Yep I agree. His attacking contributions are superb.
Being 21 is no excuse. He cost £40m and given his specialist position is LB or full back, his defending should not be 'all over the place' for that money.
Based on what sample size? Honestly it makes me sick that people form a judgement after 2 or 3 games on new signings knowing full well the past has shown that it can be at least a season until their true potential is shown. Ridiculous.
He's a defender and the Villa game he wasn't great however last night he looked defensively shocking against a player lacking game time, a little like Diouf but still he should be better. A defenders primary role is as the role indicates and he's poor. Dango gave him the run around last season and we view things very different but £40m on a player who's better going forward than he is defending.... That's wrong 100% but as I've said hopefully he proves his doubters wrong but there is no evidence to suggest it.
I assume you watch a lot of football but the very least I'd expect a player to do is to do the simple things well, he doesn't. Of course he hasn't played many games for us, but he played in the Premier League last season albeit in a poor side. He just doesn't look like he can defend at the moment, train them up narrative etc I get that but he should be better and putting KLP under pressure which he isn't. As Always Up The Bees
One of our most disappointing signings
he’s started 2 games ffs….. bit of an overreaction wouldn’t you say? He’s 21, let the coaches do their thing. I’m pretty confident he will prove you wrong btwI doubt KLP would have done any better last night. Since Valdimarrson would still have been there and basically gifted them three goals.
Danis Salman and Keith Millen were not "great" defenders, great for Brentford yes, but spent almost all of their careers playing lower league football. The Premier League is very different.
Would Rico have been trying to tackle there? He would have been suffocating the player, trying to turn him away and doing all he could to stop the ball going across goal. Actually getting the ball might not have been his priority.
We had to watch Keith Millen mature on the job from a very raw teenager to the finished product, at times it wasn't pretty.
I mean I think Rico is one of the best defensive LB's I've seen and isn't 21 years old. I don't see any benefit in judging a guy in a game where we gave Sunderland the whole half to run into at will, players were scrambling back to defend and the organisation as a team in that 20 mins was horror. I'm pretty sure I could find clips of Rico missing tackles, getting beaten when committing to a tackle as well, we just remember the ones that lead to goals.
Age is more of an "excuse" than his price tag. He's clearly been valued on his potential and must be considered 'in development'. At the moment, he's number two to Lewis-Potter, who is being overworked right now.
I’m not saying it’s an excuse, I’m simply agreeing that I’ve seen enough to say he will eventually be worth the money we’ve paid. If a full back at that age could defend well with the quality he possesses in attack he’d have been snapped up by a top club.
Yes, I thought about whether Henry would have done better, and concluded that he would probably have shepherded the player out of the danger zone, or at least delayed it. It seems that he’s not part of the future, sad to say, which I think is premature, and I also I think Diouf needs a bit of work defensively before being first choice, especially when there’s Hickey as well to consider,
the difference is the players you mentioned cost a fraction of £40m , really for that money we should gettinng someone who can step right in now .If he was £5m and neeeds lots of coaching we'd find that more aceptable
Why? How many players costing far more have not hit the ground running at other clubs? Wirtz is a prime example and he was nearly 3 times as much - forget the price tag and look objectively at how much he has actually played for us to date.
Absolutely. I know you don't get much bang for bucks nowadays we presumably didn't buy him as a work in progress.
As @upnorthbee wrote, the price the Club paid (true or not) is not controlled by the player or the fans. The value of a player to the Club is across the period he's contracted to us not across a few weeks, so it's not really relevant ©Oscar Wilde.
Possibly based also on his time at West Ham when it was exactly the same?
you do know defenders are supposed to stop them before they reach the keeper?
Fine, then play him as a winger and not a sodding left back.
I wouldnt fancy playing Thiago at CB just because he can head a ball.
Don't know what I've done to deserve your f*****g unpleasant post and resort to personal insults but if that's your world mate you're welcome to it. As it happens I wouldn't want you to be closer than a country mile to my world. Have a nice day!
Yeah…and no defender on the planet has ever done that all the time.
