It's great that Santos has the team playing well without Ronaldo and he's smart enough to learn the mistakes he made for the call up and during the world cup. It still angers me cause we all pretty much picked these players, and we could have gone deep into the world cup given the weaker half of the draw if we beat Iran. It was obvious that Dias, Cancelo and Andre Silva should have started in the WC. Rafa Silva is a great little player, it was a shame he was injured after the last Euro. It looks like the only position we are lacking depth is left back. Not sure about Rui, he seems to make a lot of mistakes when I see him play but I can see the potential.
In terms of Left back Ruben Vinagre is a hell of a talent and hopefully will develop into the talent he appears to be.
Let's hope so. I forgot to mention Neves as well, the kid should have been at the world cup, Santos played it too safe
My problem with Mario Rui is he looks like he gets bullied around too much. Just seems so physically weak.
We have the opportunity in that position to be amazing with Cancelo & Semedo but Santos always has a habit of choosing a weak fullback and a strong one. No idea why he does this.
Would you suggest putting Semedo on the LB? I personally do not know if Semedo is capable of playing LB? has he ever done it? i cant recall.. I stick to my earlier statement, if we are going to run with someone like Mario Rui (God love him, he is doing his best..).. then why not roll with someone like Ricardo Pereira? who defensively probably isnt that much different then Rui, but is most certainly physically stronger, and much more offensively capable then Rui.. back line consisting of: Pereira----Dias----Pepe----Cancelo would be very appealing to me, if under the assumption Santos is not willing to throw Semedo on the LB/if Semedo can even play LB.
and by no means am i defending Ricardo Pereira.. i am not a huge fan of his.. and feel that his shit defensive work v Uruguay in the WC is the biggest reason we lost that match.. but.. when comparing the possibilities.. and with Mario Rui being our goto guy at the moment.. it would make sense to atleast consider the idea of Pereira starting at LB.
Cancelo can play on either side, we can keep Semedo at his original position. I think Ricardo is playing midfielder for his club. A sudden change to the back will probably come with some rust. He's capable back there too but i think the Semedo/Cancelo combo would be better.
I have seen neither Semedo or Cancelo play LB.. have you? where? how consistent was it? I know Pereira can play LB, and have seen it personally. Pereira is playing midfield for Leicester, but i feel they play with 3 at the back and 2 WB's? i could be completely wrong though, so forgive me if i am. I stand to be corrected on that. Either way, it is no different then throwing Guerreiro out there.. but, thats kind of the point, right? someone who actually plays the position to be there.. Look, Mario Rui isnt the next Roberto Carlos.. but, hes better then Eliseu and a few others.. Napoli is not shit.. to be starting for them.. he is doing something right.
You guys are making it seem like Mario Rui is completely useless. The dude isn't playing for Alverca or rapid Bucharest, he is at Napoli and has proven himself in Italy. Right now, that is what we have to work with. The Guerreiro train has left the station and it isn't coming back anytime soon
It may not seem like the best stats, but Napoli have only conceded 10 times thus far in 8 league games, and also, Rui helped keep a clean sheet against a slightly out of form, yet still dangerous, Liverpool attacking trio recently. I say we put our faith in him now, since he is playing regularly as a LB for a team that is second right now in the most defensive minded league in Europe. Plus, I’d rather take a defensive minded fullback than one caught out of position too many times at the back, like what we saw against Uruguay with Ricardo e Guerreiro…
Yea I agree. I said he gets bullied a lot and he does, but I still prefer him than moving a RB to LB Although one guy I’m really intrigued about is Diego Dalot. Kid got a shit ton of potential on both flanks.
Good point. Dalot played well when he's appeared for Man United so far, particularly his crossing. He coule be the future starting LB. Full backs are probably the least of our concerns right now. I would say finding a 3rd and 4th CB is more important.
Crazy as this sounds Dalot got potential to be the best RB even more so than Cancelo. If your looking for the future LB I’d look at Rúben Vinagre from Wolves. Rúben Dias is a stud, and Diego Leite from Porto got plenty of potential. CB looking pretty good now too, although that’s still not a certainty. Portugal is seriously loaded with talent all across the board. A country of only 10m isn’t supposed to be this good. I’ve said this time and time again, but every Portigie should be keeping a close eye on Wolverhampton. Between the Mendes links to the club, and the fact they play in the best league in the world, that an interesting pipelinefor Portuguese players. Much better off having a guy like Rúben Neves go there and playing week in and week out, then see what happened to Renato in Bayern and Gelson Martins now In Atlético.
