DMAA

This is like Celtic park in February. Kent is in no-man’s land when their defence has the ball, there is a free centre mid and a free right back behind him. One pass takes him out of the game and both players can then take advantage.

This is rubbish. The system is not working, they have acres of space all the time, our shape behind the ball needs to change or we will concede more.

And Freiburg are top of the Bundesliga, only 5 games have been played and Napoli have drawn two and are joint 2nd. Obviously they are a very good team I’m just saying they are not in the category of teams who should be thrashing us, we should be holding our own against them, at home especially.

IMO, only Liverpool are at that kind of elite level. Napoli and Ajax are the kind of sides you we could easily meet in the latter stages of the Europa League. We absolutely shouldn’t be getting hammered by them.

Not to Patterson, very little data to go on with Patterson. Tav's defensive stats weren't great last year, when compared to FB/WBs in our league he scored high for interceptions and aerial duel success, very low for everything else (defensive actions per 90, defensive duel success %, sliding tackles, foul differential). Those stats only give part of the picture defensive, a lot of what you do defensively is to do with work rate and positioning. The same is true for Kent actually, his defensive stats are all very poor, but he is regarded as good defensively, and in my opinion it's because of his work rate. Barisic's stats were higher for almost everything defensive though, in some cases far higher. Bassey's defensive duel success was off the scale, as you would expect. I still think it's a strong position and my focus would be elsewhere.

I don't think anyone knows. Last season they sneaked the title with only a 2 point lead. Since then they have sold £195m in talent and spent £95m of that on replacements. After an initial blip with the loss to PSV in the community shield equivalent, they've cruised through their league matches since and look very strong. Only three new players are likely to start against us; Bergwijn, Brobbey and Bassey (£63m of their spend), in part due to an injury to their new £9m left back. On paper, they are probably weaker than last season. They should be a cut above us but our best chance of finishing 3rd is by beating Ajax, it is achievable if we can find our European form again.

Tbh I think right back is our strongest position, it's the least of our worries. The strategy should always be to target your transfer money on your weakest positions. We got good money for Patterson and we'll hopefully receive another wee windfall down the road.

It should be our aspiration. Look at how young Ajax's team are, I don't believe for a second they don't have as much pressure on them as we do. But Scotland does not produce very good players, Holland does, so ambitious recruitment at young ages is the only solution. I don't know why we don't recruit young players directly from South America either. Clubs around Europe are making a fortune from selling on South Americans. It's obviously not that hard to get a work permit considering Celtic got one for their left back.

Yeh that’s very possible. I don’t have much confidence in Gio domestically at all, and yet his European success guarantees his safety for the foreseeable. I’ve resorted to pinning my domestic hopes on Roofe somehow staying fit for a longer period and getting a start in the right forward position, as he did in the 55 season. Emphasis on the word resorted.

Well, one difference is that O’Riley is 21 and will make them a lot of money. The Lawrence signing is one our better ones, but we’ve lazily renewed contracts while Celtic have picked up very good players at bargain prices, implementing a transfer strategy we pay lip service to.

We’ve lost the recruitment battle badly in recent windows and that’s the crux of the matter for me. The fact we are still reliant on Davis and Jack says a lot. They picked up O’Riley for peanuts, why aren’t we finding these players?

I think that’s an oversimplification. They have very good goalscorers in their team. It isn’t a coincidence that Abada always seems to have 5 yards of space at the back post, he is very good off the ball. Sure, poor defending is involved, but good forwards will always make defenders look bad.

The fact is, they have better players in most positions, and that’s a problem. Whose front 3 would rather have? Jota is better than Kent for me, quite comfortably. I’ve said that for a long time. Abada isn’t even that good an all round player but he’s like a second striker, a very reliable goalscorer. And then they have two reliable goalscorers in the middle. That is the biggest difference for me at the moment, they score from half chances. We wouldn’t score from them because we wouldn’t even have a player in those positions at the back post.

A bit of an indictment of the quality of this squad. We’re not good enough, I don’t care what anyone says, we should not be losing 4-0 to our rivals. They have more quality in key positions across the starting 11 and it showed today. This is not going to be easy to turn around.

Undroppable for this game after PSV away

I wasn’t suggesting that the last two games are proof, however they are worth something, they are a good indication that maybe he has learned from previous defeats. Today is the big test of that of course.

Unbeaten in two 🙂 neither at home either

Gio has learned from the disaster in January, he has made tactical changes and those were on display vs PSV. Lawrence is a big loss because he adds a lot offensively vs Kamara, but we have a starting 11 who can get a result tomorrow. I'm not even going to get to watch most of it live tomorrow 😭 hopefully I'll be more gutted about that after the game tomorrow than I am just now.

£4m is the rumoured fee the make it permanent, an option you would imagine we are inclined to take. If you ignore the fee, he seems to be an excellent player to have in a squad. His best years ahead of him, and covers a lot of positions.

It's hard to predict, but we have probably another couple of seasons of automatic Champions League qualification before we lose it. So this season and next are more important than most. Our qualification to the CL has only accelerated the eventual loss of the automatic space we have.

I think Matondo will prove a very useful player over the course of the season, and hopefully for seasons to come. But the fact remains that after spending £12m or so and making the Champions League, our strongest 11 has a central attacking mid playing in the right forward position (Tillman or Lawrence), which is a bit disappointing given it seemed to most of us like the top priority position to strengthen.

We haven’t signed a clear starter who is natural in the right forward position. Both Tillman and Lawrence look best centrally. Matondo doesn’t look to have the quality to be a clear starter who we can rely on week in week out. Question marks over style of play too, why didn’t we go for a left footed wide forward?

I think we absolutely do need to catch them up, they were a far better team last season. Whether we have already caught them up remains to be seen. I still have a concern regarding the disparity in goal scoring capability between our front 3s, although I do believe we have made strides in the right direction with Colak replacing Morelos, Lawrence replacing one of our midfield 3 and Tillman replacing Wright or whoever else.

In seriousness, Club Brugge are in a different league to us in terms of their use of the transermarkt. They have a great track record for signing quality young players and flipping them for big money, an example for us to follow. To be fair, we've taken steps in that direction too with the signings of Yilmaz and Matondo (and maybe eventually the signings of Sands and Tillman). Time will tell whether those players are good enough to bring in the fees Brugge have brought in, it's all about quality scouting. Bassey is our obvious big success to date. We have a long way to go though, clubs like Brugge have far more money than us to spend because they've been doing this for years whilst we have generally been very pragmatic.

You obviously haven’t seen what I am capable of on Football Manager.