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Crystal Palace v Bournemouth match thread
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 Booted Eagle  Bristol 08 Dec 23 11.51am |
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Paying for 3 previous light transfer windows where suitable replacements were not brought on board. Only centre midfield has been beefed up. With an average amount of PL injuries (some teams have had a fair few more) the squad looks very lightweight and unbalanced. Edouard's lack of effort to even try to stretch for a cross in the 1st half fairly summed up where we are at, at the moment. Looks increasingly like we will have less points than games around the New Year, a barometer for possible relegation, meaning the owners will have to make some tough choices.
“ [T]here are known knowns; there are things we know that we know.There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that, we now know we don't know.But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know. ” |
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| palace chick South Croydon 08 Dec 23 11.57am |
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Originally posted by Booted Eagle
Paying for 3 previous light transfer windows where suitable replacements were not brought on board. Only centre midfield has been beefed up. With an average amount of PL injuries (some teams have had a fair few more) the squad looks very lightweight and unbalanced. Edouard's lack of effort to even try to stretch for a cross in the 1st half fairly summed up where we are at, at the moment. Looks increasingly like we will have less points than games around the New Year, a barometer for possible relegation, meaning the owners will have to make some tough choices. I would say our midfield is the weakest it’s been for many a season and all we are missing at the moment is Dacoure. Even with him it’s not been that strong this season?
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| EverybodyDannsNow SE19 08 Dec 23 12.00pm |
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Originally posted by MrRobbo
You do have the rough with the smooth. But it just feels very rough atm. Roy is taking a lot of stick, and he deserves some. We do need to understand as fans that he sees these players every day, so if he picks Richards as CDM or Clyne as LB etc its because he trusts the others even less. However we play with no desirable tempo or style, and when we go 1-0 down we do more of the same, usually with JMP subbed in. I'm desperate to see us do something drastically different. even stick Richards up top and pump balls up at him. Anything to avoid limping to another loss. That is on Roy. Ultimately the buck can only stop with Parish and Doug. When fit we have a competitive 11. But are now in a position with no LB or CDM against potentailly 3 of the toughest games of the season. We cant cry about injuries, every team has them. But that doesn’t make him right. I think we’ve seen enough of Roy over the years to know he is conservative to the extreme in player selections - I have no doubt that another manager would look at our squad and find very different solutions to the same injuries.
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| EverybodyDannsNow SE19 08 Dec 23 12.01pm |
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Originally posted by palace chick
I would say our midfield is the weakest it’s been for many a season and all we are missing at the moment is Dacoure. Even with him it’s not been that strong this season? And Eze. Our best midfield is Lerma Doucoure Eze, which is a strong trio.
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| palace chick South Croydon 08 Dec 23 12.28pm |
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Originally posted by EverybodyDannsNow
And Eze. Our best midfield is Lerma Doucoure Eze, which is a strong trio. I don’t believe Eza makes it into a strong midfield. Perhaps just behind a centre forward is his position. If anything he makes a midfield weaker because of his lack of tackling / winning the ball. We need a strong midfield 3/4 for which we only have Lerma and Dacoure. Olise also is part of a 4 but again his strength is going forward but as we saw on Wednesday he had 2/3 on him every time he got the ball and also had a poor game like the rest of our team. It’s a squad game these days and we don’t have a strong one at all. Plus we don’t even have a strong 11 to start with, let alone sitting on the bench :-(
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Nicholas91  The Democratic Republic of Kent 08 Dec 23 12.37pm |
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Originally posted by palace chick
I don’t believe Eza makes it into a strong midfield. Perhaps just behind a centre forward is his position. If anything he makes a midfield weaker because of his lack of tackling / winning the ball. We need a strong midfield 3/4 for which we only have Lerma and Dacoure. Olise also is part of a 4 but again his strength is going forward but as we saw on Wednesday he had 2/3 on him every time he got the ball and also had a poor game like the rest of our team. It’s a squad game these days and we don’t have a strong one at all. Plus we don’t even have a strong 11 to start with, let alone sitting on the bench :-( Eze is a midfielder as he is a playmaker. I wouldn't get too caught up on debating what constitutes 'a midfield' but would argue ours is two holding players with a playmaker/link to the forward line ahead of them. To echo EDN, I believe Doucoure and Lerma holding with Eze ahead of them is our strongest midfield. Johnstone, Guehi, Andersen, Lerma, Doucoure, Eze, Olise (RW) and for now Ayew (LW) is the core of our team. Beyond that we have players just making up the numbers with very few if none worthy of being considered in that cohort. Mitchell, Ward, Edouard and potentially Ayew are filling positions we would ideally strengthen if we were able to spend money and recruit like other PL teams, which apparently we cannot. We're vulnerable from attacks down the wing and blunt in front of goal. Until this changes, we're going to struggle.
