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Dembele''s best position is considered to be deep lying playmaker. At least that is the position he played most of his carreer in premier league. He can play everywhere in the midfield, but his long shot and vision comes best in effect as a regista. Winger means attacking wide player, same as wing back means advanced wide defender. Wingers play at the level of attacking middlefielders and wide midfielders play at the level of central midfielders when in a formation. We clearly have two wingers who play either level of Hoolahan or even front of him when it comes to our left wing. Hopefuly this was helpful.

Maher cant be moved this year anymore as he just signed from AZ to PSV with 7million dollar. I curse every day we werent after him. One of most promising advanced playmakers in the game. But I also like their LB Jetro Willems and Wejnaldum isnt too bad either. Few games I have seen by the way from Man City loanee Rekik, he looks great prospect too.

Newboy if Pilkington is middlefielder he is playing so out of place and forgets that he should hug the line.. We should sack him instead of Hughton. Same goes qiute much for Snoddy, but he sometimes at least drops to get balls from the middlefield instead of running behind fullacks. We clearly have two winger on the field. Not wide players and to mention another team that has almost constantly used two defensive middlefielders: Chelsea, and quick to think Tottenham and Man City pops in my mind too. Apart from Chelsea neither of other teams play very defensively. Also previous time Tottenham had 3 players whose main position is a deep middlefielder as Dembele, Capoue and Paulinho started game against Swansea. When we attack we play 4-2-3-1 and when we defend we have 4-4-1-1, but so does most of the teams that use same formation.

Well I have said this earlier, but in my opinion Hughton is way better manager than what Lambert was and even thought I dont agree with everything he does, I can see clear point behind what he is doing and why. After saying that, if we are 3-5 points under relegation line at december we should sack him. Sometimes things work sometimes they dont and in that situation "waking the team up" could prove useful and new manager would have time to consider transfers for january and make inquries. In other cases I would not sack him.

Yeah Johnson was at his best at side of Tettey previous season and vice versa. Tettey give Johnson so much more time which he needs as he isnt fastest fellow and Tettey other hand needs someone calm with him as he tends to drift out of position with his high energy running. I personaly would like to see Fer - Tettey pairing at saturday, but I think Johnson at the end has better attributes for Fer except that simple passing where Tettey is very good. But at the end when Fer is injured or suspended I wouldnt moan to see Tettey - Johnson down there as Howson seems so many times out of game when he plays alongside Johnson.

Nope you are simply wrong again ^^ I watched both games and overlapping, middlefields pushing forward happened almost always at same positioning and our counters also followed same principality than before. Ofc every game has little tinkering as you have to take note of opponents playing style and players, but we were no more attacking by intent that we were few games before WBA or 6 months before. You could say that our players were more relaxed or their head was in right place and mayby Hughton changed some things for pre-game speech etc, but in tactical sense we didnt push players forward any more than we did in other games and when wingers got into the position by cutting lttle bit in, both fullbacks made that normal overlap which happens every single time if opponent dropped few of their attackers to help the defence.

Houston: We didnt change tactics. Simlpe as that. We played most part with same or at least similar tactic trought the season apart of those few times we landed 2 strikers shoulder to shoulder at early part of the season and when we were trailing and needed to take bigger risks. Even when we played Holt and Kamara at same time, other of them replaced winger or Hoolahan. This is one of the reasons these discussions seem to go nowhere most of the time as people do not accept that Hughton''s tactics can result lot of goals, overlapping and goal scoring situations when players produce what is asked from them. Trough whole previous season our middlefielders and fullbacks had a license to get forward, but it was not done without moving the whole unit and this is same time the reason why we sometimes looked like getting nowhere as either our squad couldn''t keep the posession or opponent managed to keep our link up players off the ball. It is concervative way to play the game to keep unit that compact and solid, but when pieces of puzzle fit together it will result games what we saw during our unbeaten run and at the end of the season. Also it is hard tactic for players as they have to understand eachother and acknowledge when to get forward, when to shoot, when to overlap without breaking the unit. This and building up play is something we still struggle sometimes.

Well probably if we are behind we at least use two strkers and mayby few times during the season too for rotation sake. And ofc I can be horrible wrong and Hughton goes for 4-4-2. And I''m quite sure Hooper is confident chap and trust that he can compete with RvW and Elmander for that spot.

For me he is backup striker. We need two decent players for each spot and arguably three for striking spot. He wasnt really that expensive and as you watch other teams they have decent names who mainly sit on the bench waiting for chance to prove themselves better than first choise striker and almost never play together.

