Souza

[RossingtonBlade]

Anyone still think he is any good? I won’t have it

He’s downed tools again tonight. He looks out his depth… like the rest of em.

 

[ThatJa]

I think he was better against Man Utd.

Certainly not the worst on the field, by a long stretch.

 

[Houston_Blade]

He’s up there with Stephen Quinn on his ability to go from superlative to stupid in less than a second. He wins the ball back well, then plays a suicide pass and sells a teammate short immediately.

 

[Paddy1]

Thought he was half decent tbh. Not spectacular in what he does but broke play up and actually thought he read the game pretty well. Felt for him have it to cover Norwood who constantly let his runner go

 

[Nelson1889]

Nick Montgomery with a fancy name.

Which is more of a slight on Monty as I think he's the better out of the two based on the games I've seen him in so far

 

[Jan Age]

Absolutely amazing as a sitting midfielder but gets delusional and thinks he can go forward at which point he becomes a grenade with the pin out.

Cannot make recovery runs for shit

 

[Blade56]

Disagreed. Solid in midfield and does the dirty cleaning up in defence. Not prolific going forward but that’s not his job. Does get pulled out of position but he’s covering for so many gaps with the rediculos injury position we are in.

Lets not look for a player to destroy. He might not be the best in the PL but he’s one of our more dependable players.

 

[Weasel]

If he sticks to the Trevor Hockey role he will do just fine. Problem is we don't have a Currie next to him or a Woody out wide.

 

[Wards]

First half yesterday was his best performance for us. Same for Hamer, McAtee (since he returned) and Norwood (this season). They all suffered from the slightly baffling/non-existent tactics second half

 

[BettingBlade]

Bloke is fucking wank. Miles off premier league standard

 

[Moan? Nope-I saw Longhorn]

Bloke is fucking wank. Miles off premier league standard

Aye
But he’s in good company

 

[Camden Blade]

Stuart McCall could do a better job if he came on today.

 

[Solihull Blade]

Left at 80 minutes but thought he was ok. Didn’t pull any trees up but didn’t make any monster cock ups. Maybe he was Uber wank in the last 10 minutes. There were others much worse than him today.

 

[Hamandcheese]

Catastrophic signing that has single handedly wrecked any chance we had of fielding a cohesive, balanced midfield bearing some resemblance to what brought us success last season

Genius management

 

[Kizmet]

Compared to norwood he is like xavi
Maybe play him ( and hamer ) as defensive mids where they are supposed to play instead of crow barring in a liability that severely weakens half the side

 

[Rodley]

Spent £10m on George Santos whilst Doyle rips it up for Wolves.

 

[TJ blade]

Spent £10m on George Santos whilst Doyle rips it up for Wolves.

I heard it was £12m which makes it hurt even more

 

[Blademan18891889]

Spent £10m on George Santos whilst Doyle rips it up for Wolves.

Other than the fact Doyle hasn't even started a league game yet.

 

[Smirth]

He looks very average in a really bad side, can't work out if that makes him any good or not.

 

[Rodley]

Other than the fact Doyle hasn't even started a league game yet.

He’s been brought on both at half time and just after for last two games and looked superb. The whole second half of the Bournemouth match went through him, passing forwards and through the lines. On those performances he’d be our best midfielder by some margin.

You’d rather have Souza then?

 

[Espania blade]

Nick Montgomery with a fancy name.

Which is more of a slight on Monty as I think he's the better out of the two based on the games I've seen him in so far

A lot of fans never understood what Mont's role was, Just like they don't understand what Souza's role is,
unless a player dribbles like Ndiaye or scores goals like Billy Sharp then they are crap!

Having said that I'd like to see Souza in Norwoods role (can't be any worse), and take Norwood out of the team.

 

[Blademan18891889]

He’s been brought on both at half time and just after for last two games and looked superb. The whole second half of the Bournemouth match went through him, passing forwards and through the lines.

You’d rather have Souza then?

You watched the whole 2nd half of Bournemouth v wolves then? I thought souza looked decent early on , not too much recently bit none of them do. I'm willing to give him much more of a chance. No point comparing who I'd rather have either, if wolves want a player then so called player would be joining them over us so Doyle literally wasn't an option. They got him for a cheap fee as basically part of the player who went to City from them.

 

[Torrix1889]

Souzas flip-flap megs move was literally the highlight of the game for me....

 

[PokerBlade]

Player with no prior Premier League experience, adapting to new club and country. Occasionally shows flashes of brilliance but far too many errors. He affects the game a lot more than Berge did when we first got him in.

He's another player that we presumably would've wanted to be moving into a settled side, settled formation, and be able to rotate. That hasn't happened. He's played in front of a different defence not even every game but probably every thirty minutes with the way we pick up injuries. Little consistency in the chosen midfield or his specific role. No consistency upfront. Hard for me to come crashing down on him for not shining so far.

No idea if he'll be up to it long term. Probably not. Don't feel like slating the guy though.

 

[nopigfansintown]

I'm starting to think the transfer geniuses at United who knew where all the foreign bargains were to be had - the last time we were in the Prem - were actually talking complete bollocks. Apart from Anel they've located precisely zero since we went down. They've had five transfer Windows. Souza is ok, nothing more. At 12 million for a midfielder you should be able to do much better.

