Luxury players and why we have too many

[TuffLuff]

16 minutes ago, ramsbottom said:

So by your definition, ANY player who shows inconsistency is a luxury???

Ofcourse not. For Bent though if he can't consistently contribute as a lone striker in terms of hold up play, winning headers etc but still scores goals then he is inconsistent in his play but still a luxery because your essentially going to be carrying a player through most of the game, and is that worth it? 

[ramsbottom]

6 minutes ago, TuffLuff said:

Ofcourse not. For Bent though if he can't consistently contribute as a lone striker in terms of hold up play, winning headers etc but still scores goals then he is inconsistent in his play but still a luxery because your essentially going to be carrying a player through most of the game, and is that worth it? 

Jermaine Defoe wasn't exactly Harry Kane or Diego Costa when it came to running channels out wide, holding up the ball for others, and tracking back into his own half, but without his goals, Sunderland would've bettered our 11 pts last season.  Strikers aren't meant to be involved in all the play, all of the time, the nature of their roll means they will be isolated for large periods of the game, especially against superior opposition.  Are they worth carrying for most of the game if they pop up with 2 minutes left and poach one at the back post for three points?  Absolutely...

Any player not performing for the majority of their game time, is counter productive to their team, but that doesn't make them a luxury

[Dimmu]

I hate the "luxury player" term.

If we are talking about players who doesn't contribute to defence, I like Juve's approach. They don't concede many eventhough Dybala and Higuain doesn't defend at all. Those two have to be ready and full of energy when attacking. Of course this duo needs to score a lot or otherwise it wouldn't work. Juve's approach is just tactical masterpiece, I could watch it all day how defensive lines shapes from 4-4 to 3-5 and 5-3 so fluidly and depending who is supporting the "luxury duo" upfront and how opposition is shaped to attack.

[TuffLuff]

40 minutes ago, TommyPowel said:

never heard such a load of clap trap in my life .Ince job in the squad is a flair player(match winner if you will) his job is to take risks and score goals did he do that last year you bet he did.

Hughes the play maker job to create opportunities for other this he did when on form(somebody out of form is temporary and not a luxury)

Bent    a goal poacher does he do that YES

 

Er yes I'm not disputing that but I'm saying that we struggle to accomodate all these players together into a system because their styles are too individual to accomodate them all into a team. It's not worked and hence partly why we seem open to selling them.

[DenmarkRam]

3 hours ago, TuffLuff said:

I was sat in the pub last night with a Newcastle fan. Whilst we were discussing the championship it was brought up that while they spent a lot last year, it was spent on players to fit a unit or system. There were barely a player in that team who I would define as a luxery, possibly Gayle but I'm not 100% he fits definition. I would consider that type of player to be a player who can change the game all by himself but you give more of a free role to them rather than working for the team. More often than not, you need to play your system to accommodate them because they can't adapt that style. This means they can go missing during games but you keep them on with the thought they can get a goal out of nothing. I think it's fair to say that you can't fill a squad with these type of players, but when I went through the Derby team I was quite surprised on how many we actually had at the end of last season. On a similar note, its worrying actually how many we tried to accommodate into a starting 11!

So how many did we actually have? If I make a quick list

Darren Bent-the fox in the box type, doesn't provide a lot else but can't argue he scores goals (and some important ones too)

Abdoul Camara- got that bit of unknown quality, alas we never really saw it

Tom Ince- Now Ince is more of a team player and works hard but he's also that one who is in and out of games who can provide a goal out of nothing

Matej Vydra-A clever attacking footballer but provides little to the team unit overall. A touch of the Kinkladze if I dare make a comparison.

Will Hughes- A wonderful creative player, seemingly could do anything with the ball to us. But as his game became more defined, his influence on the pitch became less to points less season where the game was passing him by.

Now I could make arguments for others (Christie? Possibly Johnson and Butterfield too). 

But do we see a pattern? In that these are the players that have so far we have loaded off/been linked away. In my opinion a squad in the champ can afford one of these players, certainly not 5+. It's necessary for players to leave so we can build a unit, that won't happen if we kept them all because they all cancel each other out. This is in effect what happened last season. Losing players like Hughes does hurt, no doubt but I do think it will benefit us in the long term.

Finally out of them all, id personally keep Ince but I have a feeling it'll be Vydra.

 

Is Martin in part 2? Or have we sold him ?? 

[TuffLuff]

1 hour ago, ramsbottom said:

Jermaine Defoe wasn't exactly Harry Kane or Diego Costa when it came to running channels out wide, holding up the ball for others, and tracking back into his own half, but without his goals, Sunderland would've bettered our 11 pts last season.  Strikers aren't meant to be involved in all the play, all of the time, the nature of their roll means they will be isolated for large periods of the game, especially against superior opposition.  Are they worth carrying for most of the game if they pop up with 2 minutes left and poach one at the back post for three points?  Absolutely...

