Prediction League Season preview 2017-18

Love me some Charisma Carpenter

 

2015 season was totally ruined by one stupid move. Luis over Ivan.
2017 could be due to Matic over Cescy!!

 

There you go with the hyperbole again.

Soooo many factors in 2015 being a poor year. Ivan's form dropping off a cliff was not the easiest thing to predict either.

Anyway, I thought 2015 was bad because Jose decided to orchestrate his move away from the club because he didn't have full control.....

All along it was because of our choice of full backs!?!?

 

to be fair i predicted Ivan.

even during 2014 the reason Ivan was "so good" was because he was running a lot and came up with a few goals and assists. Defensively he was very very poor where any winger who had the ball had all the time in the world to do what they wanted as he was scared to get tight because he was getting skinned all over the place

 

Isn't that Jose all over. Picking a guy who was badly out of form because he was essentially good at set pieces and added another 6 footer to the 11!!

Real shame Luis never got a real chance.

 

Yeah, i thought luis looked really good on the ball and wasn't too bad defending. Just Dave is dave and so so solid and Jose would prefer a beast over a better all rounder.

Just seeing how good he is for Atletico makes me think of what he could have done for us. Alonso is great at flat track bullying as he's good technically and puts in the yards. Put him under pressure in the big games or a tricky winger and he's not brilliant.

 

I really like Alonso. His attitude is great and infectious, much like D Luiz.

He's not perfect defensively but you cant have it all. He is so exciting going forward and got a goal or 2 in him as well. Closest thing around to a young gareth bale in that respect (in his full back days).

 

haha, positionally he's okay and he's got the height.

Hes only exciting going forward in the sense he's a willing runner and his crossing isn't too shabby neither is his ball controller.

But he is slow in both top speed and acceleration (his biggest weakness) and whilst he's not weak, he isn't strong either. The reason he is bad defensively on that side of things is that wingers find it very easy to dribble past him as he doesn't have that acceleration and it doesn't help that the lcb who is cahill who also hates people running at him. If theres any space behind these two, they both **** their pants.

Its great one of our tactics is to play a lofty ball to alonso, but when theres a wing back on top of him ala walker or valencia, he doesn't have the strength or the pace to get away, turn or hold up the ball. This isn't necessarily a criticism as most full backs cannot do this and his attitude is superb. If we want to progress though we either need to get rid of him or cahill as our left side is pretty much useless when we have to play the ball out and we are pressed.

As i said before, against teams who sit and where we dominate the ball, alonso is perfect as their wingers are generally not so good and his energy means that he can support the attack and the defence

 

It's a real shame Bertrand never got a chance never mind Luis.

 

Exactly. Any winger worth his salt will have Alonso on toast.
With Cescy in there our guys will have no protection.

 

Come play the Survivor prediction game:

http://www.not606.com/threads/survivor-season-2017-18-series-one.351168/

 

to some of the smart asses in our forum.

I don't want Cescy, Alonso & Cahill to fail.
But I cannot see us flying with those 3 in there.
I will tell you this - with 70 starts between them in the league we will struggle to make top 4.
High time to move Dave to the left wing if Tony settles on the right CB.
Top 4 will be massive accomplishment with this squad.
10 Goals will be a huge success for Morata based on the fees and new environment.

 

I think all 3 are excellent team and squad players . None are perfect and I don't think any of them will get much better. So we need to have either faster, fitter, better quality players in the squad OR younger, top quality players with the the ability to improve into absolute world class players in a couple of years. Right now we have neither, so I think we will really struggle second half of season unless someone gets control of our squad and works out a feasible plan for the future. We are now in danger of being overrun by clubs who spend more than us and buy the very players we need, we sell all the young players who might be future champions, and we appear to have no plan B. My prediction is that unless something changes very very quickly, Conte will not last the season. That said I think we will make top 4, but fail in the early rounds of the CL against stronger, better, more skilful Teams.