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WystonRam

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Once the envy of all championship clubs:

Hendrick,Hughes,Thorne,

Bryson,Eustace 

Two academy products, one old head , one goal scoring attacker and then an upcoming midfielder who'd represented England at most levels. 

Where have we gone so wrong to be talking Baird and Hanson in the middle of midfield because Maikel Kieftenbelds transfers fell through. 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Charlie G said:

Once the envy of all championship clubs:

Hendrick,Hughes,Thorne,

Bryson,Eustace 

Two academy products, one old head , one goal scoring attacker and then an upcoming midfielder who'd represented England at most levels. 

Where have we gone so wrong to be talking Baird and Hanson in the middle of midfield because Maikel Kieftenbelds transfers fell through. 

 

 

 

Because we sold Hendrick and Hughes, Thorne is perennially injured, Bryson went off the boil after he was given a fat new contract and time caught up with Eustace. Not sure why you think things have gone so wrong. 

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1 hour ago, Inglorius said:

Because we sold Hendrick and Hughes, Thorne is perennially injured, Bryson went off the boil after he was given a fat new contract and time caught up with Eustace. Not sure why you think things have gone so wrong. 

Welcome everyone to series 5 of Game of Thongs !   .............Send in the Dragons !

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2 hours ago, kingsy1884 said:

I know in the prem that there is a free transfer window that runs on after the real window has closed.

We signed Cisse in the middle of October i think a few years back so maybe there is a chance we could get someone if we were desperate. I.e. Joe Ledley.

Why is this desperate? He would be a coup for anyone in this league. The only desperate part would be willing to pay his huge wage that is the only reason I would think why no one has snapped him up yet.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 02/09/2017 at 21:24, lioncoeur said:

You're pretty much wrong about M. Kieftenbeld's passing ability, you should better watch some of the highlights from Birmingham City's matches on youtube. For example:

https://goo.gl/h7sk4a

https://goo.gl/RPcsgz

He's actually quite a good in short-passing, exchanging short passes with his teammates and creating situations, but it's also true he almost never plays long passes. And technically maybe he's even better than T. Huddlestone in certain segments of the game. 

He posses a certain level of trickery in his game.

1v6t6l.gif

 

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He's also the third best tackler in the Championship.

mkieftenbeld-warekleuren-01.jpg

http://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2016/10/19/the-top-tackling-championship-teams-including-leeds-and-villa/

The only thing in which he's not so good, he collects too many yellow cards, average 7 yellow cards per season making him suspension prone.

He is not a world beater, but at the Championship level he's a top class midfield scrapper.

As i said that info came from the blues forum. I haven't even heard of him let alone watch him play. I remember when we got youtube footage of Blackman showing what a great striker he was. Reality we do know is something very different. Time will tell with the dutch fella.

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When we sold Hughes, Bryson and Butterfield and never replaced them with at least one playmaker, the writing was on the wall we would suffer .

Having only one formation 4-2-3-1 with only 2 midfielders was always going to fail.  To was far to easy for city to plsy through us. 

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2 hours ago, toddy said:

When we sold Hughes, Bryson and Butterfield and never replaced them with at least one playmaker, the writing was on the wall we would suffer .

Having only one formation 4-2-3-1 with only 2 midfielders was always going to fail.  To was far to easy for city to plsy through us. 

And neither Will, Craig or Jacob are getting much game time at their new clubs. 

 

No idea if that's relevant. But I still can't believe we intentionally reduced any kind of creativity from the squad during the summer. You can only assume GR wanted this. A slow, older squad with less flair. Or perhaps those departed players weren't happy here and the GR direction? 

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I fully understand the worry over the midfield. Personally feel we are desperate for Thorne but there is no guarantee he will come back ready. But also I think we need to be flexible in what we have in front of Huddlestone/Johnson, especially away from home. I said yesterday that when the opposition get their tails up then those two are very much exposed. It's not Huddlestone's fault, it's the overall team protection in the centre.

Vydra is a fantastic attacking player and while he's scoring you can't question his place in the 11, but it's coming at a price away from home when he's in that no 10 role. This isn't pointing fingers, but just a possibility of why Huddlestone and Johnson are having problems. We need someone who is going to squeeze the space in front of the cm's, but that defensive side isn't Vydras game. Our ability of becoming a unit to break down is getting towards embarrassing because we essentially can't become one. We look fantastic when are attacking and everything is flowing but the first sign that we aren't on top we look weak and opponents capitalise on that

 

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2 hours ago, RoyMac5 said:

Err wasn't Bryson MoM yesterday? Butterfield has played. Rowett didn't want Hughes to stay.

Was he? I don't know. I've only seen that he started at last after barely figuring. He went off and they equalised. Butterfield has had about 10 minutes three times by the looks of it. Hughes barely figuring. So yeah, my point stands.

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5 hours ago, Warren Hobhead said:

And neither Will, Craig or Jacob are getting much game time at their new clubs. 

 

No idea if that's relevant. But I still can't believe we intentionally reduced any kind of creativity from the squad during the summer. You can only assume GR wanted this. A slow, older squad with less flair. Or perhaps those departed players weren't happy here and the GR direction? 

Get the impression that Rowett has a "you're either with me or against me" approach.

His first priority seemed to be to get rid of certain players and he said that from day one. It was also clear that having the right kind of back six - goalkeeper to holding mid - was more important than anything else. Beyond that, he also seemed to chase strikers that suited his style of play.

I think Rowett's ran out of time and money to have the midfield or wings as a priority. The man's not stupid, I'm sure he sees it too, but I think it's easy to disagree with the order in which he decided to change things.

 

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7 hours ago, toddy said:

When we sold Hughes, Bryson and Butterfield and never replaced them with at least one playmaker, the writing was on the wall we would suffer .

Having only one formation 4-2-3-1 with only 2 midfielders was always going to fail.  To was far to easy for city to plsy through us. 

How can you include Bryson in that list as a playmaker when he is about as far from one as you can get. We have two of them in the squad, Huddlestone and Thorne. That point is also completely irrelevant to the problem we're currently suffering, which is our midfield duo of Johnson and Huddlestone is defensively appalling. The trouble mainly lies with Huddlestones lack of mobility, which is highlighted particularly when we're away from home and on the backfoot. It's pretty obvious Rowett sees this as the issue too as his pursuit of Kieftenbeld is pretty telling.

Thankfully at Pride Park we're usually on the front foot and teams want to sit back, so Huddlestone can do what he does best and ping passes under little pressure. If Thorne eventually returns to full fitness and doesn't have any more injury troubles (fingers crossed), I can see him replacing Huddlestone completely when we're away and perhaps taking over Johnsons position when we're at home.

Either way you look at it the problem with our midfield isn't creativity, it's with the defensive side in mobility, positioning and tackling.

 

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