[Albion] Mats Wieffer SINGS on 5 year contract

[Mr Bridger]

Does the hard graft without being noticed. Has balls up a few times but he’ll only get better.

 

[Flounce]

If I was going to single out a player for a shit performance he would be way down my list on last night’s performances.

 

[Han Solo]

I don't think he was particularly good last night. Or bad for that matter. Can find a good pass but is quite untidy in small spaces, he really doesn't like getting pressured when he's on the ball.

Overall I think he's going to need to step up a bit if this isn't going to be a one year thing. He's 25 and signed to be one of our better players.

 

[GrizzlingGammon]

Any psychologists here? I'd love to know the mentality behind people who fixate on one player to criticise, no matter how they play.

 

[DJ NOBO]

I don't think he was particularly good last night. Or bad for that matter. Can find a good pass but is quite untidy in small spaces, he really doesn't like getting pressured when he's on the ball.

Overall I think he's going to need to step up a bit if this isn't going to be a one year thing. He's 25 and signed to be one of our better players.

This is the problem.
Trying hard, doing the simple things ok and the occasional decent pass is an acceptable base level for Ayari, but not a major signing.
I‘m starting to think what we are seeing is what he is. Just not influential at this level.

 

[GT49er]

Have we ever had a marquee signing from the Dutch league perform well? They come with such high expectations and end up being terrible.

Veltman did OK. Wieffer doesn't look like the next Veltman in terms of quality though.

 

[Sarisbury Seagull]

Why should our £30m midfielder dominate his area of the pitch when every week he is up against other £30m(++) midfielders? Iwobi cost £22m himself.

The price tag has no bearing, Groß cost £3m and was our best player in the PL era, and one of our best of all time. Locadia was £15m and one of our worst signings in the Amex era.

Everyone has good and great players, his fee was simply the mechanism to bring him into the squad - in terms of value we won’t win them all but we are massively in credit.

I think he did okay today and was actually one of our better performers on the night, in that he did his job fairly solidly.

Thank you, you saved me having to type the same! £30m is nothing special in the PL at all these days and you certainly wouldn’t expect to sign a CM for that for him to come in and dominate PL midfields straight away.

He was decent, nothing special but no one particularly stood out for us last night. He was comfortably the best dutchman for us last night though! He was a long way from being one of worst performers.

I like some things I have seen from him, I’m confident he’ll prove to be a good signing for us.

 

[GT49er]

According to transfermarkt:
Minteh €35m
Wieffer €32m
Gruda €31.5m
Ferdi €30m
O’Reilly €29.5m

Early days. Only Ferdi has really shone, making his way back from injury O’Reilly against ManC? Don’t know why more would be expected of Wieffer.

£29.5M on a player who hasn't even made the squad yet? - Barber out! Thank goodness we bought that bloke from Celtic to fill his place!

 

[Cordwainer]

Any psychologists here? I'd love to know the mentality behind people who fixate on one player to criticise, no matter how they play.

Boring innit. For me it’s very rare to see players come in and hit the ground running and then maintain that form..they need to be fairly judged after a reasonable amount of game time..how many mins had he played so far, how many mins has MoR played, how many have they played together? Look at Igors improvement after a sustained run in the team..best CB last night. Disjointed last night and a non match fit MoR looked lost for the most of it..but despite that were the better side for a good chunk of the game.

 

[Machiavelli]

Very hard to see how he is having a noticeably positive impact when he plays. Looks tidy in spells, but nothing like a £30 million pound player unfortunately.

Happy for someone to tell me I’m wrong, but ‘keeps us ticking over’ doesn’t count. The guy should be dominating in his area of the pitch.

You're just illustrating that he's the new boo boy. He was one of our better players last night. I could mention other players that were really off it last night, one of which has been for a long time, but I won't because I'd rather not target our own players unless it's, eg, Leon Best or Kemi, and that's for a lack of application.
Wieffer has been bought to plug a hole in the squad, one of the most undervalued but important roles. He's got most of the attributes to do that well. The glaring issue is that he is slow, and don't think anything is going to change that. He needs to adapt his game, positioning, decision-making in order to improve within the pace of the PL.