Now Zaha's got a bit of green grass ahead of him here... and finds Ambrose... not a bad effort!!!! |
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| MrRobbo Chaldon 08 Dec 23 12.48pm |
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Originally posted by palace chick
I don’t believe Eza makes it into a strong midfield. Perhaps just behind a centre forward is his position. If anything he makes a midfield weaker because of his lack of tackling / winning the ball. We need a strong midfield 3/4 for which we only have Lerma and Dacoure. Olise also is part of a 4 but again his strength is going forward but as we saw on Wednesday he had 2/3 on him every time he got the ball and also had a poor game like the rest of our team. It’s a squad game these days and we don’t have a strong one at all. Plus we don’t even have a strong 11 to start with, let alone sitting on the bench :-( That's if you are judging a midfield on physical strength alone, which nobody does. What are you hoping for 3 holding midfielders? Don't say it too loud, Roy might go with it.
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| Elpis In a pub 08 Dec 23 1.29pm |
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Originally posted by palace chick
I don’t believe Eza makes it into a strong midfield. Perhaps just behind a centre forward is his position. If anything he makes a midfield weaker because of his lack of tackling / winning the ball. We need a strong midfield 3/4 for which we only have Lerma and Dacoure. Olise also is part of a 4 but again his strength is going forward but as we saw on Wednesday he had 2/3 on him every time he got the ball and also had a poor game like the rest of our team. It’s a squad game these days and we don’t have a strong one at all. Plus we don’t even have a strong 11 to start with, let alone sitting on the bench :-( Strange comment , v Luton Eze made 3 tackles which was 2 more than any other player bar the full backs also 3 and he was only on the pitch for 40 minutes .Lerma a DM who played the whole game didn't make any ,Doucoure who went off in the second half made one
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| Putitout Oxford 08 Dec 23 1.47pm |
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Eze,s overal contributions have improved under Hodgson almost 100%. But hasn’t anyone noticed that without his goal, and assist contribution we struggle in the way we did even at WH. This was apparent even in pre season. Without him we didn’t fire on al cylinders .He is a mid fielder ,but if you are going to need his vital work up front the rest of the mid field has to balance. We don’t carry him ,we literally are not much without him, and we always struggle to win games without his quality.
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| Booted Eagle Bristol 09 Dec 23 9.01am |
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Originally posted by palace chick
I don’t believe Eza makes it into a strong midfield. Perhaps just behind a centre forward is his position. If anything he makes a midfield weaker because of his lack of tackling / winning the ball. We need a strong midfield 3/4 for which we only have Lerma and Dacoure. Olise also is part of a 4 but again his strength is going forward but as we saw on Wednesday he had 2/3 on him every time he got the ball and also had a poor game like the rest of our team. It’s a squad game these days and we don’t have a strong one at all. Plus we don’t even have a strong 11 to start with, let alone sitting on the bench :-( Both were signed in the last 3 transfer windows. The only area that I can see bar the goalkeeper (which I think we have overcooked now) where we have made some in roads. Looking at todays injury list for the PL the average number of players out is around 7. If you take those out of the squad you have 18 players to pick, 16 if you remove goalies. The PL is the most demanding league physically and if you don't have a good level of squad depth you are going to struggle. So if you have a weak squad and not prepared to blood home growns you have to be very active in the transfer market. We haven't for 3 windows. Roy is a pragmatic manager, in the mould of Pardew although he might of been more stubborn. In the FA Cup season it was only the fact that the team had enough points by Xmas to be comfortable. The wheels well and truly fell off after that and we narrowly escaped relegation. Next season he was found out and toast. Just hope the management don't go down this route with Roy and hold out too long. The worry is that just like Pards he might be "cut some slack" with the management. Roy's comments about the players recently have seemed odd. He was full of praise of the new players emerging and then said they weren't ready, all in one sentence !! If he believes in them that much then give them a go. Talk of only entering the loan market to "shore" up the squad does not fill me with confidence. Don't know the rules but I thought we were only allowed 2 loanees from the PL ? If so we need a lot more than that and loanees even from there are dicey, foreign ones even more so.
“ [T]here are known knowns; there are things we know that we know.There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that, we now know we don't know.But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know. ” |
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| southnorwoodhill 09 Dec 23 9.14am |
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Eze's a talent, and we're better with him than without obviously. I'm not so certain he's worth anything near some of the figures bandied about on here, mainly because he appears injury prone.
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Jimenez  SELHURSTPARKCHESTER,DA BRONX 09 Dec 23 4.59pm |
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Same scoreline against Manure
Pro USA & Israel |
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