TheGunnShow

Swap Stiepermann for Aarons and that's who I think will go, especially considering Mumba and Byram are also options at right-back. Stiepermann's partnership with Pukki in the Championship last time out was a huge part of our success and I'd be surprised if it's completely broken up.

Homegrown, Championship experience, young so still potential to improve / sell at profit if we have to, and proven to be a strong player at this level. Ticks all the boxes if he gels into the team - this is a crafty signing. I do like that Farke's looking at young local talent now. Wonder if we can poach any from Wigan with their known financial issues at the moment? Spurs took one of their 15-year olds for half-a-million recently. Suspect Stiepermann's going to be a back-up, but he's one I'd really want to keep around as he partnered Pukki so well at Championship level last time out. I also think having a speedster on a wing near him will give him more space too for hitting his own passes or long shots. There are understandable comments about some of our squad players going such as Vrancic, Trybull, etc. I would wonder if they're all going to stay simply as the season will be even more crowded than usual, so I would expect that good rotation and strength in depth, which is always needed in the Championship anyway, is surely going to become even more of a premium.

Over half-way there. Good to see.

Just because you haven't heard of them doesn't mean they can't play. There will definitely be a sale or two soon - makes more sense to sell a player when the replacement is already in the building rather than have a panic search when you lose a player and desperately need a new one. That's also how you end up paying silly money. Wildschut, anyone? Relax, they've done their business before selling any of the top youngsters and inadvertently doubling the price of the lads they just bought. If they'd sold Buendia (as an example) for £15 million (again, for example), do you reckon we'd get these lads so cheap, or do you reckon it would have put another quarter of a million (or more) on the asking price?

Meanwhile, here I am cursing the paparazzi...

I'll pop a donation in at the start of next month when my main supplier pays me (self-employed translator here). And if you want a cheap laugh at our antics from my previous post, my old team still has the photo gallery up! https://www.flickr.com/photos/oldboltoniansafc/albums/72157635048891189

Put him in the hole, tell their midfielders to give him the ball at every opportunity, and hope his legs are still up for it. Oh, and tell the striker to time his runs.

Get yourself a set of Gatorskin tyres if you haven't already. If you're tackling that sort of mileage there might be a puncture waiting for you. Best of British to you. I'm at the wrong end of the country, otherwise I'd have happily joined in for a bit. Did something similar back in 2013, but we played the first half of a football match on our local pitch, cycled 80 miles to St. Georges Park in Burton-on-Trent, then played the second half there to raise money for a charity that focused on sudden arrhythmic death syndrome.

Middlesborough was a tough old scrap in the promotion season anyway. Wasn't Tony Pulis manager back then?

This is exactly why we should be excited about the whole concept as for a long time youth development was rather more miss than hit, or indeed very much neglected. This is what attracts promising young talent - the fact that a team will give them their break at first-team level and is committed to that philosophy. I have said on Facebook here and there that the aim looks very much to replicate what Auxerre did under Guy Roux as they became quite the powerhouse of French youth development - which for a smallish French town of around 100,000 inhabitants around 100 miles away from Paris - led to them becoming quite a respected fixture in European football for a couple of decades. Not saying we could necessarily carry it quite as far this way in the cash-rich Premier League, but in the absence of big money this is very much the way to go.

Sure, but we've also got to get back up there. Stiepermann would be a splendid back-up player for the Championship in that position if you do find that player who looks like he can make the leap, and if he's struggling, put Stiepi back in.

We learned that we needed another centre-half or two, we learned that top of the Championship was about the limit for many of our senior players, and that we need to be physically more imposing and combine brawn intelligently with brain next time. January signings rarely work out either, especially in teams struggling for confidence as it is.

Agree re. Stiepermann. Suspect he wouldn't mind having a speedy winger or two around him as it gives him more space down the middle. He's just one of those who clearly couldn't make the leap, but would be excellent in a central spine for the Championship.

Looks like he was their youngest ever first-teamer at the age of 16, but poor management may have stalled his progress into the first team. This report seems to indicate that Sunderland really didn't / do not have much of a concept in place for enabling young players to make the leap from the academy to the first team. And under Phil Parkinson, he wouldn't get that chance. Parkinson is - lemme tell you as a fan living in Bolton - a real dinosaur in terms of how he wants his teams to play, and Mumba is not his kind of full back. Looks like a back-up. Suspect Aarons will go, Byram will cover both full-back positions and this lad will get ahead. https://rokerreport.sbnation.com/2020/7/27/21303396/mistake-or-masterstroke-norwich-sign-bali-mumba-from-sunderland-for-350k?utm_campaign=rokerreport.sbnation&utm_content=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

Considering how much survival meant - and at Villa it was against the odds a bit - I can understand the celebrations. I do agree that there's an element of it being phony, but they're also celebrating out of relief.

