Anthony Elanga | Forest watch

Elanga was decent enough when he first broke into the team under Rangnick, but he was terrible last season. Pretty much nothing he did worked, and it looked like the pressure of Utd had got to him. I think he's the classic example of somebody who needed to leave for his own good.

I find it interesting how Elanga has highlighted the short memories that football fans tend to have. Last season while he was terrible everyone seemed to forget he'd been ok before that, but now that he's doing quite well everyone seems to be forgetting how bad he was last season.
 
Gordon Godot said:
Then you dont understand what building a squad is about. ETH is not the first manager to do this, LVG sold for example both Evans and Keane and then bought Blind (not capable of dealing with physicality of PL) and Rojo (not good enough). Then Mou bought Bailly (clown) and Lindelof (also not capable of dealing with physicality of PL), then Ole made Maguire the most expensive CB in PL and bought Varanne. So we sold 2 youth products for modest feels (, Keane £2m; Evans £6m, Ferguson reported as 'speachless' at the time) and then go and spend over £200m and massive wages on at least 6 shiny new CBs, none of them good enough. The irony is Evans is back and looking an accomplished CB whose good on the ball at the age of 35, Keane has been up and down but for a period was playing for England. The point is not that the likes of Evans and Keane were going to win us the PL, but there is no point selling them unless its for truly outstanding players. Evans has this seaon kept Varanne out of the team.

So when it comes to Elanga, he has shown that he can score and create assists and chances in one of the worst teams in the PL. Rangnick who has an eye for talent picked out Elanga, ETH clearly didnt rate him and preferred to play Weghorst over him (unbelievable), then sold him to buy Antony. So for a net £70m spend we have a demonstrably worse right winger who has zero goals and zero assits in PL, whilst Elanaga has 5 goals and 6 assits for the team in the relegation zone. The irony is that Elanga looks really dangerous on the sort of fast breaks that it seems would suit the current United set up. So again, the point is not that Elanga would get us to challenge for PL, but unless there is a truly elite replacement we can get we should give our youth players more time and opportunities and conserve funds for the star players and stop allowing each new manager to buy the latest shiny toy who proves to be useless.
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The thing is Keane wasn't good enough for United though. He'd be playing for Everton now if he was. Evans demonstrably was good enough. I suppose my take is that Elanga is more the Keane level player who has a few decent Prem seasons, becomes an international, but he's never going to be good enough to play much at United.
 
Gordon Godot said:
Then you dont understand what building a squad is about. ETH is not the first manager to do this, LVG sold for example both Evans and Keane and then bought Blind (not capable of dealing with physicality of PL) and Rojo (not good enough). Then Mou bought Bailly (clown) and Lindelof (also not capable of dealing with physicality of PL), then Ole made Maguire the most expensive CB in PL and bought Varanne. So we sold 2 youth products for modest feels (, Keane £2m; Evans £6m, Ferguson reported as 'speachless' at the time) and then go and spend over £200m and massive wages on at least 6 shiny new CBs, none of them good enough. The irony is Evans is back and looking an accomplished CB whose good on the ball at the age of 35, Keane has been up and down but for a period was playing for England. The point is not that the likes of Evans and Keane were going to win us the PL, but there is no point selling them unless its for truly outstanding players. Evans has this seaon kept Varanne out of the team.

So when it comes to Elanga, he has shown that he can score and create assists and chances in one of the worst teams in the PL. Rangnick who has an eye for talent picked out Elanga, ETH clearly didnt rate him and preferred to play Weghorst over him (unbelievable), then sold him to buy Antony. So for a net £70m spend we have a demonstrably worse right winger who has zero goals and zero assits in PL, whilst Elanaga has 5 goals and 6 assits for the team in the relegation zone. The irony is that Elanga looks really dangerous on the sort of fast breaks that it seems would suit the current United set up. So again, the point is not that Elanga would get us to challenge for PL, but unless there is a truly elite replacement we can get we should give our youth players more time and opportunities and conserve funds for the star players and stop allowing each new manager to buy the latest shiny toy who proves to be useless.
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Well I'm not a simpleton. So the issue is feck all to do with Elanga, who was unlikely to get any game time and would likely not have contributed a huge amount.

Your issue is that Antony is crap and we overspent. Our recruitment has been poor we all know that and hopefully that starts to change but Elanga wouldn't have changed our fortunes a huge amount if we hadn't sold him.

Also you're not the first person to mention Weghorst which is baffling me. Maybe I'm missing something but Weghorst played CF/10. Elanga is neither of these things. How was Weghorst taking his place in the team?
 
All of you people moaning about the transfer fee: what do you think we should have got for him? 25m? 30m? 35m?

Now name me the club(s) you think would have purchased him for your estimated amount.
 
Rozay said:
15-20 was a fair price to me. Certainly at the 20m point. Do people expect 20m players to be completely useless or something?
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Agreed. Elanga was a grafter but didn't have the quality to make it here. We maybe could've eked out an extra £5m but I think it was a scenario where the buying club, selling club and player all got a decent deal.

His price is being judged relative to Antony so that's never going to be a favourable comparison.
 
MadDogg said:
Elanga was decent enough when he first broke into the team under Rangnick, but he was terrible last season. Pretty much nothing he did worked, and it looked like the pressure of Utd had got to him. I think he's the classic example of somebody who needed to leave for his own good.

