[JPRouve]

Agree and disagree at the same time.

He is very effective at making sure nothing much happens through the middle. Against a big team coming at us he will be grand and his passing will be fine because there will be oceans of space ahead.

In a game we are bound to dominate and rivals sit deep in a low block you don't want him pulling strings as a pivot but someone else doing that while he presses higher up as a turnover machine keeping the oppo in trouble.

So yeah, there's a role for him in a game like that, but not one where the build up goes through him much at all, as seen quite clearly late in the Palace game. We subbed him on for Eriksen and it all went stale. Fine if you want to play out a draw but surely not what we wanted?

It's an interesting point because that's what I saw from him with PSG. Granted that he wasn't the only one like that but he was a contributor in the fact that their midfield was very timid with the ball outside of Vitinha.

 

[FrankDrebin]

Will be fascinating to see his development throughout the course of the campaign and whether he will be a little more expansive in possession at times.
The later the game wore on against Twente the more trepidation I felt in his game in quickening our tempo and passing more through the middle.

Interesting signing really.

 

[El Jefe]

Not saying he would have liked Ugarte (or not) but I don't think that's really accurate. Look at Fletcher, Fergie loved him and he was pure legs + energy.

You've already been corrected but Fletcher is a really bad example. He came into the team competing with Ronaldo on the RW in his breakout year. He Fletcher was really good technically and was a good passer. His strength was getting around the pitch and workrate but he could play too. Hargreaves was the closest thing to a pure destroyer that Fergie signed and even he could cross a ball and was class at set pieces.

That sort of logic is a little absurd.

There are plenty of players that take a lot longer than three months to bed in. Sometimes their football talks but I'd argue that's much, much rarer. There's a lot to overcome: the language barrier, the culture shock, the pitches and climate, etc. Maybe some particularly driven players adapt a lot more quickly, for whatever reason, but even they you would expect to not get the best out of them until they're truly comfortable.

The closest comparison I have is also Uruguayan Luis Suarez took 2 full -seasons- to start looking like a good player at Liverpool. And nowadays people talk about him - rightly - as being one of the best number 9's of all time. He scored a pretty mediocre 11 goals in his second season.

It will take a full season for our side to gel. Ten Hag won't have that luxury if things go wrong, but either way we won't see the best of Ugarte until next season I think.

I love how you just skipped all the examples of players I listed who were crap from the beginning and those who were impressive from the start. Your Suarez example also happens to be a terrible one. He was very good from the very start, he absolutely destroyed us at Anfield in one of his first PL games. He was never a player that was seen as bad/poor before hitting his world class level.

Do you remember Evra and Vidic's first 3 months?

Another one skipping examples of recent players to find examples from nearly 20 years ago. Btw they joined in January so obviously have a longer grace period. In their first full season they were flying from the start.

More often than not players are good from the start if they are to be successful unless they are teenagers or joining a very complex system like Peps.

 

[Gabriel Djemba-Bebe]

Another one skipping examples of recent players to find examples from nearly 20 years ago. Btw they joined in January so obviously have a longer grace period. In their first full season they were flying from the start.

More often than not players are good from the start if they are to be successful unless they are teenagers or joining a very complex system like Peps.

Surely you don't expect me to pick a more recent example when almost all of our post-Fergie signings haven't been a success. Fred is the first one that jumps to mind, as he improved a lot during his second season, but I'm not going to pretend that he was a success, just like the majority of signings under the Woodward and Murtough stewardship.

 

[jem]

I’m not saying this in relation to Ugarte but surely the last ten years is enough for people to stop acting like you necessarily need to give every player a season to judge them. Sometimes it’s just that easy to tell the wrong player has been signed.

For the most part our impactful signings have been good from the start. Martinez, Bruno, Matic, Herrera, Pogba, Martial, Mata, AWB, Blind. Fred and Dalot are one of the few players to be slow starters that actually ended up becoming somewhat successful.

Players like Antony, Sancho, Dan James, Memphis, VDB, Schneiderlin, Mkhitaryan and the other mountain of flops were pretty much bad from the start and within three months you could tell it wouldn’t go well. So I don’t buy that all players need time. Sometimes it’s obvious a player is either the wrong fit for the team or just not good enough.

I think the first three months tells me all I need to know about a player.

Actually pointing were anointing James the best signing since RVP after his first 3-4 games, which just goes to show the folly of making such snap judgments. Likewise, Mkhitaryan was hardly considered a flop right away nor was Antony. I guess the real point here is that it is certainly worthwhile to hold off on snap judgments.