vonwright

Good luck to him.

Make or break loan, I'd say. I know a lot of people here rate him highly but he's not really shown anything to suggest he's ready to make the step up. Hopefully he can do that now. But while I agree some players develop more slowly than others, it's also true that some players don't develop much at all. Sometimes they just aren't as good as we hoped or thought they would be.

I like Stretton, I hope he shows that he's got a lot more to give. But I think this loan is a good one for all parties. 

3 hours ago, DCFC27 said:

I think he’d be better playing central, in our team. From the left I think he looks pretty ineffective. Might see more from the right, but Mendez Laing seems to look really good from that side at the moment. 

Think he needs a bit of time. Worth remembering if he's playing on the same side as Roberts then he's not going to get as much attacking support as NML and that might make him look less effective. But in any case the fact he hasn't set the world alight from the wing yet doesn't mean he isn't a winger (he usually has been throughout his career). Not sure he'd be any better down the middle and feels to me like we have better options than TB at either 9 or 10.

We definitely need another winger and striker though. 

Can see how it's a good move for him if his international manager has said he won't to to the world cup playing in League One. Whether it's good for us will depend on a couple of things: a) how good is 22/23 Bielik after all the injuries, and how much will he play? but moreso b) what we do with the money we have saved. I think we are still two or three good players off having the squad we need. If the 'Bielik money' gets us a great right back and striker I'll be happy. If it goes on a couple of average squad players who don't really improve us, not so much.

17 hours ago, Rev said:

who joins Yanic Wildshit as a recent arrival. 

Is he the one who lives in a tent in the woods?

55 minutes ago, MACKWORTHRAM said:

Even if we sign a couple this week then they aren't gonna be playing on Saturday.

I think LR will go with

                 Wildsmith

Knight Davies Chester Roberts 

              Bird         Smith

                 Hourihane

   NML.         Collins.     Barkhuizen 

Genuinely think that's the obvious team. Toss up between who plays right back our of Knight or Smith but LR will not be playing Oduroh there.

Other than Smith, who needed the minutes, I'd be amazed if anyone else in that team makes the starting 11 on Saturday.

Forsyth and Cashin didn't really do their chances any favours at all. From what I've seen of Roberts he looks a better option at LB than Forsyth.

 

This is the team I'd expect to see, too.

In terms of the team I'd want to see, I'd swap Smith and Knight. Smith's no more a right back than Knight is, but I suspect you lose more playing Knight out of position.

Tricky one - I understand why he'd want to go but the fact is his injury record means any move now would be for a fraction of his potential value in a year's time. And would any club looking for a loan want to commit to paying his entire wages - and for him to take up a valuable loan slot - when there's no guarantee he'll stay fit?

On the other hand his value to us is potentially enormous - if he reaches anything like the level he's capable of we get the best defensive midfielder in the league (or one of the best centre-backs).

So there's very little incentive for us to let him go, and little incentive for clubs of a sufficient status to get him in the World Cup reckoning to take a risk on him. But he wants to go, and probably will, and if that's on a cut-price permanent deal or cut-price loan-to-buy, it is going to be painful.  

 

 

6 minutes ago, Ravabeerbelly said:

These are first teamers.

Some of who have had way too much wind blown up their @rses.

Yup. Cashin, Stearman and Forsyth are three of the back four, with Thompson in front... You'd be entitled to expect a bit more against Alfreton. 

48 minutes ago, Reggie Greenwood said:

If big American  financial institutions like Goldman Sachs’s etc have been funding Kirchner / Sylnc then I’m pretty sure that would have had a bearing on the Q/ EFL decision ? If he could /is fooling massive financial corporations I doubt the EFL and Admin would fare much better sussing him out. 
That’s from a person who is no fan of Q or EFL 

I understand that but they were backing his company - not him. That might suggest to Q that he's a credible player but their job is to work out if his funding to buy the club is credible and secure, not whether big financial corporations have bankrolled his business. 

1 hour ago, duncanjwitham said:

For all the talk about these rules, I have yet to see any remotely sensible suggestion as to what an improved/toughened-up set would actually look like.  There's certainly nothing immediately obvious that would pass David Clowes but reject Mel Morris, for example.  And if Kirchner has £100m sat in a bank account, is the CEO of a biggish company, and has no previous history of anything illegal (or even dodgy), then what do you actually test for?