I find it interesting how Elanga has highlighted the short memories that football fans tend to have. Last season while he was terrible everyone seemed to forget he'd been ok before that, but now that he's doing quite well everyone seems to be forgetting how bad he was last season.
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Plenty of young players struggle in their second seasons after a breakout year. Having patience with players can pay dividends if they're nurtured correctly. Elanga probably wasn't good enough to be a starter at United, but he could have been a good squad player given time.

His biggest issue last season was that he wasn't getting the gametime to actually significantly improve, as Ten Hag spunked £84m on Anthony and was never going to drop him no matter how bad he was.

Not every player has to be a world beater, but it's surely better for those players to come from the academy rather than spending silly money on players who are unlikely to ever come close to justifying such sums.
 
Lexicon Red Devil said:
Plenty of young players struggle in their second seasons after a breakout year. Having patience with players can pay dividends if they're nurtured correctly. Elanga probably wasn't good enough to be a starter at United, but he could have been a good squad player given time.

His biggest issue last season was that he wasn't getting the gametime to actually significantly improve, as Ten Hag spunked £84m on Anthony and was never going to drop him no matter how bad he was.

Not every player has to be a world beater, but it's surely better for those players to come from the academy rather than spending silly money on players who are unlikely to ever come close to justifying such sums.
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Very good post that I wish I could like. People always expect trajectories to be smooth but a players progress is determined by so many other variables besides their skill and mentality.

Who’s to know how players levels will dip and rise and hard work can be a major contributor to but they still need the opportunity. I would say though the manager was hoping to build on the early buzz from a few of Antony performances.

I made the point in other threads to that the ideal for me would be to have the majority of the squad be academy players at different stages, ie from Rashford to Mainoo then fill the major roles with real quality.
 
Any interest in taking him back? Apparently Forest have to sell players before June 30th to avoid another FFP penalty.

https://inews.co.uk/sport/football/nottingham-forest-sell-players-30-june-3072414

5 goals and 9 assists are decent numbers in a poor Forest side. We may need more attackers if Sancho is gone and we know Antony can't cut it. Elanga would be a cheap choice and we're shopping in the Tesco reduced section this summer.
 
Shane88 said:
Any interest in taking him back? Apparently Forest have to sell players before June 30th to avoid another FFP penalty.

https://inews.co.uk/sport/football/nottingham-forest-sell-players-30-june-3072414

5 goals and 9 assists are decent numbers in a poor Forest side. We may need more attackers if Sancho is gone and we know Antony can't cut it. Elanga would be a cheap choice and we're shopping in the Tesco reduced section this summer.
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No, there's no point in wasting money on players we already know aren't good enough.
 
Shane88 said:
Any interest in taking him back? Apparently Forest have to sell players before June 30th to avoid another FFP penalty.

https://inews.co.uk/sport/football/nottingham-forest-sell-players-30-june-3072414

5 goals and 9 assists are decent numbers in a poor Forest side. We may need more attackers if Sancho is gone and we know Antony can't cut it. Elanga would be a cheap choice and we're shopping in the Tesco reduced section this summer.
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Nope. Basically all his effectiveness is on the counter, and hopefully whoever is managing us, we'll move away from just being a counter-attacking team.
 
Seems a kind of pointless move for him at this stage. He’ll just be doing the same thing there as he was here. But obviously he’s going to be getting much more money and the chance to break through at a club on the up? I don’t know, if money wasn’t important to him I’d stay another season and play regular football
 
Ali Dia said:
Seems a kind of pointless move for him at this stage. He’ll just be doing the same thing there as he was here. But obviously he’s going to be getting much more money and the chance to break through at a club on the up? I don’t know, if money wasn’t important to him I’d stay another season and play regular football
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I can't think of who there other winger is apart from Gordon, but he'll probably get plenty of game time at Newcastle, and he'll fit their counter attack style better than whatever it was we are building towards.
 
Why would Newcastle want him? The money they’ve got, they could get a player miles better.
 
DJ_21 said:
Why would Newcastle want him? The money they’ve got, they could get a player miles better.
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They have pretty big PSR problems and they allegedly wanted to swap him and Anderson to fix them. He's not meant to be a marquee signing.
 
Lemoor said:
They have pretty big PSR problems and they allegedly wanted to swap him and Anderson to fix them. He's not meant to be a marquee signing.
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Just aswell. He’s bang average. Alright at a team like forest.
 
Lemoor said:
They have pretty big PSR problems and they allegedly wanted to swap him and Anderson to fix them. He's not meant to be a marquee signing.
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Feckers won't sell it to us but I would happily take Gordon.
 
P-Nut said:
I can't think of who there other winger is apart from Gordon, but he'll probably get plenty of game time at Newcastle, and he'll fit their counter attack style better than whatever it was we are building towards.
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They have no European football and already have Gordon, Barnes and Almiron who are all better than Elanga. Don't really think they need to sign a 4th choice winger, Jacob Murphy is fine for that role.
 
sizzling sausages said:
They have no European football and already have Gordon, Barnes and Almiron who are all better than Elanga. Don't really think they need to sign a 4th choice winger, Jacob Murphy is fine for that role.
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Almiron is looking to go off to Saudi isn’t he?
 
Allegedly they offered Gordon to Liverpool as part of a swap for Quansah. Seems like all is not well up in the darkest north east
 
whitbyviking said:
Allegedly they offered Gordon to Liverpool as part of a swap for Quansah. Seems like all is not well up in the darkest north east
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Gordon to Liverpool? Didn't Everton fans abuse Gordon for going to Newcastle? There would be uproar if he signed for Liverpool :eek::lol:
 
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