Anybody on here could've signed Harmer, Archer etc. It doesn't bode well for next season when the budget is further reduced and the need to identify bargains increases.

 

[Rodley]

You watched the whole 2nd half of Bournemouth v wolves then? I thought souza looked decent early on , not too much recently bit none of them do. I'm willing to give him much more of a chance. No point comparing who I'd rather have either, if wolves want a player then so called player would be joining them over us so Doyle literally wasn't an option. They got him for a cheap fee as basically part of the player who went to City from them.

If you don’t believe me, see here:-

Tommy Doyle

You have to be careful about the double there is a reason why gomes and lemina have been working, allowing ran to bomb on and cunha drops in. Cunha off ball work is fantastic plus he and neto have so many take ons I mean nunes was doing well linking before his sale, and this is what bellegarde...

www.molineuxmix.co.uk

Souza will go on to be the worst SUFC signing since Brewster. We’ve spent £10m on a defensive midfielder who doesn’t track back, can’t pass, doesn’t have a footballing brain and can’t move the ball forward. His deficiencies are so pronounced, he will only ever leave a midfield completely unbalanced.

 

[CPB]

I'm more than willing to still judge Souza after more games but I can't say I've been less than impressed with him. I'm surprised that he keeps starting actually.

I'd quite like to see a Hamer, Norwood middle 2 with McAtee behind the strikers and 2 up top, or even 3 up top. Archer, Brewster and Traore?

Given our summer transfer dealings as well we were initially going to loan him with a view to perm at end of season.
Then when N'Diaye was sold we decided to buy him right now. I do wonder if we should have stuck to our original plan and used some of that £10m to bring in another player.

 

[ATL Recs]

You watched the whole 2nd half of Bournemouth v wolves then? I thought souza looked decent early on , not too much recently bit none of them do. I'm willing to give him much more of a chance. No point comparing who I'd rather have either, if wolves want a player then so called player would be joining them over us so Doyle literally wasn't an option. They got him for a cheap fee as basically part of the player who went to City from them.

Not quite we had an offer for Doyle all but agreed but the relegation clause in the contract (40% wage cut) was the pisser

 

[PokerBlade]

I'm starting to think the transfer geniuses at United who knew where all the foreign bargains were to be had - the last time we were in the Prem - were actually talking complete bollocks. Apart from Anel they've located precisely zero since we went down. They've had five transfer Windows. Souza is ok, nothing more. At 12 million for a midfielder you should be able to do much better.

Anybody on here could've signed Harmer, Archer etc. It doesn't bode well for next season when the budget is further reduced and the need to identify bargains increases.

Watched a video not long back on why about half of Premier League transfers fail. Part of the reasoning was this: say you evaluate a player in six characteristics (positioning, passing, stuff like that), and you're 90% confident in their quality in each characteristics being up to scratch. What's the probability the the player will be good enough? Some people have an instinct to say 90%, but in reality it's 53% because the probabilities stack (0.9x0.9x0.9x0.9x0.9x0.9 = 0.53).

Point is, you can look at players in other leagues, try to evaluate them, but however you try to judge them you'll only ever be so confident. It's not just us, this is just what happens when you're gambling on players from the Scandi leagues on our kind of budget. There's been an awful lot of more expensive flops than we've signed. We've gone the route of not signing any proven quality at this level and this is the risk.

 

[nopigfansintown]

Watched a video not long back on why about half of Premier League transfers fail. Part of the reasoning was this: say you evaluate a player in six characteristics (positioning, passing, stuff like that), and you're 90% confident in their quality in each characteristics being up to scratch. What's the probability the the player will be good enough? Some people have an instinct to say 90%, but in reality it's 53% because the probabilities stack (0.9x0.9x0.9x0.9x0.9x0.9 = 0.53).

Point is, you can look at players in other leagues, try to evaluate them, but however you try to judge them you'll only ever be so confident. It's not just us, this is just what happens when you're gambling on players from the Scandi leagues on our kind of budget. There's been an awful lot of more expensive flops than we've signed. We've gone the route of not signing any proven quality at this level and this is the risk.

I look at the major capital investments (Souza, Harmer, Archer) and think we'd lose serious money on all three if we weren't covered by the Archer buyback. The Hamer one is perhaps the strangest acquisition.He's never played above Champ level. He'll be 27 before the start of next season. Even if he worked out this season how much resale value is there? I'm struggling to see the basis of any kind of strategy behind our signings.

I always thought the talk of them having a Brentford/Brightonesque level of recruitment being held back by the first team manager was bollocks for the reasons you've highlighted. It's extremely difficult and it wasn't evidenced (the evidence we did have would lead to the opposite conclusion imo).

The problem we have now is that a crap recruitment process combined with a lack of money usually leads to a big slide. We staved that off last time due to top academy players emerging, our retaining of existing talent and good, albeit expensive, domestic loans (this is part of what's hurting us now as we couldn't retain them).The signing of Anel is the anomaly . We didn't have the scouting ability to sign foreign bargains on permanents in the Championship either. It's likely we won't next season.