Litch
Full Member
- Joined
- Dec 23, 2013
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- 10,631
I do wonder why we went for Maguire (for that price) if the plan was to keep Lindelof as one of the main two. I've liked Maguire since he was at Hull and wish we'd gone for him when he was cheap, but he's very slow and is only, at best, 'good' defensively rather than it being an actual strength. It's why I thought that Smalling would, yet again, quickly establish himself as first choice as he's the best we've got to cover those two aspects which would allow Maguire to focus on what he is good at. Instead in pre-season it was obvious that Maguire and Lindelof were the main two, Tuanzebe seemed to be next in line and then from memory even Jones and Rojo (or maybe it was only one of them) got more minutes. Smalling unsurprisingly saw the writing on the wall and asked to leave.
In saying that, it doesn't really matter who we bought, we still would have had to buy a second as none of our senior defenders are good enough. Smalling isn't good enough on the ball, Bailly, Rojo and Jones are too injury-prone and Lindelof is...well, Lindelof. Unless the entire plan was to hope Tuanzebe would take the step up, but it is appearing increasingly likely that he's going to join the injury-prone club and we may need to rely on Mengi. So ultimately we'd need a second defender no matter who we bought last season, and the fact that it was Maguire just means we know that whoever that second defender is needs to have certain strengths (most noticeably he needs to be fast).
Agree but it's like finishing with girlfriends or divorcing your wife in hope that the next one is better than last. At some point, you have to look at maybe what's wrong with you? Signing another CB if the quality of coaching is poor, only going to result in the same outcome. I like Ole but I'm sorry, he's not experienced or qualified to run a club of this magnitude. If you are Samsung, you get the best person from Apple. Ole gets the sack tomorrow, he doesn't any of the top 50 clubs in the world. If we sold Pogs tmw, he's bought by one of the top 5 clubs in the world. That's the difference.