Squad Depth

[Bakbear 3,586]

6 minutes ago, Bristoe1872 said:

We have one fit striker and played Jack at centre half the other night. Sorry but considering the money that's been brought in it's shocking we never added to the squad. Huge gamble 

 

Jack played at Center half to allow rests for our first team and blood in some youngsters. It’s a good use of our squad. 
 

Alfie is being brought back and while not fit enough is still able to give us 30 minutes. We have youth strikers and we can play some players like Fashion through the middle in the event Colak is unavailable 

it’s not great but it is not disastrous either and we have to acknowledge the long term balancing of the books

[beararse 6,408]

6 hours ago, westenclosure2008 said:

Don’t disagree with that yet we’re still struggling to create chances away from home in the league. We need more than what we are seeing. Going back to my point earlier when was the last time we humped anybody? We should be steamrolling the majority of teams in the SPL home and away.  

The year we won 55 we averaged 2.42 goals per game in the SPFL.

We've scored on all 10 competitive games so far this season and are averaging 2.6 goals per game in the League and have scored so  6 in 4 in Champions League qualification so we are creating just as many chances or we are more clinical: it has to be at least one of the two.

it’s the defence that needs tightened up as it always looks like it’s going to concede. In that regard we brought in two centre halves (unfortunately both have injuries/off field issues) and a full back whilst defensive midfielder Sands has played well as cover. We also have long term injury Helander (who was the best defender at the club by some distance before his injury) and King so it’s not for the lack of trying or lack of depth.
Lundstsam has also played an effective defensive role during certain games.

Lets see how we perform over the next 6-8 weeks before hitting the collective panic button. 

 

 

[steven33jackie 1,946]

A decent information on injured players and possible returns would be nice. Always find GVB quite vague when providing updates. 

[WWTC 2,247]

43 minutes ago, Bakbear said:

Jack played at Center half to allow rests for our first team and blood in some youngsters. It’s a good use of our squad. 
 

Alfie is being brought back and while not fit enough is still able to give us 30 minutes. We have youth strikers and we can play some players like Fashion through the middle in the event Colak is unavailable 

it’s not great but it is not disastrous either and we have to acknowledge the long term balancing of the books

No, Jack played at CB because we didnt have any other fit CB’s to play along side King. 
“Its not great” is an understatement, but for the purposes of the discussion no more than “its not great” is required. We’ve just been to a Europan Cup Final and then Qualified for the Champions League and we’ve had a hugely underwhelming transfer window, yet again. We’re miles off of them In every department. Hoping we might get lucky over the course of the season is both worrying and stupid in equal measures.

[soulboy 2,519]

All our transfer money that came in will be going to pay the energy price increase in Oct and Jan 

[Roy Hobbs 2,209]

2 minutes ago, WWTC said:

No, Jack played at CB because we didnt have any other fit CB’s to play along side King. 
“Its not great” is an understatement, but for the purposes of the discussion no more than “its not great” is required. We’ve just been to a Europan Cup Final and then Qualified for the Champions League and we’ve had a hugely underwhelming transfer window, yet again. We’re miles off of them In every department. Hoping we might get lucky over the course of the season is both worrying and stupid in equal measures.

Were Goldson and Sands injured?

[beararse 6,408]

1 minute ago, WWTC said:

No, Jack played at CB because we didnt have any other fit CB’s to play along side King. 
“Its not great” is an understatement, but for the purposes of the discussion no more than “its not great” is required. We’ve just been to a Europan Cup Final and then Qualified for the Champions League and we’ve had a hugely underwhelming transfer window, yet again. We’re miles off of them In every department. Hoping we might get lucky over the course of the season is both worrying and stupid in equal measures.

D’you mean ‘Jack played at CB because we didnt have any other fit CB’s other than Goldson and Sands who were rested’?

[OrangeRab 2,848]

I’m surprised we didn’t at least try and go down the Tillman/Jota route for a few more signings. Fair enough if there’s no money. But we can offer Champions league experience and surely there are one or two fringe players at big clubs we could have got our hands on.

Few people on here saying it’s hard to attract players to the Spl. Amazes me then that we haven’t tried the Japanese market where celtic have picked up 3 starters for reasonable outlay.

So frustrating as there’s really not much between the first choice elevens. But sadly I think we’re 1 or 2 short from being able to win the league. Barring a tactical masterclass which would see us winning 3 out the 4 old firm games. 