Wow, Rui gets pushed off the ball and stops chasing thinking it's going out(Which it did) and it leads to a goal. Now all the sudden everyone forgets the over 300 very solid and often dangerous attacking minutes with us, and might I say decent defensively as well. Thank God Santos is the Manager. If it was some of the fans here, we would have Ricardo at LB, or even worse l, Cancelo moving to LB and Semedo moving into RB. Just lucky Santos knows better and we won't get a chance to see how absolutely terrible a idea those are. Mario Rui has been good, more of the same please and thank you.
Agreed. You are right. i by no means was making an attempt to make it seem like Rui is useless, but i also feel if one of our RB's who arent starting are capable of playing LB, then we take advantage of it. I dont think its out of line to suggest any one of us would say Pereira/Semedo/Cancelo offer more at LB then Rui does.. if they are capable of doing so.. use that option... if they arent.. as you stated, Rui is playing for a solid team who is doing well defensively.. might as well stick with it, which is ultimately what i believe Santos will do moving forward untill he is proven wrong.
You're deluded.... The Rui praise. The praise for mediocrity. Just because we are playing well, there are no weak spots and questionable decisions made by Santos. Gotcha. It was the same thing for Cedric as well. Look how that turned out. Cagao. We aren't going to be facing a bad Polish side and a rebuilding Italian side all the time. The kinks are going to start showing even more in Rui's game than it already has. We need our opponents to start fearing both sides, and not just one. Too much is generated from Cancelo's side. He will be shut down when we face better teams. When that happens, now what?
I'm deluded because you're sh*t at judging talent....gotcha. Rui has been threatening from the left plenty of times over the last 3 appearances, and even his first start against the Netherlands. It's just me and you are watching very different people apparantly. So what's you solution? This is precisely what I mean by being lucky the fans don't choose the team, most fans like yourself are imagining things that don't exist. If I was to make a compilation video divided into his good to great moments, vs his poor to terrible moments, 75% would be on the positive side. You don't have to believe me, many people just don't process reality properly. But take a look again, he has been mostly good. So, please tell me what you would do?
Sheesh.....Just who are you in relation to Rui? A cousin? Wife? I've never seen such high praise for mediocrity over potential world class talent in my life. Please go on, i'm done with you. I'll be back when the tougher opposition lets everyone know how correct i was. This seems to happen alot.
Did Rui sleep with your wife? Why all the hate. I'll be back after we play good opposition and he still performs well. Easy to back out of a gun fight when you have no bullets. Just can't say I understand where the hate is coming from. Also again for the third time, we are all very lucky the Manager understands this game much more than @Sumol. I wish I had the talent to ignore hours of football to focus on a few minutes or instances, but I'm a big picture kinda guy.
It's not hate. I already said what i would do and why i think he shouldn't be starting. He is not our best player at the position. Is he bad? No. Is he good? No. Is he meh? Yes. I'm not going to bother reasoning with someone who just said Rui was 75% good and 25% bad throughout his tenure with the national team. Where does the word mediocre fit in when it comes to those two areas? Hmm... I wonder. You are just being dishonest. That line just proved to me that you want to believe the guy is better than he actually is and i just don't bother with that kind of delusion when it comes to anything.
Why go in circles, I simply believe he is better than mediocre. Meh=mediocre right? Mediocre compared to who? Our other LB options? Or maybe as oppose to other top 10 national sides? I simply don't know what you mean, and I'm just happy arm chair Managers usually don't get their way or we end up learning the hard way. All I know is this......Rui starts every game for Napoli, and he rarely gets a player rating below 7. He has looked as sharp and consistent with Portugal IMO. Yes I've seen a fee bad moments and decisions, but I've seen much more positives. It's really just that simple, so let's agree to disagree.
I think we are being a bit picky to be honest, we’re talking about the starting RB of Napoli who I have to take my hat off to in terms of his journey. He was pretty ordinary talent in that 91 generation which made it all the way to the under 20 WC final. He went to the Italian second division learnt his trade and now plays in one of the top teams in Europe, got to give the guy respect for that. But Vinagre is really special, for a 19 year old with his size pushing for a starting spot in the EPL at wolves says a lot about his ability
A draw in the Poland vs Italy game today guarantees our qualification for the semi finals. They would both be 4 points behind with 1 game left to play.