The only remotely plausible suggestion is some kind of escrow type requirement, where a potential owner has to put any money that he commits to the club spending into an escrow account himself.  But then you're massively ramping up the short-term cost to buy a club.  Would Clowes still have bought the club if he was required to put away another say £10m, with no guarantee he would ever get it back?  Or £20m? Or £30m?  Would Gadsby and co have saved us last time if they had to find another £5m or £10m from somewhere?

Not sure why you would reject Mel, to be honest. He had the money, just spent it in an incredibly reckless way. I don't see how any fit and proper persons test could or should exclude him (although arguably it should exclude him from being able to own another club in the future).

Kirchner is quite different. Even if we accept he "had the money" (What money? Whose money?) I think some basic checks on where this money came from, and how his businesses were being run might have thrown up at least some red flags.

For all that people are saying 'the system worked!' it seems like both the admins and the EFL were perfectly happy, and it was left to the American financial authorities to step in and freeze the deal, and journalists to reveal the turmoil at Kirchner's company.

I accept there is a limit to the investigations the EFL can do into a potential buyer, but I'd suggest they should be doing a lot more than the currently seem to do. 

Of course this makes you wonder about the fit and proper person rules, but in our case we also had administrators whose sole purpose was to find an appropriate buyer. I've spent a lot of time sympathising with them - they can hardly magic up a bid from nowhere, and we were very hard to sell - but it feels like an awful lot of time and effort was spent pandering to this guy's bs when perhaps it would have been better spent asking questions

The really annoying thing is that Byrne is exactly the player we need. He was one of our best players last year, super-consistent, never injured, and offered a threat carrying the ball forward from right back.

Such a shame it's come to this.

 

3 hours ago, EnigmaRam said:

I think Roberts has been one of most consistent players so far pre season. I would expect them to be battling for the place as anyone should 

Agreed and (maybe controversially) I expect Roberts to come out on top, on merit.

39 minutes ago, sage said:

The problem for Knight is he doesn't really fit in a 4231 but being a good pro he will do his best wherever. 

He is an 8 in a three man midfield or a RM in a 442 that has an out and out winger on the left 

I broadly agree but it feels like there should be some way of picking a midfield of Bird/Knight/Hourihane, with two wingers and a striker ahead of them, that worked. 

LR seems to want two sitting midfielders, which is his prerogative of course, but he looks set to lose his best one (Bielik) and it is a system that leaves no obvious spot for one of his better players (Knight).

Two sitting midfielders made more sense to me in the Championship, where we were often on the back foot and needed more stability.

I'm not Knight's biggest fan (ie I think he's a good Championship player but maybe not much more), but he should definitely be a regular starter in a position that suits him in League One!

(It's possible LR is resigned to Knight leaving before the window closes, of course - that would make more sense.)

1 hour ago, duncanjwitham said:

Usual caveats about preseason/heat etc, but the thing I found most worrying last night is that we seemed to have no answer to them stopping us playing out from the back.  It's not a case of our midfielders passing sideways/backwards because they're lazy or scared, it's because Stevenage were blocking off their forward passing options.  A certain amount of that is definitely down to preseason+heat - you need players busting a gut to get into space to receive the ball, and the conditions were definitely not ideal for that.  Likewise when we did manage to break the lines, the player often found themselves isolated and ended up going backwards anyway, but players won't be sprinting up to support and sprinting back afterwards as much in a game like last night.

The thing I find most interesting is the way we've used James Collins.  He's barely touched the ball in the 2 games I've seen this week - he's played much further forward than Plange and CKR have previously, basically like a proper striker rather than dropping off to link the play.  Which means we've basically been playing with 10 men for large parts of the game.  If you want to play possession football, you can't afford to be a man down like that.  But we also haven't (as far as I can remember anyway) gone direct to him even once.  When we have been more direct, it's been balls over the top for wingers to run onto.  If the opposition are doing a high-press, then one of the ways to beat it is to go direct to a striker and play from there - at the very least it will force the opposition to sit back a bit more because they have to be wary of a longer ball - but we haven't even tried that.  It seems to be like we're not playing to his strengths, and his strengths don't seem to suit the way we want to play.  Obviously early days etc though.  (And I'm not saying play direct all the time, just mix it up occasionally so you don't become predictable.)

