I think everyone deserves a fresh start under a new manager, and in potentially a new system.
Apparently, he has been killing it in training but having a hard time doing the same in the actual game.
How many times he was in the area for us is woeful, and I’m blaming the system.
A right winger having to track back. The downright audacity of expecting a midfield player to defend.
What were we thinking.
Shocking expectations on a player.
Hopefully we can relinquish more players from the unreasonable expectation that they might be able to win possession back.
Joking aside, how many people have said he's not a winger and should be played as a no.10!? Not from that heatmap...
Ease up my friend, shirley even you can look at those charts and think something was amiss?
As I've already said, all the 'mitigating circumstances' lifelines, new country, team, league blah blah blah that I was throwing him have ended now.
He has a new manager, minimal international duties and a full preseason to get stuck into.
If he stays, I'll be happy, as far too many others have been, to call him shitehouse while it's still shorts and t-shirts weather.
Although that will be a moot point as by then the boo-boys would have turned their attention to the poor saps the club sings this summer.
2 things about that map:-
1 - He clearly has never been a 'to the by-line and cross' winger.
So beating him with that stick makes the posters that do look even more ignorant.
3 - (brace yourself for a proper straw clutch) This season might, just might, actually make Ali a better all round player.
AZ Alkmaar finished 3rd scoring 72 goals in 34 games, winning 22 with a GD +34. Now I might not be the brightest, but coming from a team finishing 3rd winning 2/3rds of their games, I would expect their heatmap to be slightly different from joining us, or any team in the bottom half of the PL.
What you've got is hope that all these mitigating factors when lifted will unveil a player who will tear up this league, and you can nod appreciatively. I will look on delighted to be proved wrong. I've not got a fixed opinion that he is always going to be poor, but empirically, objectively, call it what you will, despite all the potential reasons, to this point he has been shitehouse. The future may hold a different answer, and lets hope it does.
Although that will be a moot point as by then the boo-boys would have turned their attention to the poor saps the club sings this summer.
If I performed as badly in my job as he has been, for us in matches, I'd have been sacked months ago.
If you were, say, a qualified physiotherapist but your manager had you doing dental work (which you naturally ballsed up), then it’s your manager that should get the tin tack............
What if he had you doing dental work becuase he'd seen your physio clinics and knew you were sending people away injured because you'd qualified at a third rate college and only ever practiced on people who'd spent all day sitting down......