Being Honest

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If someone posts "he's prone to the odd mistake" again I'll do a Curtis Woodhouse on them. My blood pressure goes off-scale everytime I read this. Messi is "prone to the odd mistake" ffs. I'd love to know who these other centre halves are who we are going after at a cheaper rate than EEL if we can't land him. Oh, and if we do get EEL, we "can't break the bank" i.e. it's got to be on the cheap, SUFC style.

Wake up folks, if we get to the Championship, to stay there we need to take a chance on up and coming youngsters and not blow the wage budget on ageing journeymen as we have in the past. In one of the posts above, EEL is compared with Morgan at that age. Correct. I'll also compare him with Colquhoun when he first came to the Lane. And I'd say he's got greater potential than Kenworthy and Stancliffe at that age and these guys feature regularly in all-time favourite lists.

I'll mention this too. Brayford would fly in the present formation. That's one of the wing back positions sorted for the Championship.

And before anyone pulls me up about being presumptive about promotion, fuck you all, we are going to blitz it this year.
 



The last 2 games haven’t been at all suited to the strengths of EEL, Basham, Done or Scougall in my opinion.


Playing against 9 men who are parking the bus is a situation that requires guile and skill.

EEL’s strengths are defending, blocking, using his brute strength etc. Basham is all work rate and combativeness to help win a midfield battle. Scougall and Done run all day and make teams think twice about committing bodies forward or playing a high line knowing they’ll look to exploit the space. None of them are great at receiving the ball around a packed area or beating a man with a trick or threading a pass through the eye of the needle and as a result, I think all have looked poor in the last 2 games (2nd half of each game at least). These games are tailor made for the Flecks, Coutts, Duffys and Chapmans of this world and it also helps to have defensive players who are good going forward like Freeman. Unfortunately, we’ve had a shortage of these players on the pitch at times but still managed the 6 points.


I think EEL and Bash will come into their own more on Saturday when we’re playing a worth opponent and need to compete and deal with their threat.
 
Great in the air and a good 'old fashioned' tackler but I must admit to feeling uneasy every time he has the ball at his feet ! A bit of a cult hero already but from a footballing point of view, jury's still out for me, particularly if we go up.

Interesting line from wiki :)

Ebanks-Landell established himself in the first team at Bury, playing in the centre-back position, though he would play in a different position and earning praise from manager Kevin Blackwell
 
The last 2 games haven’t been at all suited to the strengths of EEL, Basham, Done or Scougall in my opinion.


Playing against 9 men who are parking the bus is a situation that requires guile and skill.

EEL’s strengths are defending, blocking, using his brute strength etc. Basham is all work rate and combativeness to help win a midfield battle. Scougall and Done run all day and make teams think twice about committing bodies forward or playing a high line knowing they’ll look to exploit the space. None of them are great at receiving the ball around a packed area or beating a man with a trick or threading a pass through the eye of the needle and as a result, I think all have looked poor in the last 2 games (2nd half of each game at least). These games are tailor made for the Flecks, Coutts, Duffys and Chapmans of this world and it also helps to have defensive players who are good going forward like Freeman. Unfortunately, we’ve had a shortage of these players on the pitch at times but still managed the 6 points.


I think EEL and Bash will come into their own more on Saturday when we’re playing a worth opponent and need to compete and deal with their threat.

The problem with playing against 9 or 10 men is that all our defenders have nothing to do at the back so they start to push forward so you end up with the EEL playing right wing/wing back, JOC left wing/wingback and Basham floating around as an attacker so that the crosses and balls into the penalty area are being played by players who are not used to making them and are not in the team for that purpose and frankly are pretty poor at it. Meanwhile all the players who are in the team because they are supposed to be able to cross or pass the ball are in the penalty area waiting for JOC or EEL to cross the ball to them! May be JOC and EEL (who after all has scored 4 goals already this season) should go into the penalty area and wait for the crosses to come in from Chapman, Coutts, Fleck, Freeman. We'd stand more chance of scoring - indeed that's exactly how we scored last night!
 
The last 2 games haven’t been at all suited to the strengths of EEL, Basham, Done or Scougall in my opinion.

But not only because we were playing against 9 and 10 men. We were dominating possession against 11, as we will do against teams like them. Increasingly so if teams come here, put men behind the ball and sit deep.

In these games we need to make sure we have enough astute technical players on the pitch who can work in tight spaces and create things. Straight away that means Done shouldn't start, and Basham should possibly play ahead of Wright in the back 3. We could also consider playing Chapman at wing back.
 
We rarely replace with better, so if he gets recalled by Wolves in January we are up shit creek.

What about that time in the 2016/17 season, where more than half the team were replaced by players who ultimately proved to be considerably better?

Whatever Wolves decide, I don't think we need to worry ;)
 
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Regards EEL or any player we want to sign.

It's like having a really good looking girlfriend and you know that plenty of other men might fancy her.
What do you do?

If you're insecure you'd spend loads of money on her, buy her clothes, perfume.
Take her away to fancy hotels etc. She loves the lifestyle so you get out a loan to buy her more things to keep her happy because you think she might choose someone else.

No, have confidence in yourself and the club.
We make EEL a sensible offer which provides a top wage. If his agent says "yeh but Burton Albion have offered £1000 a week more", then we tell him to go there if he prefers that offer and we bring in the alternative defenders who might end up being better than EEL. No player is bigger than the club.
I think you treat her between the sheets and she'll keep coming back for more! Never heard of this spending more money on them lark!

Not sure how this applies to EEL though? Wouldn't fancy it myself!
 
I feel when teams park the bus like the last 2 games, he should be put up front. When they aren't showing any intention to attack, may as well put him in the only other part of the pitch he has a chance in. Anywhere else and I think you're just wasting his strengths.
 
He's spent parts of the last couple of games being thrown into odd positions either because we've had forced changes mid-game or because we're throwing so many players forward we didn't need to defend.

From a defensive point of view, Bury had 1 shot and 0 on target. EEL scored a winner. I'll pick another day to talk about the limitations he has.
 
But not only because we were playing against 9 and 10 men. We were dominating possession against 11, as we will do against teams like them. Increasingly so if teams come here, put men behind the ball and sit deep.

In these games we need to make sure we have enough astute technical players on the pitch who can work in tight spaces and create things. Straight away that means Done shouldn't start, and Basham should possibly play ahead of Wright in the back 3. We could also consider playing Chapman at wing back.



It’s worth considering but these teams can come and surprise you at times. Look at Colchester, Bury and Shrwesbury at the lane last season. 10 goals between them. I know we were crap but it shows the danger of tipping the scales too far in the other direction.

Although I was in favour of playing Clarke over Done for the Bury game after seeing such a lack of composure in the box over and over against Shrewsbury.

I’m sure tomorrow will be a very different test though and 1players like EEL and Basham’s defensive capabilities will be tested.
 

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