilities I.e…

- Millwall second half - Mitchell was exposed on the right and Esse scored.

- Aberdeen first half - Ness hugely exposed multiple times and Morris consequently got multiple assists

Oggy Red said:

Garrymanilow said:

I am finding it quite amusing seeing people begging for us to play 433 before we've even started playing 352 after people spent so much time on here last season asking for 433 to be ditched in favour of 442. I don't know what it is about our fans always wanting the shape to change but we seem to always want to do something different. People get absolutely livid when we don't have two strikers on and Alfie May is not a lone striker. He needs a partner. CBT has spent a lot more games in recent years playing LWB than May has on his own up front and more than Campbell has played on the right wing. I don't particularly like him there but he'll do. Ness played left-sided centre half for us last season in a two, I think he'll be ok in a three. We had one dodgy pre-season game, we really shouldn't throw away all our prep for that. We might not have the squad fully completed yet but the better thing to do is to get the players playing the shape and patterns in competitive games and then improve on the players on the pitch rather than completely avoiding it all until we have the perfect line-up. I do think we need another centre half to add competition and reduce the pressure on Ness and we definitely need another striker. I'm not sure that we'll get another LWB in as Edun will be the main one and CBT will cover. Thomas is absolutely not a wing-back. It's not my dream to start the season with Kirk or Campbell up front but we will get another striker in before the window closes, in the meantime I'd rather we play a shape we've trained for and put someone alongside May to work with him rather than guaranteeing we're setting him up to have a bad afternoon on his own up there.

I'm not particularly in favour of 4-3-3 myself and prefer the more fluid gung-ho of a 3-5-2 ...... but no matter how often the formation has been practiced, Aberdeen very easily exposed our playing of square pegs in round holes. Without specialist players to suit in some positions, we're going to be particularly vulnerable caught on the break - Orient will no doubt do their homework.

First rule of football: Don't get beat.

If our defensive play is a colander full of holes, then we need to sort the defensive strategies first. At least eliminate best we can glaring vulnerabilities.
Curbs would call it back to basics.

All true but with the caveat that while we (Lifers) won't have seen Orients preseason you can be sure Holden will, or had people watching it at least.

No doubt there's weaknesses in our probable shape but there'll be weaknesses in theirs too. What those are is not for me to say but it's not a case that we are automatically going to have a "lose the game" button that Orient can press at will.

Not Kirk it’s like playing with 10 men