Were Higher Quality Hungry Players available Last Season?

[65Vintage 5]

The rise of Maddison begs the question - he wanted to not go out on loan again to prove himself last season following his loan move. Lewis - a very accomplished left back too.

Should they, and others, maybe have been given more of a chance last season - surely if Maddison is to be commanding a £20M transfer at the end of this season, he could have done a more than reasonable job for us last season - could we have been promoted if we gave youth a chance?

We are not doing much worse in the league for all the sales of our multi million pound players - team spirit also seems to be back - the synergy that brings must be welcome!

[lake district canary 4,531]

Maddison had a good loan spell in Aberdeen, but it''s worth noting he did not start every game for them.We were stuffed last season, full of players with experience of both being promoted and being in the PL - and if they had achieved promotion, we would have been fine - but they did not and that was the catalyst for change.  But what a change it''s been - it''s been a breath of fresh air with the new input and new heroes to support.    Maddison, Lewis, Gunn, Hanley, Zimmermann, Trybull, Reed - maybe Leitner, Hernandez and Srbeny too - who knows if they will cut the mustard too.   Add the resurgence of Klose, the captaincy of Pinto the evergreen Tettey and the other players new and old and the progression from a cumbersome overly paid bunch of underachievers into a leaner fighting machine is clear.  Could we hae been promoted if Maddison had been given a chance at Norwich last season? Who knows - but I suspect not - our defence was poor and that was the reason we didn''t do better.

[AJ 1,218]

I doubt even with Maddison and Lewis in the team, we would have still failed last year because we conceeded the 3rd highest number of goals in the division! The only reason we finished so high up the table was because we scored joint 1st number of goals. But certainly were far too leaky for serious promotion contention.

Ironically this season the balance has tipped and we can''t score for Toffee, but our defence is pretty good.

Was Lewis better than Dijks? Was Maddison better than Wes or Pritchard?

The reality was neither was near the first team last season for various reasons, thanks to our failure to achieve promotion last season it gives players like Lewis and Madders a chance. If we had gone up, they probably wouldn''t be in our starting XI right now.

[king canary 7,578]

You can argue that a smarter manager than Neil would have noted the talent Maddison had and not then spent most of his budget on Pritchard to play in the same position and instead spent that money improving the defence.

[nutty nigel 7,509]

Two things...

IMO Lewis is a superior player to Dijks. And if we hadn''t bought Pritchard we couldn''t have sold him so would it have been better? It does allow for some quite amusing circular moaning though 😀

[king canary 7,578]

@Nutty

To be fair I did say it when we signed Pritchard. I believe I called it ''buying a hat when you haven''t got any trousers.''

[nutty nigel 7,509]

But we''d just replaced half the defence in the previous transfer window in a season where we had a greater net spend than Chelsea.

[king canary 7,578]

Your point is....?

[nutty nigel 7,509]

My point is that Pritchard was one of our better signings. As were the two defenders. No way on God''s earth were any of those three bad or unnecessary signings and even hindsight agrees. Using hindsight t here''s plenty of signings far more worthy of moaning than those three.

[king canary 7,578]

Well for starters I''ve not remotely claimed that the two defenders were bad or unneecessary signings so no idea what you''re on about there.

Secondly I specifically stated I''m not talking about hindsight- I didn''t think we needed Pritchard at the time as we had Wes, Maddison and Naismith all who played that same position. Yes Pritchard turned out to be a good player that we sold for a profit. However at the time (and I stand by this) I believed we''d have been better off spending that money on different areas of the team.

Neil signed more number 10''s and goalkeepers (3 of each) permanently than he did defenders (the 2 you mentioned above). It doesn''t take much insight to suggest that wasn''t a balanced use of funds/wages.

[nutty nigel 7,509]

Surely, bearing in mind events on the pitch that we all witnessed, we would have had less chance of making the play offs last season without Pritchard?

[king canary 7,578]

I''m not sure about that- he started less than 20 games, we were well stocked in that position and our chances of going up were scuppered by weak defense. So I don''t think it is a huge stretch to say that money spent on another central defender of defensive central midfielder would have served us better than spending what we did on Pritchard.

Worth being clear though- I think he''s an excellent player and I really enjoyed watching him.

[nutty nigel 7,509]

Not so sure the defence was weak as in personnel. But it was protected far worse than we are seeing this season. 

[Badger 2,405]

The other factor, of course, is whether the coach improves (or the opposite) the players.Klose, Pinto, Maddison are better players this year imo. It is possible to speculate that some of the other players are better as a result of the coaching regime.

[Tetteys Jig 830]

Persisting with Russell Martin at centre back and leaving Bennett and bassong as the only back ups killed us last season. We would have made at least playoffs if we’d had Hanley or Zimmerman next to Klose.

[nutty nigel 7,509]

[quote user="Tetteys Jig"]Persisting with Russell Martin at centre back and leaving Bennett and bassong as the only back ups killed us last season. We would have made at least playoffs if we’d had Hanley or Zimmerman next to Klose.[/quote]

Instead of Pritchard?

[Tetteys Jig 830]

Kind of, yeah. Pritchard is class, don''t get me wrong but we got extremely unlucky with him getting injured as we did this season. He missed a decent chunk last year and pretty much all this season and we had plenty of other attacking mids that would have done a decent enough job.

It''s all speculative so we''ll never know but we were desperately short of quality at the back and didn''t address it and we got punished.

[nutty nigel 7,509]

It''s all a bit of an unknown buddy but for me this years defence has far more protection than last seasons. I wouldn''t be surprised if we finish in much the same position with a lot less goals scored and a lot less goals conceded. It''s worth noting that the only two players that got PL moves were Jacob and Pritchard. I think we''d have scored more goals this year with those two. But will we ever know....

[Bill 1,788]

You can see Bassong''s worth by looking at who signed him after us .........

[nutty nigel 7,509]

Seb hardly played last season though.