Dicko
Edgar Davids
We should be looking to scoop up some promising teenagers. Feels like most of our best prospects have moved on recently.
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Transfer thread
- Thread starter Danishfurniturelover
- Start date
We should be looking to scoop up some promising teenagers. Feels like most of our best prospects have moved on recently.
Danishfurniturelover
the prettiest spice girl
Might have been paper talk but they were quoting 70m a few weeks back
Bedfordspurs
Martin Peters
Just not the right fee for the player
Grays_1890
Colin Calderwood
I think he is a highlights reel player more than a week in week out quality player, known for knocking in the odd freekick but other than that he is not the efficient type, looks like he is wading treacle the rest of the time. I watched him after his goal last week and he did little more after.
tommysvr
Justin Edinburgh
Disagree. One of the best midfielders outside the top 6 IMO.
metalgear
Nayim
Lol better than Messi last season :
James Ward-Prowse put numerous deliveries on a plate for his teammates, creating 39 shots on goal from set-pieces, a total surpassed only by Mason Mount, but registering six set-piece assists, tied 1st in the league with West Ham’s Aaron Cresswell. The data confirms Ward-Prowse’s world class dead-ball ability. He’s scored ten direct free-kicks from 4.4 xG and 72 shots over the last six seasons, a scoring rate that means it’s possible he genuinely might be an even better free-kick taker than Lionel Messi—Messi has 39 goals from 423 direct free-kicks across his entire La Liga shaking out at a 9% conversion rate, a clip that pales in comparison to Ward-Prowse’s 14%. [https://statsbomb]
https://statsbomb.com/articles/soccer/southampton-season-preview-2021-22/
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James Ward-Prowse put numerous deliveries on a plate for his teammates, creating 39 shots on goal from set-pieces, a total surpassed only by Mason Mount, but registering six set-piece assists, tied 1st in the league with West Ham’s Aaron Cresswell. The data confirms Ward-Prowse’s world class dead-ball ability. He’s scored ten direct free-kicks from 4.4 xG and 72 shots over the last six seasons, a scoring rate that means it’s possible he genuinely might be an even better free-kick taker than Lionel Messi—Messi has 39 goals from 423 direct free-kicks across his entire La Liga shaking out at a 9% conversion rate, a clip that pales in comparison to Ward-Prowse’s 14%. [https://statsbomb]
https://statsbomb.com/articles/soccer/southampton-season-preview-2021-22/
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Gazza Dazzla
Chris Perry
He is probably the best set piece taker in world football isn’t he? The Stats don’t lie here.Lol better than Messi last season :
James Ward-Prowse put numerous deliveries on a plate for his teammates, creating 39 shots on goal from set-pieces, a total surpassed only by Mason Mount, but registering six set-piece assists, tied 1st in the league with West Ham’s Aaron Cresswell. The data confirms Ward-Prowse’s world class dead-ball ability. He’s scored ten direct free-kicks from 4.4 xG and 72 shots over the last six seasons, a scoring rate that means it’s possible he genuinely might be an even better free-kick taker than Lionel Messi—Messi has 39 goals from 423 direct free-kicks across his entire La Liga shaking out at a 9% conversion rate, a clip that pales in comparison to Ward-Prowse’s 14%. [https://statsbomb]
https://statsbomb.com/articles/soccer/southampton-season-preview-2021-22/
Sent from my SM-T865 using Fapatalk
Football isn’t just played when the ball is dead though, the majority of the time the ball is actually in play! I think the debate is whether his in play ability is strong enough to warrant a place in the team.
tommysvr
Justin Edinburgh
Only one game etc etc but he setup 2 goals in the last 10 minutes to beat us earlier in the year.
Gutter Boy
Tim Sherwood
That Aouar guy at Lyon that some here wanted before we got Bentancur is signing for Forest, so will be interesting to see how he gets on in this league.
Gazza Dazzla
Chris Perry
I think Bruno Guimeres was the one from Lyon people wanted before Bentancur. Aouar is more of an attacking player I believe so not relevant to Bentancur.
DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
Well, what that game showed, imo is that we still need an upgrade at CCB, LCB and in midfield, where we need a press-resistant player who can pick the ball up deep, evade challenges and turn. The sort of profile of a right-sided AM, like Kulusevski, but more used to playing in central midfield.
The first two are fairly self-evident - we cannot play out from high presses, and it remains a critical issue that will stop us competing at the very top. Teams will try to press us high and hard, and we need to be able to play out from the back.
Maybe Lenglet is the solution on the left, I dunno. But we need a playmaking center-back in Dier's place, and a press-resistant midfielder to offer an alternative in games like this. I hope we can make enough money from sales in the next couple of weeks to address at least one of the two gaps above.
