Dr Balls

“Clubs in the bag, clubs in the bag”. As provided by Mark Ashton and his Top Trumps approach to recruitment.

2 ways of reading that. One is that Arsenal and Man City don’t know how to drive a hard bargain on fees. The second is that they would somehow be doing Chelsea a favour. Time for the conspiracy theorists?!

“The curse of Ashton Gate”? Where brilliant players lose their skills as they arrive but magically seem to regain them as soon as they leave. It’s happened so many times it’s hard not to believe it’s true!

Good grief. I had forgotten Chelsea got £55m out of Man Utd for Mason Mount, another England player whose career at Old Trafford appears to be going the way of Jadon Sancho. Perhaps Chelsea aren’t the financial mugs we had them marked down as!

You mean being a “counter-attacking” team? I wonder who first had us set up like that…

Couldn’t have done much worse than Kasey Palmer, given the fee and wages we paid out on him by comparison. Szmodics was a good piece of scouting and that’s about all you can say positively about his time with us.

Bloomin’ well should be. Absolutely travesty that we didn’t play him and then let him go so as to accommodate Kasey Palmer, at a massive fee and ridiculous wages.

Could run rings around our media department too by the looks of that! “Top bloke” captures him perfectly.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/67878118 A bit of nostalgia for those old enough and a culture shock for anyone under 30!

My worry is that Agent Martin has gone “rogue”. He’s seen what JL did to Pearson and is on some mad scheme to wreak vengeance for a terrible wrong that has been committed. Never before has one of these agents looked good enough to return (Akinde, Clarkson, Little, Hunt etc) but Martin seems out to prove a point!

The problem with the FA Cup is that in the past 30 years it’s mainly been won by a small cabal of clubs including Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United, who have pretty much monopolised it, buoyed up by Champions League riches, while also winning other cups. Therefore it has become a lot less special. Just look at how many times the league and cup double was achieved before the Premier League started and how many times since. However to clubs such as Leicester, Wigan, Portsmouth and even Everton who have won the FA Cup during the last 30 years, it would remain a highlight for fans. It also stands in direct contrast to the 70s and 80s, which was a golden period for wins by the unfancied underdogs - Sunderland, Southampton, West Ham, Coventry and Wimbledon, the first 3 of which won it while playing in the Second Division. The chances of a Championship side winning the FA Cup now (even one just relegated and with parachute payments) are less than zero!

Definitely badly handled by LJ. But he wasn’t the only player sacrificed in a churn that looked like Ashton was playing Top Trumps with potential signings, and ended up getting them all while SL’s attention was elsewhere. Wes Burns always had pace and some skills. What he has gained is a lot of experience in L1 that has allowed him to finally flourish at this level. Just a shame it’s at Ipswich with Ashton!

I am not surprised that players jump at the chance to go to the Premier League. It was the same for Reid and Bryan as it has been for Semenyo and Scott. The biggest surprise for me is that only Bournemouth seemed interested in Scott or willing to pay our price for the Championship Young Player of the Year, who was actually playing for a team in the bottom half of the table. Suggests that some PL teams don’t really scout the Championship that well and would prefer to recruit from overseas.

Just hope we got a decent sell on clause for Scott because my feeling is that he won’t be at Bournemouth for long. The problem is that the biggest clubs buy very few young players directly from the Championship, but are then willing to pay far more buying the same player a season later once they have Premier League experience. False economy to me but there we go. And at some point soon, I also reckon some higher PL team will come in for Semenyo. He could be Antonio’s replacement at West Ham as he is a defender’s nightmare even at Premier League level. Is he playing at the Africa Cup of Nations? Did Ghana qualify for the finals?