It could also be the case that Rosenior is deliberately telling our players to not go direct in preseason, to force us to get used to moving the ball under pressure, and he's going to mix it up a bit more when the real games start.  And if that's the case them fine.

Was definitely hoping signing quick wingers and the likes of Collins meant we were going to mix things up a bit more this season. We got caught out a lot last year when teams decided we weren't going to hurt them if they pressed high and stopped us playing out. We didn't seem to have any plan B. 

If we aren't going down that route then Collins is an odd signing really - we'd have been better off with someone more mobile and more able to drop back, hold up the ball, bring others in etc. 

Still plenty of time to figure out what works though. I guess that's what these games are for. 

 

A signing of this calibre would definitely raise the 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

overall quality of the first-team squad.

3 minutes ago, Brammie Steve said:

Hope he's not a novice!

(DELETED MY OWN TERRIBLE PUN)

1 minute ago, vonwright said:

Interesting. You'd have to say some serious quality came out of the Forest academy in the late 1990s/early 2000s. 

...although just read that Forest released Shaun Wright-Phillips because he was 'too small'.

Ha.

1 hour ago, Ghost of Clough said:

A comparison of the main academy products since 1980:

Then there will be:
Delap, Ebiowei, Williams (2003)
Moloney, Gordon, Ryan (2004)
DRobinson, Kellyman, Sharpe (2005)
JThompson, Scanlon, Kaba (2006)

Interesting. You'd have to say some serious quality came out of the Forest academy in the late 1990s/early 2000s. 

Of our list I guess Huddlestone, Hughes and Hendrick are the only ones who played regularly at the highest level, and of those Huddlestone stands out as having a significantly better career.

We will see where the younger ones end up. 

26 minutes ago, Millenniumram said:

It’s an interesting debate, and one I’ve thought about before. Is our academy really as good as some fans make it out to be? Do we get overexcited about our young stars who aren’t really as special as we think they are? Those really are open questions btw, because I’m really not sure what I think.

You can look at Forest for example, much as I don’t want to. A lot of our fans say we’ve got the better academy, but have we? They’ve had players like Cash, Burke and even Brereton go for absolutely huge fees, far larger than what we got for players like Hughes and Bogle. Players like Lascelles and Darlow have also had established Premier League careers, whereas even Hughes and Hendrick have hardly torn it up after leaving us. And I’m pretty sure they were only a category 2 academy until fairly recently. That doesn’t reflect well on all the investment we put into our academy in my view - very few players have left for 10m+ and established themselves in the Premier League. 

We can look further than that as well, how many of the players we’ve let go have made particularly great careers for themselves? Hanson, once regarded as a “hot prospect”, has been released by Oxford. Farrend Rawson, due to be our next big CB, is at Morecambe. Zanzala plays for Newport. These were once regarded as our best young talent, and look at them now. Our academy has hardly churned out a load of top quality players. 

Now, I don’t want to come across overly critical of the academy. Without the players they brought through, we wouldn’t have even put up a fight last year. In fact, we wouldn’t have even had a team to put up a fight. We should be hugely thankful to academy staff like Wassall, who has found some brilliant external talent to bring in and develop, and the coaches that got these players ready to play for our first team when we desperately needed them (many of these coaches are now gone, sadly). 

But I do feel our fans have got a bit over-excited about this current crop that have come through, based on their performances when we won the U18 Premier League. First team football is a totally different proposition. Yes it’s amazing how many have come through at once, but this was through necessity rather than every player being absolutely ready.

Bird being linked with Coventry is no surprise, for example, that’s his level. A good Championship player, nothing more. And that goes for Knight, Buchanan etc as well. I don’t think any of them will go onto have established Premier League careers. Might flirt with the top flight now and then of course, but I think they’ll all spend the best part of their careers in the Championship (I’m not even sure Sibley will manage that). Not that there’s anything wrong with that of course, a Championship career is a damn good career, which will set them up for life. Plenty of good players who’ve done similar in the past. But they’re not as special as some believe in my view.