I dont know how many times this needs to be said, but most of modern teams use only one up. Both of London teams that are considered playing best football in England (Arsenal - Tottenham) and Real Madrid who is notoriously playing attacking football even when they would get a result with less risky way. I personaly dont think Hooper has a skillset suitable of being linkup player. I would prefer Elmander or even RvW before him. The Greek fellow who played with Hooper whose name I cant spell without Wikipedia and I''m too lazy for that today was their linkup player who drifted wide and hold up the ball to give others time to get up. Hooper didnt get involved that much with playmaking and as said so many time we lack creativity to create chances from midfield, so I think it would be begging for troubles to put player in a whole who is not used to create chances.

[quote user="vlad666"]Exactly. We had 4 shots all game. Don''t think their keeper actually made a save. They had about 65% possession as well as nearly four times as many shots. It''s not the results that anger me it''s the manner of the performance.[/quote] Heh and still in the finnish football forums the Everton game was touted very exiting game by neutral fans where both teams tried to get a 3 points. But hey if you want to keep sensible negativity classes on, be my guest you will have very dull season where I can enjoy my football with justified sensible realism classes on.

I agree with Bethnal that if we play Howson behind striker we lack ability to break defences and efficient playmaking. In that case we would have to sign someone to make plays at CM position as we do not have anyone there really who could be profiled as a playmaker. In some way it probably would be easier to find deep lying playmaker in current market than a pure 10, but Kiyotake could be good shout I''m afraid he would just get same treatment as Hoolahan as he is quite similar player. Same mold player I would have wanted before this season was Adam Maher, but as he moved already for PSV it is quite impossible to move him anymore. Rémy Cabella is also very similar with Kiyotake and Hoolahan, but mayby a bit more "goal greedy", same goes for Gerginio Winjaldum and totally to the other way Óliver Torres who doesnt make a lot of goals, but is great playmaker. Atletico was looking place to loan him earlier this season, if you believe Marca, but he still is in their first squad. But they are not fitting player Hughton have been looking trough this summer. All too small for his taste I guess and ofc all would cost us (except Oliver''s loan) around 10 million if not more. Not to mention they are all quite young and he has looked for already peaked player thus far. Someone like Siem de Jong probably would fit his plans, but is too hard and expensive to release from Ajax. Same goes for Roman Eremenko from Spartak. Type we are looking is very rare if we want quality. Mayby we could go for risk and try sign someone like Dennis Praet from Anderlecht, who is very talented, but doesnt have that great "portfolio" yet. Dont know. There is lot of fish out there who are out of radar and as I''m not that interested of 185cm strong and powerful version of number 10''s I haven''t really paid attention who is comming up the ranks or near moving for the bigger or smaller stage to get new challenges in that category of players. I had high hopes for Toivonen signing as we would know what we get with that move, but as it seems he wont come I would hope we still keep looking player like him. You never know with cheeky bid you could get someone like Ganso or Yoann Gourcuff who are looking new opportunities to get their carreer back into track and who are considered way over our range but are not really that far away from talent and hype of RvW. Far fetched, but you get the point.

Only seen him play for Aussies, but there he has been quite good if not anything special. So nothing to be exited about, but gives decent backup for three slots and who knows if this move would make him flourish and as said we dont have that many skilful players that could play behind the striker except Hoolahan and in lesser extent Butterfield who isn''t trusted. So better than nothing if we are closing our interests for pure 10 in transfermarket.

Yup same as me. I try to avoid certain thread starters and topics and only read ones that I could believe giving anything for discussion in this forum. But so many posters totally disappeared when we got that good end result from WBA game and from whole previous season and even after Everton game only few of them came back it was quite obvious they would come back soon as given any chance for touting their own truth and as lakey said there are many people here that want to see Hughton fail as they could then say "I said so" and are already too deep in their anti-Hughton path. I learned from last season that it was useless to come here after game lost and try to discuss tactical points as most of writers were already decided that only reason why we lost was management and only way to get better was getting rid of Hughton.

Yeah and when we took a point from QPR or Southampton last season people were still crying out loud how negative we are and "Hughton out". Same time Chelsea fans are showing their thumbs up for their messiah returning and just get the result from the hard games. I agree that we should try to win every game, but same time I agree with Hughton that we shouldn''t open ourselves like we did Lambert era.

