Diame

Watched the west ham game tonight and he really is the engine room for most of their play, him and Mbia should have a good old battle on saturday, but if steph can do the same job as he did on Dembele it will really help our chances

Also, cant believe we didnt try and sign him up for free in the summer, no doubt we could have offered a better package than West Ham. Again just shows the inability of Hughes, before Mbia (who wasnt even a hughes signing and just part of the barton deal) came in he would have been perfect in the middle for us.

 

Out of contract Wigan player didn't fit with Hughes' inflated ego's who's won the Champions League.


It's so ****in' infuriating it makes me wanna scream! Diame was right at the top of my wish list this summer before West Ham snapped him up. And I know for a fact Kenny Dalglish would have signed him for Liverpool if was still in charge at the time. Goes to show how much MH and Mike Rigg really knew.

 

Been really impressed Everytime I've seen him play. It's no surprise that West Ham have struggled without him in recent weeks! Only problem is he's another player who has injury problems. Why is it that so many players are getting repetitive injuries these days. I'm sure the fitter they get the closer their bodies seem to be to breaking point. It's ruining the careers of some great talents....

 

just wait for Remy to pull his hammie as soon as he puts on the hoops shirt!..

 

I noticed he was good too, hes the man we have to keep quiet to get something out of the game.

 

He and Mbia will have a great battle on the center of the pitch. It should be interesting

 

Diame is a strong player, think he will be gone from West Ham before the end of Jan

 

Told by my Arsenal mate...he is a "gooner", sooner than later

 

Mbia seems to get booked every game - isn't he due another suspension?

 

If M'bia could be more disciplined he would be a fine player. Too many times he lost the ball against spurs through extremely basic errors. He did well defensively, but most of the plays he broke up were actually caused by his original error. If he could have a few tactical lessons he would be a asset to us.

 

They're strong through out the team will be a fairly Physical game and yes good match up there, looking forward to it.

 

Trouble is, we were saying the same about Diakite this time last year and he turned out to be sh*te.

If you don't mind me asking Kampala, but how does a lad from Uganda end up supporting the Rangers?

 

I believe he got a clean slate in January when he was on 4 yellow cards.

Discipline Yellow/Red

Diakite 5 1
M'bia 5 1
Granero 4 0

 

Correct. The card amnesty kicks in on the 1st of January. Now they need to accumulate ten bookings to warrant a suspension.

 

Dont mind at all. Im an essex lad born and bred, I work out here with the mountain gorillas in eco tourism. I used to be a regular at the loft in the 90s when I was a member and the trains and tickets were a lot cheaper. Went sporadically through the championship and league 1 mire and managed to fly over for the Hull game of the championship promotion season and was part of the most embarrassing pitch invasion of all time!

You're right about Diakite, he looked great last season and in one of the bars here there is a photo of me dancing on a pool table after his winner against arsenal (its nearly all arsenal out here). I just wonder if we never got the full story about his absence earlier in the season when he returned to france, has never looked the same player since. M'bia is a funny one as I cant tell if he is very good or god-awful.

He's like a lot of lads out here as the way they are brought up with the game is very focused on close control and tricks. They dont even have proper goals when they play, even when they have the facilities they will still use rocks as goals, with no goalkeepers, so there is no punishment for losing the ball at the back as its rarely punished with a goal, so you dont learn. I think you can see that with a lot of the lads that come from here, they are very raw. All legs, pace and effort but very little tactical know-how or decision making skill. Its really something that needs to be coached and its not offered in much of East and West Africa for the kids. Everyone sees rio ferdinand dribble a ball out of defense on tv and because they are not used to errors being punished, this is how they play, all the time!

Do a bit of playing and coaching out here and i tell you, its darn frustrating! Lots of potential though, it just needs the money. I hope M'bia and Diakite are both young enough to learn and adapt to a different game because they are great athletes. I would have thought in France they would have had to take on a bit of this but the step to the Premier league is obviously a level up.

 

That certainly explains a lot. Thanks for the detailed response mate.

After M'bia got sent off at the Arsenal a while back, someone said African players lacked discipline (was it Igor?). It wasn't a very tactful OP and Queens totally lost the plot as he thought the guy meant they lacked discipline because they were African. Of course its nothing to do with that. Its down to, as you say, the way the game is coached over there - insofar as it's coached at all. An old boy said to me a few times RE Diakite and M'bia, that they come from a land where the game is still a man's game and its not the over sanitised version we are served up in Europe where all there needs to be is barely a touch on a guy and he goes down looking for a penalty/free kick.

Still, it shouldn't take more than a few months of being in England to eradicate the bad habits of the African game. Not that our own game here is perfect. Far from it. It has just as many bad habits albeit in different areas, like ball control, dribbling etc. Diakite? Maybe he got caught up in something he shouldn't have, who knows?

You say you're working with Gorillas. I thought you meant rebel soldiers until I realised you meant furry primates!!

Looks like you've adopted the local hairstyle if that's you in your Avatar!

 

Interesting post that, thanks!

 

Granero hasn't got a booking for more than 2 months now. Fishy

 

Ha, i wish my hair had as much action going on as that!

actually the game out here is not at all like you would expect. I used to play for a team in SW Uganda and we would play in Congo, Rwanda and Uganda and it is not physical at all, not in the slightest. I was able to plunder goals from pretty much basing my game on Kevin Davies, the players really hated pulling, pushing, shoving, anything like that. It all comes back to what they see on tv as being the way to play football. People are very good at slide tackling, fancy skills, chipping penalties etc, but when it comes the things you learn from playing that are not obvious on tv, like physical play, formations, playing they way they face, finishing or crossing, its really lacking.

I think that a few years ago it used to be more physical, but people now are very in tune with what is assumed to be 'good football'. Everyone supports Man U or Arsenal, everyone thinks that Baloteli is the world's best player etc etc because it's what they see on FIFA13 or who is on the tv the most. Along with the diving and general nonsense that has come more into the game, they see this on tv and its how they think you play football. I had dinner with the coach of Zanzibar a while back who used to be the youth development coach at Birmingham and he thought that the standard of play was on the slide in the continent, that the batch of Toure's and Drogbas was the golden generation and players now play a different game where technique and tricks were more important because more and more kids are watching TV and playing video games rather than playing ruff and tumble games, so when they do go out on a football pitch, they want to play a sort of 'hollywood football'.

I still think you'll see good kids come through here (though not from Uganda as they are woeful!) but i dont know if we'll see more smaller, forward players than the spate of midfield juggernaughts that we associate with the African game at the moment, certainly nothing i've seen here suggests that this is the mold that young players want to take on, despite they physical advantages that the bigger guys possess.

If we do go down this season, I hope we manage to keep hold of M'bia and Diakite as i think a spell in the championship where you get less time on the ball will actually be good for both of them to develop and help them keep possession and to do the easy thing

 

Coinsides with the last time he put some effort in.