yeah thought it was a well timed tackle to be fair. Thought he’s been excellent tonight but weird ratings on my app has him the same as Diasi and lower then Fofana.
Jadon Sancho: “I've been working hard for this moment and I'm just happy that I got my chance”. “I’m very happy here. I have to thank all the staff and my team-mates”. “The first day I came in, they made me feel welcome and I'm so happy to feel this comfortable”.
It's also yet another example of how poor/lazy Premier League scouting/recruitment is. They're totally different players so I'm not suggesting CHO would've been an alternative, but the fact Spurs were willing to pay £50m for Brennan Johnson in the same window while there was no competition for CHO shows how lazy clubs can be - ironically though Spurs now really need a player of CHO's mould. Clubs hardly ever assess the base attributes of a smaller named player without much recent form and think "what can be done with him?". They usually just scout based on recent performances or big name value.
I do think he's better (or could be better) than what he's shown at Spurs but yeah, never in a million years a £50m player. That's Premier League recruitment for you though. You'd never see a PL club sign a Yuki Ohashi equivalent today.
It really is bizarre to see these faceless nobody’s making such idiotic footballing decisions to justify their existence, then melting into the background when the manager struggles to unravel their mess. I’ve seen a couple of worrying interviews recently, one with Everton’s prospective new owner, John Textor, and the other with Newcastle Sporting Director, Paul Mitchell. Both of whom were saying their managers need to stop trusting in English players and start plundering the world market. Who are they to tell Eddie Howe and Sean Dyche how to build a successful team on a tight budget?
CHO having struggled for a while with loss of form, injury and fitness problems and with rumours of attitude issues surely massively reduced what Chelsea got for him.
CHO had one big injury but he's never been majorly injury prone. And that's my point about the form, why do clubs need a player to be bang on form to sign him? If you can't recognise a player's attributes and think he's undervalued in the market as a professional sporting director then you're not competent. Plenty of people predicted this CHO rise when he signed for Forest and few of them were paid "professionals". Sporting directors need to be giving interviews to justify their sporting decisions like they do in Europe. They're getting away with murder. I haven't seen those Textor/Mitchell interviews but I can only imagine it. They're probably just getting sucked into the wonderkid fad like every other club.
Enzo Maresca on Sancho's impact: "I have a feeling that Jadon is a guy that needs love". "This is what I thought when I spoke with him before he joined us. "Also I know he has the desire to show the player he is, but for me, it is just to enjoy football". ten Hag on Rashford back to scoring goals: "Once a striker was talking about a ketchup bottle... once it's going, it's coming more!". "It's very important. For every striker, they want to be on the scoring list. Now he has his first, I'm sure more will come". Everton boss Sean Dyche will monitor Newcastle's Nick Pope, 32, in the coming months as a potential replacement for fellow England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford, 30, in the January window. (Sun) So Everton might drop Pickford for Pope - that won’t be good for England. Would be a big opening for Pope, Henderson, Ramsdale or Trafford to become N.1
Textor is going to sacked Dyche apparently. I think perhaps that Dyche is a little too reliant on a particular style of player but his track record for keeping poorer sides in the PL is second to none. It would be strange for Howe to get sacked given how well he's done at Newcastle and they've started this season well too.
I just think we're seeing more and more clubs outside the big six wanting to replicate the Brighton ‘model’. Brighton’s success in searching undervalued markets worldwide and developing a database that offers 25 prospective replacements for every individual at the club, has made their approach a lot more sustainable than the player-flogging models we saw at Southampton and Swansea. And unfortunately, it’s given other teams the green light to employ all sorts of unqualified sporting directors and analytical charlatans, at the expense of proper football people.
For most clubs, Premier League football has short term goals - win the league, get into Europe, stay in the division, etc. Clubs look for players to make an impact, so form becomes more relevant to them than potential in a lot of cases. Add in the amount of money the clubs have a their disposal and the pressure is there if signings don't always provide instant returns. It's frankly a poor approach, and clubs should be looking at both long and short term success from transfers. The game as a whole would benefit if this was the case.