[quote user="star_manic"]The truth of the matter is that Wes does not perform well enough often enough. Wes fans are living on past exploits (much like Fox fans), but we have moved on to a point where, like it or not, we have outgrown him. He still has a part to play, it is just that it is from the bench this season. If we put him up for transfer how many premier teams would show an interest? I would venture to say very few to zero.[/quote] You know as Championship and League 1 is very hard to follow from Finland I really cant rate him because of his past exploits. I have seen him play there only in few games I watched him live and few most important games of the championship which I had to watch trough shady streams. For me talent of Hoolahan comes from his games in premiership and stats and results speak for themseves. We always play a bit better football him on the field. Ofc we can upgrade him and we should be looking for upgrade, but at the moment as said so many times he is one of our most essentials players in 4-2-3-1 system.

Too bad we didnt go for Biglia. Looked class against Udinese and would created good pairing with Fer and supposedly moved on quite low fee of 5,5 million euros. And I''m I missing something, but if we are talking the O''Hara who plays for Wolves he is quite clearly no better what we have already. Or at least I can''t think him any better than what we have in Howson. I would even prefer someone like Skjelbred over him as he was rumoured for us in previous windows. Or mayby Albin Ekdal could come to increase our swedish force.

I agree we should get more versatile option for him in the 10 spot, but at the moment in my books he is one of most essential players in the team, if we really want to win games. We have simply none other who could play the spot with his vision, his touch and flair and work rate and without pure 10 we have looke quite awful at least in previous season. Hughton can prove me wrong, but I doubt it. In my opinion he should play every game where we can believe having around 50% of posession or more or games where we base our attacks for countering trought central link up player.

Problem with 3-5-2 would be squad depth, which is clearly build for attacking wingers so 4 players (Pilkington, Redmond, Snoddy and Bennett) wouldnt get playtime in their prefered positions, thought Bennett probably would be a good wing back too. Also we would need more CB''s for rotation. Even if we wouldnt play anymore than couple of games with 3 at the back it would mean quite drastical change for positioning. I played centre back in my youth day and I know quite well how much formation changes what and how you need to think on the field. Changing tactics day after day that are based completely different ideology of pitch balance is quite risky way. Lambert era in premiership showed it quite well that we were at best with diamond everyone was familiar with and most times struggled to get team balanced when tinkering the formation. Also I do not agree at all with Dandy Mountfarto''s tactical analyses. Our wingers (except Snoddy) are very comfortable with dropping down and getting back to the high end of the pitch. Snoddy is bit slow which sometimes make our formation unbalanced, but same time it gives us nice second wave, if we build up from Pilkington''s side. Previous season Snoddy got probably more chances because of this from Pilkington or Hoolahan than our strikers did as full back didnt notice his slow run behind them. Also it is false fact that our fullbacks wouldn''t be allowed to get forward. I have explained this many times already that when our team reaches certain point on the field as a unit, fullbacks will almost automatically do the overlapping to allow our wingers cut in. In Everton game where we had Whittaker on the field he almost had a free role to push forward. The thing we keep struggling about is our centre middlefield. Without it getting those slow build ups, we wont see much of fullbacks pushing forward and ofc same goes for our centre backs. They need to build up with better accuracy and the old phrace "pass and move" have to be repeated in every training as staying playable is very important and Johnson, Turner and Howson are notoriously bad moving in a right slot after passing. What comes to Hoolahan I partly agree but not with same arguments. In my opinion we see him dropping too many times out of pocket to build up and wing option comes very hard for him there. This is also side effect of the bad build up from our centre middlefielders and centre backs. 3-5-2 is good tactic, but I dont think we can just jump there and I doubt neither our squad nor the management would be comfortable with it. Also after few losses with it our beloved fans would be all over them and pressure would be too high to keep using it. For a counter version I think we lack attacking midfielders. As Hoolahan would be good link up player, but goals would have to come somewhere else. Howson and Fer both can score and Howson could even flourish in tactic where he could roam free and have more time to pass, but still depth in sector of goalscorers behind strikers is quite poor. Also what comes to strikers RvW and Hooper are a bit too similar for getting most out of it. Someone like Lavezzi, Tevez etc (fast technical and good build up player) would be better for playing side of clinical goal scorer. Elmander then is a bit slow for that role too in my opinion. Version that is based on posession we lack good middlefielders. Howson and Johnson are clearly not up to task of posession game and creativity of Tettey is arguably poor. Fer is still a bit question mark. Also in posession version we would need another 10 instead of striker for playing side to side with Hoolahan to give us extra strenght for midfield. Elmander again could do the job, but hard to see us succesful without few new names in the roster (good regista and goal scoring trequartista). So at the end I see our squad builded up for either 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1 and without more versatile players like Fer it is very hard to use different formations without great risk of relegation. (Yes I still think even 4-4-2 comes with huge risk because of our midfield even thought some of our players would probably prefer it or more modern versions of it like diamond.)