 

[Dibdab]

Very hard to see how he is having a noticeably positive impact when he plays. Looks tidy in spells, but nothing like a £30 million pound player unfortunately.

Happy for someone to tell me I’m wrong, but ‘keeps us ticking over’ doesn’t count. The guy should be dominating in his area of the pitch.

He was clearly one of our better players last night. Very odd to then single him out. Looked far far better than O'Riley who's been anonymous for two games now so guess it'll be his turn to step into the scapegoat firing line soon.

 

[Weststander]

He’s clearly not the least of our worries based on his start here.

Last night was his best performance, but he was still well below the required level. Time and time again they eased through our midfield like they weren’t there, often with Baleba being the only one trying to stop them.

Again, Weiffer was better on the ball, but he was also incredibly slow at times which was part of the reason we struggled to move up the pitch quickly enough - we had very few real chances despite dominating possession.

Now the shape wouldn’t have helped anyone, and MOR looked as lost as he did, if not more so, but let’s not pretend his performance was good, just because it was his best for us. It wasn’t - he was as below par as most of the rest of the team, and many of the issues we had stemmed from the his poor positioning and inability to move the ball forward with any pace.

Goal apart, Baleba was poor.

 

[Weststander]

You're just illustrating that he's the new boo boy. He was one of our better players last night. I could mention other players that were really off it last night, one of which has been for a long time, but I won't because I'd rather not target our own players unless it's, eg, Leon Best or Kemi, and that's for a lack of application.
Wieffer has been bought to plug a hole in the squad, one of the most undervalued but important roles. He's got most of the attributes to do that well. The glaring issue is that he is slow, and don't think anything is going to change that. He needs to adapt his game, positioning, decision-making in order to improve within the pace of the PL.

Adingra and Verbruggen won’t be offended.

 

[Paulie Gualtieri]

No problem with his performance at all yesterday.

He is slightly hamstrung though considering his “worth” was meant to be tucking into and forming a back three when out of possession, which is pretty hard to do and add value when we are playing 3 CB already with an undertone of appeasement

I thought he was one of our better players last night

 

[Si Gull]

Goal apart, Baleba was poor.

Several of our players seemed to be using body doubles last night, Baleba (goal aside) and JPvH looked so far off form it was hard to believe it was them.

 

[Bodian]

He was clearly one of our better players last night. Very odd to then single him out. Looked far far better than O'Riley who's been anonymous for two games now so guess it'll be his turn to step into the scapegoat firing line soon.

Ah - but first impressions linger.

O'Riley got all our sympathies when he was crunched by the Crawley thug - and then scored the winner against Man City when he returned. It will take a long run of poor performances to turn him into a scapegoat.

Weiffer cocked up that 4v1. It will take a long run of fabulous performances to remove the scapegoat tag from him, and even more before he becomes a fans favourite.

 

[Weststander]

Several of our players seemed to be using body doubles last night, Baleba (goal aside) and JPvH looked so far off form it was hard to believe it was them.

and do you remember when we had the Dutch international keeper?

 

[Sarisbury Seagull]

Ah - but first impressions linger.

O'Riley got all our sympathies when he was crunched by the Crawley thug - and then scored the winner against Man City when he returned. It will take a long run of poor performances to turn him into a scapegoat.

Weiffer cocked up that 4v1. It will take a long run of fabulous performances to remove the scapegoat tag from him, and even more before he becomes a fans favourite.

All true. And also Wieffer isn't aesthetically pleasing, he can look a bit awkward at times so he's an easy target. Good player though.

 

[Silverhatch]

Like Wieffer - but he absolutely does not have the ‘fast twitch’ of a sprinter.

 

[Weststander]

Like Wieffer - but he absolutely does not have the ‘fast twitch’ of a sprinter.

Along with Hinshelwood, Gross. Their football brain more than makes up for it.