Sam is actually a good goal poacher in the box. His shots on target percentage is high. The problem has been that often we haven’t played in a way that has suited his game. But then neither has it suited Conway, Wells, and Weimann. On that basis, I wouldn’t say our lack of goals should be blamed on the strikers but rather those behind them who should be making the opportunities. And no we haven’t replaced Scott properly, and that becomes even more apparent when just playing James and Williams in midfield.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/jan/02/the-wayne-rooney-paradox-he-should-avoid-any-club-that-wants-him Pretty much hits the nail on the head. Also could apply to our own previous “Marmite” manager, whose latest post was similarly short and unsuccessful. And at least when JL etc sacked Pearson, we didn’t end up with either Lampard or Gerrard. If anything, the current route to improvement appears to be to appoint a Basque coach (Emeri, Arteta, Iraola, Xabi Alonso).

This would be the same Weimann who scored the one-on-one against Watford? That was exactly the sort of chance he thrives on. Plus he has been struggling with a foot injury for most of the season so far. He still has a lot to offer, if played correctly. Starting him out wide doesn’t get the best out of him. Having TGH playing balls through to him would work, but then that’s the problem. All of our forwards seem to prefer through balls to run onto rather than taking it directly in front of the defender. Only Cornick seems able to take those balls and lay it off, but he can’t score!

Might also suggest it’s easier to see the problems sat up in the stand than from pitch side. I know Shteeve McLaren got a bashing for it but watching the first half from an elevated position as per the rugby teams these days does make a lot of sense. You can see patterns of play that would be impossible to pick out at ground level and allows for a change of tactics at half time. Too simplistic?

A lot of forwards but we can’t score and we are playing a midfielder up front (Knight). Suggests the problems might be in the supply and the formation. Something for Manning to ponder but will he change?

They could but I don’t think they could make a pair right now. Too naive and also too weak. Wells may not have Bell’s pure speed but he more than makes up for that in nous and strength. It’s also extremely unlikely that they would do that for us, because if either is really that good, we will sell them just like we always do. On that basis, a front pairing for Bournemouth in 5 years time? Maybe!!

Firstly define what kind of player you need. Secondly look around at who might be available and affordable. Form a list and rank them and then see who you can get. Most likely, it will either be someone not currently getting a game at this level with not much time left on their contract, or a player from a lower league either home or abroad. That’s the long and short of it, and the problem is there is no guarantee that what you really want even exists, which is where you may have to compromise. Cornick strikes me as a “compromise buy” as a replacement for Chris Martin. But as we now know his strike rate makes Martin look like Pele!

Your last paragraph sums it up. The powers that be sacked a manager who was popular with the fans and one of which we could generally see what he was trying to do with the resources he was afforded. Even the players brought in the summer with what budget he was given were good buys: Dickie, Knight, TGH. We weren’t really failing but JL decided to replace experience with potential that may or may not exist or be realised. That’s the risk they have taken and although this was supposedly about the short term I.e. making the top 6 this season, there is little or no evidence for that happening. Hence why Manning has been given no honeymoon to speak of by many of the fans, because it was a change that many felt was unnecessary. And at least so far it hasn’t gone as badly as Rooney at Brum.

Oh I don’t know about that. In 15 games he seems to have transformed the Birmingham team under Eustace that outplayed us in August into a useless relegation-threatened joke. I would suggest that’s quite some change!

Trying to make corned beef hash and baked beans pleasant on the eye really sums up where we are. I would like us to be entertaining in our style and win matches. However I am enough of a pragmatist to know that the ingredients of our squad mean that’s not possible very often, so I would accept winning but pragmatic football I.e. 1-0 wins. At least I leave the ground happy at the end of the game. What none of us want is turgid, safety-first, low entertainment, ineffective, no scoring, possession-based amongst our defenders, drawing or losing football, because we are trying to be something our current players cannot perform at this level. I would expect our team to have more possession and look great against League 1 opposition such as Oxford. If Manning was assuming that these players could do the same against better teams at this level, then you would suggest he was either naive or deluded or both!

Hate to say it but I don’t think Hutchinson would have been able to do that against Chris Martin. It’s his type of player that we have failed to replace.