Not really sure what my point is here. We’ve been at Championship level for most of my lifetime, so producing Championship level players is really all we should expect from our academy. So this is certainly no slight on them. But you sometimes can’t help but feel, with all the investment in our academy, we should be producing the odd player who’s really special, and goes for huge money to the Premier League. To be honest, I think we might have had a couple of those go for free in Ebosele and Ebiowei, thanks to Mel Morris and Quantuma. Do all the others get snapped up whilst they’re still 16, like Gordon and Delap? Maybe, but is there something we can do to persuade them to stay? Or are the big clubs just impossible to compete with? I really don’t know.

TL,DR: Our academy has done a brilliant job, but maybe we should expect more for our investment. Or maybe not. There might be more we can do to persuade our best talent to stay. Or maybe not. Basically I don’t know. This whole post was pointless. Thanks for reading.

Cheers - this is a much more thoughtful version of exactly what I was trying to say.

I could be wrong but if feels like quite a few clubs in the Championship could point to at least one or two players over the last decade that they've either sold for big money (as with Forest and Cash), or who were later sold for big money (ie people who went on to be huge stars, but moved before they maximised their value). Who are the players we look at and think "If only we'd held on to them for another couple of seasons we'd have made £10million"? I just don't think they exist. Maybe Ebiowei, maybe Ebosele, as you say - but we've said that before.

Really don't want to sound critical of the academy, as its done an incredible job and I'd say its better to supply a steady stream of good Championship players than the occasional diamond. It's just that it is odd that we've never really done the latter. 

Just looking at the Max Bird thread and seeing a lot of people saying something like 'Coventry? He's way too good for them.'

I'm not so sure. I like Max, hope he stays, think he'd be brilliant in League One and can hold his own in the Championship. But I'm not sure how high his 'ceiling' is, or whether I'm particularly surprised there isn't a queue of top Championship clubs (or Premier League clubs) knocking down the door. 

I seem to feel this about a lot of our young players, ie we've produced a really impressive number of Championship level players. But how often do we produce players who go on to get regular football with top-half Premier League teams? 

Is this because the very best get snapped up very early (Gordon, Delap etc)? Maybe, although who knows where they will end up. More generally even some of our best recent talent - Bogle, for example - ended up at Sheffield United struggling for games in the Premier League. 

Wasn't Buchanan going to a top club? Knight? I'm fairly sure Ebosele was supposed to be nailed on for a top-flight move. 

Even our best young players of the last decade or so - Hughes, maybe Hendrick - didn't set the Premier League alight and never got a really big move, or played a major role for a competitive top flight club.

Don't get me wrong: the academy has been superb. It's been brilliant watching so many young players come through and look completely comfortable in the Chamionship. But am I wrong to think it strange we haven't produced at least a couple of real A-grade players?

54 minutes ago, whiteroseram said:

That's why I think he'll go on loan, less risk for whichever team

Even as I loan I'd think twice, though. It's not like a loan comes at no cost, and there is a limit to how many clubs can have. 

If Bielik spends next season building his strength and confidence and fitness - and his knees stand up to it - there's no telling where he might be playing the following year. But right now... he's a tough sell. 

The thing about Bielik moving... Would you take a chance on him if you were (for example) a Championship side? Doubt he's on low wages at the moment. There are a lot of safer bets, given his injury record. 

I'd love him to stick around this season. Think he could be great in League One. 

This is the first signing so far I'm really not sure about. We need goals and he's never been prolific. I get that the strategy might be to have a forward who holds the ball up, brings other in, etc, but he's also 34 and I'm not sure he's going to have the work rate or mobility to do that effectively. 

And if our wide men are likely to be Barkhuizen and Mendez-Laing then it would be nice to have a striker who was a bit more of a goal threat.

(I'm probably wrong, I've never watched him particularly closely, but then he's never made much of an impression.)

On 05/07/2022 at 09:59, Gee SCREAMER !! said:

Think they were lucky that they held on to Grealish as well.  By far the best player in the division who woke up during that  winning streak of about 10-11 games.

The side they put out in the play-off final was ridiculously strong, really. They had Mings, Tuanzebe, McGinn, Grealish, Abraham and El Ghazi all starting (not to mention the likes of Hourihane). They really should have finished top two. 

Mount, Tomori and Wilson papered over a lot of cracks for us that year.

Fingers crossed for him (and us). I've had an uneasy feeling for a while that if he isn't given space, he isn't very effective, and that other clubs worked that out quite quickly after his initial purple patch as an unknown. Hopefully he'll get a bit more time and space in League One because if he does, he's going to score goals.