[Bakbear 3,586]

18 minutes ago, WWTC said:

No, Jack played at CB because we didnt have any other fit CB’s to play along side King. 
“Its not great” is an understatement, but for the purposes of the discussion no more than “its not great” is required. We’ve just been to a Europan Cup Final and then Qualified for the Champions League and we’ve had a hugely underwhelming transfer window, yet again. We’re miles off of them In every department. Hoping we might get lucky over the course of the season is both worrying and stupid in equal measures.

We had Sands and Goldson. We rested them. 
 

we overspent by 80 million before we got to European final and qualified for the champions league. What’s hard to understand about this. In a period of 5 years we are 80 million behind. This year will balance that and we need to then have a sustainable model
 

we have 2 players at least for every position. Yes we have injuries but we cannot just keep gambling in the transfer market it has be balanced. 
 

I believe we have a good enough squad to win this league. 

[Valance1690 3,923]

Yesterday pretty much summed us, the board are happy simply with European qualification, if we get Champions League then even better, if not a Kent/Morelos would've been sold to cover it.

We'll win the odd title, when everything alines for us i.e. the injury prone players we sign all manage a decent run of games & the tarriers either don't spend big 1 window or have to replace players

1 team has backed the manager,  spent big to win the title when they lose it & spent again while they're on top, like a big club should do. In a one off game against them (injuries aside) we can compete but over the course of a season, I think they'll run away with it. 

 

 

[SeparateEntityMyArse 53,907]

Every CL draw is worth just under €1m. Every CL win is worth just under €3m

Surely the addition of the midfield quality needed at say £5m isn't too much of a gamble if it gave us a greater chance of getting more CL points plus the league. 

It really does seem we built for the Europa League despite Gio clearly believing we'd invest for the CL once we'd qualified.

Our squad is weaker than across the city. If we can get our missing players back our starting 11 is perfectly capable of beating theirs.

Disappointing window.

[WWTC 2,247]

1 hour ago, Roy Hobbs said:

Were Goldson and Sands injured?

No, we were rotating the squad and giving them a break, and we had to sink to Ryan Jack at CB levels. 

[WWTC 2,247]

1 hour ago, beararse said:

D’you mean ‘Jack played at CB because we didnt have any other fit CB’s other than Goldson and Sands who were rested’?

Exactly that, we rested 2 CB’s and had to play a centre mid at CB

[esquire8 43,092]

20 minutes ago, SeparateEntityMyArse said:

Every CL draw is worth just under €1m. Every CL win is worth just under €3m

Surely the addition of the midfield quality needed at say £5m isn't too much of a gamble if it gave us a greater chance of getting more CL points plus the league. 

It really does seem we built for the Europa League despite Gio clearly believing we'd invest for the CL once we'd qualified.

Our squad is weaker than across the city. If we can get our missing players back our starting 11 is perfectly capable of beating theirs.

Disappointing window.

Exactly. Our strongest 11 is alot better than their strongest 11 but their investment and squad strength is much better than ours. We need them to pick up the same injuries that we constantly do to make this a fair fight in the league.

[WWTC 2,247]

51 minutes ago, Bakbear said:

We had Sands and Goldson. We rested them. 
 

we overspent by 80 million before we got to European final and qualified for the champions league. What’s hard to understand about this. In a period of 5 years we are 80 million behind. This year will balance that and we need to then have a sustainable model
 

we have 2 players at least for every position. Yes we have injuries but we cannot just keep gambling in the transfer market it has be balanced. 
 

I believe we have a good enough squad to win this league. 

As above, we rested 2 CB’s and had to play a CM in there. 
You speculate to accumulate. No one expected us to go and spend all the money we’ve made, few are daft enough to believe that would ever work. But when you rake in £30M+ in transfers, reach a European Cup Final, and then qualify for the Champions league after failing to win the league, its not that bizarre to think we should invest in the team to give it a fair crack on all fronts. I dont think we’ve done that. The Nathan Patterson money alone has covered just about all our transfers. 
I dont believe that squad is good enough to play Champions League group stages, and 2 cups, and win the league. I obviously hope I’m completely wrong, but right now i dont see it. 

[Roy Hobbs 2,209]

12 minutes ago, WWTC said:

No, we were rotating the squad and giving them a break, and we had to sink to Ryan Jack at CB levels. 