Any player not performing for the majority of their game time, is counter productive to their team, but that doesn't make them a luxury

But didn't Sunderland try and set up a system to accomodate that? So when they attack Defoe just needs to concentrate on being ready in the box to poach? My point is you can allow one player to do that anyway, someone who can get you something from little, it's when you have 2 or 3 players it becomes a problem because it effects your overall game because not enough are 'in' the match for long enough. For how good all the players I've mentioned are, can we honestly say they've consistently been in games the whole season? Possibly Ince? I originally said he'd be my one to keep, but overall I'm still not 100% convinced on that over a whole season.

 

[TuffLuff]

44 minutes ago, Dimmu said:

I hate the "luxury player" term.

If we are talking about players who doesn't contribute to defence, I like Juve's approach. They don't concede many eventhought Dybala and Higuain doesn't defend at all. Those two have to be ready and full of energy when attacking. Of course this duo needs to score a lot or otherwise it wouldn't work. Juve's approach is just tactical masterpiece, I could watch it all day how defensive lines shapes from 4-4 to 3-5 and 5-3 so fluidly and depending who is supporting the "luxury duo" upfront and how opposition is shaped to attack.

Sorry! I didn't really want to use it but considering how many times I've now written it I can honestly say I hate the word too. It was more from 'luxery you can't afford to keep' and I couldn't think of a better way to put it for when you have good players who might be necessary to offload. 

The technical simplicity of Juve's unit is lovely, like most top teams really where they don't try and overcomplicate it because everyone knows their role within a side

[Sparkle]

Not sure what a luxury player is to be honest I would view it as players who go utterly missing whilst on the pitch for what ever reason

which would include - Bent Vydra camara and occasionally Ince 

but the real luxury players are the ones who are never selected! 

[TuffLuff]

2 hours ago, cannable said:

Really? Perhaps not necessarily free-flowing but Huddersfield, Reading and Fulham this year all played football. 

It's a quick fix promotion, attritional football. There's no long term future to that style of football unless you have hundreds of millions to spend. 

That type of football is always limited to how good the manager and his system is. Take what they say about Roy Hodgson for example; "he makes bad players look average… the problem is he makes good players look average as well."

Karanka's Boro as well. Barely scored despite the plethora of wonderful attackers they possessed.

Out of all those teams though only one got over the finishing line and in that one off final didn't show much of a good footballing side, but granted all those sides had their moments.

For the arguments of the quick fix, isn't there also the likes of Bournemouth, Watford, Burnley and Leicester who have gone up and stayed up and not had a free flowing approach? I consider staying in the prem is more about making sensible/class signings once you are there  over what you do before you get there (unless you make it with a load of players at the backend of their career and then pepper that with some overpriced hasbeens a la Billy Davies circa 2007, that's the definite recipe for disaster).

Id love us to get promoted with a free flowing and attacking team and take that mindset into the prem, but I'm just not sure how realistic it all is.

[Bris Vegas]

I wouldn't use the term luxury as such, but there is no doubt we now have a squad of players whose strengths lie in differing systems. It's a mish mash of a squad and one which needs changing.

 

[ramsbottom]

32 minutes ago, TuffLuff said:

But didn't Sunderland try and set up a system to accomodate that? So when they attack Defoe just needs to concentrate on being ready in the box to poach? My point is you can allow one player to do that anyway, someone who can get you something from little, it's when you have 2 or 3 players it becomes a problem because it effects your overall game because not enough are 'in' the match for long enough. For how good all the players I've mentioned are, can we honestly say they've consistently been in games the whole season? Possibly Ince? I originally said he'd be my one to keep, but overall I'm still not 100% convinced on that over a whole season.

 

If a teams set up so three of it's players aren't being effective for long enough during games then that's down to the manager.  Or previous managers, for buying players incapable of adapting to new roles.

Do we have players who're surplus to requirements cus the squad isn't balanced, regardless of formation?  Absolutely, but I wouldn't call them luxury players.  I'd call them dead wood.  I think what you're really trying to say is we have a bloated squad...

[Inglorius]

I think you're getting the words "luxury" and "crap" mixed up

[TuffLuff]

20 minutes ago, ramsbottom said:

If a teams set up so three of it's players aren't being effective for long enough during games then that's down to the manager.  Or previous managers, for buying players incapable of adapting to new roles.

Do we have players who're surplus to requirements cus the squad isn't balanced, regardless of formation?  Absolutely, but I wouldn't call them luxury players.  I'd call them dead wood.  I think what you're really trying to say is we have a bloated squad...

Well yes this is what I think Rowett is trying to address this and why certain players have been linked with moves away. Not the whole reason because obviously they might be the only ones teams are interested in, but I think part of the reason the figures are lower than what people expect is because we are willing to let those types of players go.

It's bloated yes, but i don't think it's bloated with deadwood, it's bloated with quality players that don't mix and are counterproductive to one another. Weirdly we are probably short of the Johnny Russell types who look to compliment the better ones with their play rather than looking to take risks. 

Luxery might be the wrong word, as I've said previously it came out of 'luxery we can ill afford to keep' or something like that, and couldn't find a better way to say it.