If we're not playing two wingers, that's precisely what I'd like to see. We're a couple of centre-halves light for that though, although I would maintain playing wingbacks should make us more solid down the middle of the park. We've looked pretty vulnerable down the middle so anything that gums up the works better when out of possession is fine by me. Something like a 3-5-1-1 as plan A, going to a 4-5-1 or 4-4-1-1 as a plan B would be the preference at my end, but we'll see.

Exactly. I said that in a previous discussion. If we've got at least one pace merchant on a wing, we'll pin their full-back and with a bit of luck, might even take their wide midfielder as well. A lot of people seem to think the ability of a team is a total sum game - it really is not.

Ten games is probably not enough. Don't forget that we had a poor start in the first six games even when we won the Championship.

Nailed it. The bit in bold is absolutely spot on. As much as every last one of us wants to win, I think some of us have forgotten all too quickly how close we were to administration both when we were falling limply into Division One, and how parlous things were looking before we sold Maddison. As a Canary living in Bolton (and therefore seeing closely what was going on there when you get a proper asset-stripping chancer as chairman before the takeover there, as well as the demise of neighbouring Bury and the kerfuffle with Wigan right now), you really don't want to go down that route due to overstretching finances.

Who cost less than a million.

Actually, Sinani seems to be a left-footed winger too - but he seems to cut in off the right a fair bit. I'm leery of the source to be honest, but we could be making a mistake if we just think pace. https://totalfootballanalysis.com/player-analysis/danel-sinani-201920-scout-report-tactical-analysis-tactics

The idea behind the season was extremely laudable. Keep the majority of the team together that played such wonderful football in the Championship (after a pretty poor start culminating in that 0-3 at home to Leeds) and bind them on longer contracts to secure them, get a couple of additions on on loan if need be, and try again in the Premier. Unfortunately, the loan signings weren't good enough, although I maintain Fährmann probably pushed Krul on to something approaching his best after being a little rusty last season. Amadou wasn't up to the mark, and as for Patrick Roberts and Duda, well... We had a prolonged spell where we only had one fit centre-half with Zimbo, Klose, and Hanley out for months. First game Zimbo comes back in, we beat Everton 2-0 at Goodison. We then struggle a bit but get a three-pointer at home to ten-man Bournemouth then the **** hits the fan. Worse still, when we come back, Hanley, Zimmermann, and Byram are out, and a clearly not ready Klose is pressed into action, but we look dreadful afterwards. However, our youngsters now have a good year's seasoning at a higher level to learn from. We also know that most of the more experienced ones can't make the step up (so, the likes of Vrancic, Stiepermann, Trybull, for example) if we go up again. We've not jeopardised the financial future of the club. We faced unusual bad luck with defensive injuries, and a set of circumstances with the pandemic that teams generally don't have to face. Can be well-argued that we didn't cope with it well, but it's not something you'd expect to handle anyway! We go again. Some interesting new faces are already in and they look like the sort of young, hungry players we look to develop with our model. I just hope confidence has not been hit too irreparably, although a shot of fresh young blood should help there anyway.

Why not Stiepermann then (in terms of playing through the middle)? He did it to great effect in the Championship last time.

I'm wondering - but it's a very loose hypothesis, if two wingers rejuvenates Leitner (or even Vrancic). We know he can pick passes from deep. A fast winger haring into space looks like a target he'd fancy hitting time after time. Agree that we've lacked some raw physicality. I'd also argue that if we go with two proper wingers, we don't need one in the hole so much. At that point I'd be looking for a more box-to-box midfielder with a couple of more defensive ones behind him. A few could do that. McLean's got that engine, Rupp looks like he's got it, Stiepi could with a bit of fine tuning as well, I reckon. I'm actually wondering where Sinani's going to fit in all this. It does look like Farke's planning a somewhat different plan B.

Buendia and Pukki would be my two in theory. For me, anything that shows we are great at developing our own and keeping them together makes us more and more attractive to promising young talent looking for somewhere to fine-tune their games and set us apart. Furthermore, years of such playing together generally would improve teamwork. The problem with Buendia, at least if our last season in the Championship was any guide, was that he seemed to be the one player we couldn't quite replace and when he was suspended, we seemed to lack a little something. When Leitner was out, Vrancic stepped in. When Hanley was out, Zimmermann came in. When Tettey was out, Trybull stepped in. Cantwell back then wasn't quite replacing Buendia though. We didn't really have too many games without Pukki and he probably could have been quite tough to replace as well, but you get the idea. I agree with @TeemuVanBasten in terms of Buendia lacking a yard of pace and also being better suited to being in a team that's mainly in the other half. In the Championship, that was us. In the Premier.... not yet.