You literally disagreed that players were rested and said we had no fit centre backs, other than King. We had three fit, we chose not to play two of them. We've got three others in the squad, hopefully at least one of them back in the coming weeks. We absolutely do not need more than we have 

[WWTC 2,247]

3 minutes ago, esquire8 said:

Exactly. Our strongest 11 is alot better than their strongest 11 but their investment and squad strength is much better than ours. We need them to pick up the same injuries that we constantly do to make this a fair fight in the league.

How is it? A year and a half ago you’d struggle to get a single player of theirs into our team. I dont think the same can be said now. 

[Wullies_bowly_legs 3,852]

39 minutes ago, Valance1690 said:

 

We'll win the odd title, when everything alines for us i.e. the injury prone players we sign all manage a decent run of games & the tarriers either don't spend big 1 window or have to replace players

Mjum'1 team has backed the manager,  spent big to win the title when they lose it & spent again while they're on top, like a big club should do. In a one off game against them (injuries aside) we can compete but over the course of a season, I think they'll run away with it. 

 

Lucky things have aligned for us 55 times so far.

[Valance1690 3,923]

1 minute ago, Wullies_bowly_legs said:

Lucky things have aligned for us 55 times so far.

You know I meant these days 

Years ago it was far more even playing field, right now they're outspending us by a huge amount & the team that does that will win the league 9/10 times!

[WWTC 2,247]

2 minutes ago, Roy Hobbs said:

You literally disagreed that players were rested and said we had no fit centre backs, other than King. We had three fit, we chose not to play two of them. We've got three others in the squad, hopefully at least one of them back in the coming weeks. We absolutely do not need more than we have 

No i didnt disagree players were rested, I disagreed that we played Jack there to becuase of it. We played Jack there because, after resting 2 CB’s we’re left with fuck all. If Goldson gets injured this weekend, and Sands gets sent off, who’s playing at CB the following game? I take your point that we have 3 out, so CB is probably not the best area ro use as an example. But for all we know they will all be out for the foreseeable. 
In general terms, our squad is inferior to theirs. By some distance. Strongest 11 is debatable, but squad depth and quality is not. 

[Roy Hobbs 2,209]

1 minute ago, WWTC said:

No i didnt disagree players were rested, I disagreed that we played Jack there to becuase of it. We played Jack there because, after resting 2 CB’s we’re left with fuck all. If Goldson gets injured this weekend, and Sands gets sent off, who’s playing at CB the following game? I take your point that we have 3 out, so CB is probably not the best area ro use as an example. But for all we know they will all be out for the foreseeable. 
In general terms, our squad is inferior to theirs. By some distance. Strongest 11 is debatable, but squad depth and quality is not. 

If Barasic gets injured, and Yilmaz gets sent off who will we play at left back? We've got far more depth at centre half than any other position. How many is enough for each position? 3, 4, 5?

[JackAlex93 11,458]

10 hours ago, westenclosure2008 said:

Why are we the only team where players need 6 months to bed in? None of the celtic signings needed time to settle in. Newcastle signed a player and then less 24hrs later he’s playing against Liverpool at Anfield and played really well. If you are at the level we need you need to be able to hit the ground running. Absolute nonsense that players need time to bed in. It’s football for ffs the main principles of the game are the same regardless of who you are playing with. So if he needs 6 months to learn the basics of playing football then he definitely hasn’t improved us. 

How many starts has Ridvan Yilmaz had and sub appearances? 😂

[OhW 4,676]

Playing Jack at CB in a home game that we’ll have 75% possession was a good idea I thought. 

[WWTC 2,247]

11 minutes ago, Roy Hobbs said:

If Barasic gets injured, and Yilmaz gets sent off who will we play at left back? We've got far more depth at centre half than any other position. How many is enough for each position? 3, 4, 5?

Barasic and Yilmaz cover one position, Goldson and Sands is two. I’m not even convinced Sands was originally playing in there as he didnt last season. We’ve let 3 CB’s go and replaced them with 2. And as I said in my previous post, CB probably isnt the best example to use, but the squad in general lacks quality and depth in comparison to theirs. 

[beararse 6,408]

36 minutes ago, WWTC said:

Exactly that, we rested 2 CB’s and had to play a centre mid at CB

Given we have 3 CB's out injured thats to be expected surely.

We can't just buy another CB because 3 are out for varying lengths of time/reasons. What do we do with the 4 spare CB's once they are all fit (5 if we had brought in another to allay your fears v the likes of QoS)