I had nearly forgot about this chap. We have been crying out for a cm to either cover or help out who is combative and energetic. Last night saivet played for st ettienne and played quite well. He scored a cracker in the afcon. Why have we loaned him out and why has he never been given the chance. One of the weirdest signings we have made. Your thoughts!
Not up to the job on the little we saw of him. Awful signing. Graham Carr wants whipping for wasting the club's money so badly yet again.
Wasn't he? Wasn't given the opportunity from what I remember. In fact when he did, he played better than Colback.
**** knows. He did look poor but it would be incredibly harsh to judge him on those few short games. He was a before speaker at one of the games I went to and he seemed a nice polite lad. Could we use him if we go up? Happy to leave that up to Rafa but we need a holding midfielder - and they need to be quality.
So these are the qualities we are looking for now in our players: - better than Colback - polite and good pre-match speaker Should serve us well if we get to Premier League Cannot understand how we could get it so wrong to spend 5million quid on a player and decide after 2 games he wasn't good enough. Not even as if he is developing - he is African and supposedly 26 so probably about 30.
I didn't say he was a good pre match speaker, he barely spoke a word of the queens english. 5m is pretty cheap these days. You'd probably get that for, well, er, Colback
He played two and a bit games for us. Rafa must have seen enough of him in training to realise that he was a dud. Saivet is another one of these French buys that didn't work out because of their unsuitability to the English game. Cracking player in France though.
I thought Saivet was more of an attacking midfielder? He started on the wing and has played there again? It's a lottery. Our goal is to find Kante 2. But so is everyone's, they're all looking for that guy, it's not easy to do. I'd be really interested in giving Mbemba a shot there; he's quick as lightning, not afraid to get stuck in, decent in the air. He can get away with a bit more if he's not last man, but has a great engine and could cover the ground well. I don't know why we persevere with Colback when a decent looking option is sat in the reserves. Get him alongside people who can pass - I think that 4-1-4-1 seemed like a decent option, because for me Hayden is more suited to the middle of the park moving forward than being an out-and-out DM destroyer. So you'd have Mbemba behind any two of Shelvey, Diame, Hayden, Anita and Colback (in that order). Next year for tougher games you could go 2 x DM with him alongside Hayden and Shelvey in the hole ahead of them. Can we start a petition? Mbembe for DM?
Mbemba played CDM for Anderlecht a fair amount of the time. That was the reason we bought him. He's actually a better DM than CB and that is saying something as he is our best defender by a mile. For some bizarre reason McLaren and Rafa see him as solely a CB/ Full back.
It can only be something in his head now, surely? I mean, Tiote's fall from grace should have opened a huge space and we've been stuttering with Hayden and Colback not really doing the job. I'd love to ask Rafa the question about Mbemba, seems the press just never say anything.
I quite like the idea of mbemba in the dm role actually and it's never crossed my mind but it possibly could work.
I'm not really sure Mbemba's passing game is really good enough for him to be playing in midfield tbh. Maybe temporarily but then we all know Colback will play there so it's a moot point.