29-12-2020, 23:32
(This post was last modified: 30-12-2020, 00:02 by Slick_Footwork.)
(29-12-2020, 22:35)BaggieSteve Wrote: I fully agree that these are Bilic’s signings, although we were all delighted when he signed Pereira and Diangana permanently, which used up a substantial chunk of his available budget. Grant has been a huge disappointment but, in all honesty, you get bugger all for £14 million if you’re wanting a Premiership level striker. Who else could he have signed that would score goals in this league? With the budget he was given, I understand why he turned to those players he felt he could trust and knew.
Allardyce was allegedly going to put some structure into the team that apparently hadn’t got any under Bilic and some organisation into the defence. He would also not make the same baffling substitutions that Bilic made. This was Allardyce’s first big test under those criteria (he couldn’t influence the Villa result and Liverpool was a freak in the way City was for Bilic); Leeds are a good team but they concede aplenty. Allardyce completely failed this test. That performance would have embarrassed a non league team playing Leeds in the FA Cup 3rd round. I await with interest reading his post match comments
I agree that the signings of Grady and Pereira, individually, were good signings for the money. Grant i'll reserve judgement on until he's had more time.
But the issue is that we maxed out our cheque book with these signings, all luxury players. We spent £30m on the trio of Grant, Robinson and Grady who all played left wing last season. If you add Pereira into the mix that's a £40m outlay. While he might not operate from the left, he too is another winger/luxury player.
Then we used a loan on "top target" Krovinovic who is yet another luxury midfielder, who spent much of last season operating from - you guessed it - the left side.
All this when we already had Phillips, Edwards and Grosicki at the club...
The latter of which is probably the pick of the bunch, but never gets a look in, ironically.
The transfer policy was dreadful. And while I appreciate I am saying this in hindsight, I thought it was obvious from our capitulation last season that we needed to build a stronger spine. We needed to add an enforcer to sit in front of the defence and we needed to replace the likes of Furlong, Bartley and Connor Townsend. It was obvious that if we were going to play 2 central midfielders, which we started with this season, Sawyers had to be replaced as he didn't have the legs to play in a 2.
Young wingers are probably the easiest player to get on loan, so no idea why we spent all of our budget on them.
I can only blame Bilic and Downling for this. Some might say they were naive, but IMO they were blind to the obvious. Couldn't see the wood from the trees.
As for Allardyce, he didn't have the impact I wanted today. I felt he should've played more big lads to take advantage of Leeds poor defending from set plays. But to be completely fair to him, it's very difficult when you setup the side to defend to stem the early Leeds pressure and one of the lads decides to score a screamer of an own goal from 25 yards. You can't really account for that. After that, we didn't have the quality to chase the game with our leggy midfield chasing shadows against their much fitter, more dynamic side. It is what it is, that's the dross he's been left with, enough left wingers to fill and entire XI and Lee Peltier as full back cover...
So I'll personally give Allardyce a few games before I'm critical of him. At the moment he's left with Bilic's disjointed mess of a squad. After today's game, he finally has the licence to change the team, which he didn't have after Man City and Liverpool. I also hope we are already working in the transfer market, because boy we need it. A defensive midfielder and full backs are absolute musts!