The first two are fairly self-evident - we cannot play out from high presses, and it remains a critical issue that will stop us competing at the very top. Teams will try to press us high and hard, and we need to be able to play out from the back.
Maybe Lenglet is the solution on the left, I dunno. But we need a playmaking center-back in Dier's place, and a press-resistant midfielder to offer an alternative in games like this. I hope we can make enough money from sales in the next couple of weeks to address at least one of the two gaps above.
Bedfordspurs
Martin Peters
IMO… never over react to one game vs Chelsea. That was as good as they will play all season and we were not good
Dier is fine, even with some poor passes
Davies is fine
The team is still WIP and it will be ongoing
We could have gone for someone like Koulibaly who was all over the place defensively
We have Lenglet who has already shown he can pass brilliantly
We’re fine now IMO unless a top top drawer player becomes available and is far…. None have
Bedfordspurs
Martin Peters
Yeah he is a 10
Gutter Boy
Tim Sherwood
Haven't you just described Bissouma?
DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
Sort of, but I get the sense that he isn't going to play in a three or even in place of Hojbjerg (my preference for a more skillful midfield). Early days, but it looks like he's being swapped in for Bentancur, which is only a marginal upgrade that leaves the midfield still pretty one-paced.
We need a player in Kulusevski's mold, imo, but one comfortable dropping into a midfield three, which he isn't. Just to offer us something different and help us get around the press better. There are a bunch of players like that on the market right now - Milinkovic-Savic, Paqueta, Maddison, Soler - but if's a question of if we have the time, space, money and energy to pursue them at this point.
braineclipse
Willie Hall
I would say there's definitely a lot of room for improvement.
However, we started none of our new signings. We're still early in the season and up against a very good team away from home.
Being second best away from home against other big teams happens from time to time.
That being said I agree with you on where there's room for improvement. I also think the players that would be a clear step up in those regards while being as good (or better) defensively are very rare and will be difficult to get.
DubaiSpur
Ian Walker
This is also true, but this problem predates this season - we've had trouble breaking through pressing teams for close to the entirety of the time pressing has been a thing in the Premier League.
I'm not joking - we have always struggled against the press to varying degrees, even under Poch when we were the arch-pressers ourselves. I remember his first game against Klopp as an example of this - Poch's first game against Pep had seen us beat them utterly hollow on the way to a 2-0 victory that should really have been 5-0, with us hunting down and dispossessing City's panicked players at will.
But when we played against Klopp, who had only arrived a week earlier, his team counterpressed us ferociously, and we actually struggled to get out of our half. We scraped a 0-0 that day, iirc.
In the early years, when we were the pioneers of all-aspect pressing, we had a trump card when counterpressed that hid our weaknesses as a unit - Dembele, who truly was a once in a generation player. He allowed us to press, and made it *very* difficult to counterpress us. But outside of him, a lot of our players struggled under the press - even our attacking quartet of Eriksen, Alli, Son and Kane. And as Dembele declined, our ability to play out of the press declined with it, until 2018/2019 when our approach was bypassing our midfield entirely and just lumping it to our forwards, because we couldn't hold it in midfield at all. Somehow, our fitness and the quality of our forwards in Kane, Son and Eriksen scraped us into the CL final, but it was clear we needed a change.
Accordingly, following 2018/2019, we signed Lo Celso and Ndombele to add to Alli, precisely because, on paper, they would comprise the most all-aspect pressing and press-resistant midfield in Europe. Sadly, one was a permacrock, one was a fat waste of space, and one had lost everything that once made him a good player - and, with our last bits of technical skill in midfield gone, we regressed to being a low block team, encouraged by the caveman-like approach of Mourinho who took away the one thing that had allowed us to compete despite our declining technical levels - our fitness.
So, there's a point to this story I'm telling - it's that, although we introduced the high-press to the league (well, after Soton, anyway), we were never good at evading it ourselves. Other teams were - they got better at it, they built teams full of players who could play through the press, from goalkeeper to striker. Liverpool and City most prominently.
To get back to the levels of dominance we enjoyed in 2016/2017, we can no longer rely on having a unique one-off player like Dembele to save us - we need to become press-resistant, and it needs to be right through the side.
We cannot replace Kane and Son, although neither of them are...great at evading the press. But we have to replace Dier, and we have to replace Davies, imo.
Now, whether we can actually do that is open to question - as you said, not many good players around in either position atm. But we have to do it if we really want to get anywhere, imo - otherwise we will always look limited against technically skilled teams like Chelsea, whenever we come up against them.