I missed the match so cant really tell this nor that what went to wrong, but just looking heat meters of players and our line up. I for a first time say that Hughton need to look long in to the mirror after this game. I still trust he will do the job for us and I like his approach, but you really cant start a match with three middlefielders whose first position is defensive midfielder and one who is central midfielder and none of them are that well known about creative playstyle. Sometimes I''m bit afraid Hughton reads these forums ^^ as he did exactly what most of people wanted here. Dropped Hoolahan for Fer and brought Tettey as a starter and didn''t drop Howson in process. Ofc these risks sometimes pay off and what I have red Hull never really threated our goal except the penalty, so goal from the set piece or long shot could have done it for us, but lack of creativity oozes from that line up and if we struggled last season to create enough goal chances it is quite clear that Hull game line up will struggle too. As said my opinion is only based on stats as I haven''t seen the game. But Howson seemed to have better game than against Everton, but Johnson was bad as against Everton. Tettey got people angry by sidepassing, but as some players in our squad have pointed out in certain Everton game, it really isnt that easy to keep pass tempo up at the bottom of midfield. So hopefuly in next game Johnson is dropped and Fer - Tettey will play at the bottom of our midfield and no more try outs for Fer as a attacking midfielder as he is wasted that way.

[quote user="Mervmeister"]Hooper is very quick over short distance. Much quicker than the wolf.[/quote] I wouldnt bet my money on that. Wolfie has amazing acceleration. He got his reputaton from those short bursts of speed in eredivisie. Not that he would be fastest man on the earth, but for his size he is quite quick and even thought Hooper isn''t slowpoke, I cant say which one is faster for short distances. In my opinion we have enought speed for every position if needed. Redmond and Bennett are fast. Hoolahan can easily get rid of most of players for short distances and Olsson has a reputation of a speedster and at least when Finland played against Sweden he was clearly fastest man on the pitch. Whittaker also is surprisingly fast when he get his legs going and Tettey + Fer can give us some speed for middlefield too and Bassong isn''t slowest of centre backs. Only fellows whose speed sometimes concerns me a bit is Johnson, Snoddy, Turner, Martin and Garrido. (In lesser extent Bennett too.) Snoddy is sometimes too slow to beat opponent on the wing, Johnson cant cover enought area alone, Turner have to use lot of pulling and pushing in 1 vs 1''s and Martin/Garrido are sometimes afraid to go forward as they woudlnt get back fast enough. But those are issues that can be covered with roling the team right that they can stay most of the game in their comfort zone and be very effective players without the pace.

[quote user="Waveney Canary"]After the money we have spent if he doesn''t have us top 8 by end of oct I will start the hughton out threads. Until then he is on trial[/quote] There was some calculations that our season budget with wages etc still is somewhere in lower table. Was it 16th or 15th. So that about spending big ^^

Toivonen haven''t signed new deal so he would like to move somewhere in this window, but I personaly think it sadly wont be Norwich. Also PSV already signed Maher to replace him behind the striker. Anyway I welcome Elmander in to the squad! Smart player and true fighter!

[quote user="holtamania"]The pinkun struggles to have seen a more patently incorrect view since ZLF said Kei was better than Holt. Good work. Yes yes yes, everyone''s entitled to an opinion and so on and so forth.[/quote] No need to go personal and I could say same about your opinion and at the moment with our stats of first game my opinion has more ground under itself ^^ At the end both are opinions, but even by scrolling few most popular football pages (goal, espn and whoscored) you see that Howson and Johnson are rated there equally good and Hoolahan bit over them. Not that I even believe their journos would have watched our game, but I have and I can agree with stats those ratings are based. So if you think my opinion is so wrong, good luck proving it by debate. One liners doesnt really give anything fo this forum. If you have hard time for some reason understand what I''m saying because of my poor english say so and I can draw you a pictures where and what went wrong with Howson''s game and how it did affect for rest of the team.

And by the way guys, RvP plays for ManU and RvW for us ^^