Transfer News 2022/23 Season Incoming Transfers and a few other things

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Steve Gilbert said:
I don’t think it is now the be all and end all that it maybe was 12 months ago.
They are more concerned about getting the future of the club sorted while also building a team of players who can challenge for the next few seasons.
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Risky strategy to say that promotion isn't the 'be all and end all' a few days after finishing your drive to sell season tickets.
 
It’s quite funny to me that people are saying it’s ‘unfair’ on Seddon that he gets criticised on here for making the same mistakes over and over and over again, and yet it’s somehow simultaneously perfectly fair to write off Ciaron Brown as being not good enough at left back despite him actually playing very well there for us on more than one occasion… 🤔🧐
 
HampshireYellow said:
It’s quite funny to me that people are saying it’s ‘unfair’ on Seddon that he gets criticised on here for making the same mistakes over and over and over again, and yet it’s somehow simultaneously perfectly fair to write off Ciaron Brown as being not good enough at left back despite him actually playing very well there for us on more than one occasion… 🤔🧐
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I must be blind because every game I watched Brown, he did very well, whether that was at Centre Back, Left Back or Left Wing Back. He's dangerous from set pieces, has a long throw, gets stuck in, not easily shrugged off the ball and most importantly, a very solid defender at this level.

BTW, I also quite like Seddon (when he's not lacking confidence).
 
RyanioBirdio said:
I would, because we need to stop the domino effect of “versatile” players dragging everybody else out of their best position. Brown is a centre back who can play left back if you have nobody else, but he shouldn’t be “the left back cover” while he’s also the only proper centre back cover, outside of a 17 year old (who is now apparently being viewed as a potential right back) and a 36 year old semi-retired coach.

If whoever is first choice left back is unavailable and Brown has to play there, and then either centre back gets injured or suspended, suddenly you’re shuffling three, or maybe even all four defensive spots around. You’ve changed pretty much the entire back line and potentially not one player is in their preferred / best position. This has happened multiple times over the last two seasons so it isn’t rare or unlikely to happen at some point, and it costs us every time we have to hobble through it.

As an aside, there has been some quite spectacular rewriting of history to justify the lack of defensive depth over the last month or two (not from you, but from others), particularly regarding the L2 promotion season where it has been claimed we had no real cover. That is patently untrue. We had two out and out left backs, Skarz and Jordan Evans (who at the time was the Wales U21 left back) and the only reason Ruffels ever played there for the final game against Wycombe, and I think possibly the second half at Carlisle, was because both of them got injured simultaneously with a few weeks to go, which is a total freak. But even then, Evans was still playing right up until Newport away on April 19th, and Skarz was then patched up to start against Hartlepool and Carlisle. Long was also the right back cover for both Baldock and Kenny, having played ten games there in League Two the season before, plus half a dozen the year before that under Wilder / Waddock, so he was young but an established first team squad member with 16 league and FA Cup games to his name, plus a brief loan spell one division below. We had two full backs on each side, regardless of how many appearances any of them actually made, plus three senior centre backs in Wright, Dunkley and Mullins. A young Robbie Cundy was the fourth choice in case of emergency, which is a role Golding could fill this season, but it would need to be stipulated that he’s the fourth CB, that he’s ready to play if circumstances require, and that he isn’t also the right back cover. Which is crackers, btw, but that’s for another time.

We need seven players to cover the back four spots, plus (not including) Golding as a potential eighth / fourth centre back, including two dedicated full backs on each side. We still need two more bodies - a right back and either a left back or another centre back if Brown is going to focus on playing there - without a single defender leaving.
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Sorry but just on that penultimate paragraph, I fear that may be rewriting history a bit. Evans joined on loan in November; he didn’t appear in the league until mid December. I also wouldn’t describe him as an ‘out and out leftback’ - he was very much a young LB/LWB/LW still figuring out his best position. Likewise Kenny joined in January once Baldock had been recalled. If they did overlap, it would only have been for a couple of weeks. To suggest that we went the full season with strong backup in each position is disingenuous. If either Baldock or Kenny had been seriously injured we’d have been in real trouble - Long at that stage was no better as RB replacement than Forde.

I don’t disagree we need support and competition (and, realistically, probably an upgrade) in both positions, but let’s not pretend that MApp didn’t get at least a little lucky with his squad-building, too.

EDIT: thinking about it, I also, frankly, don’t think we would have got in someone of the quality of Kenny if he had been told he was going to play second fiddle to Baldock. Evans (belatedly) came in to play second fiddle, true, but I think the respective career paths of him and Kenny since leaving us prove what we all saw when they were with us - one was significantly better than the other.
 
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tonyw said:
The worst Seddon moment from Saturday, for me, was the Eastwood save - it's at about 1:05 on the short version of the highlights:

Findlay has pushed up on the forward into the centre circle, and fouled his man.
Seddon has to know that a) Findlay is out of the play, and b) Mendez-Laing is about 20% quicker than he is. So he simply has to drop five yards off him to protect his own goal. Instead, he idly stands there next to his man, watching the ball - and when Derby take it quickly, it's the simplest ball in the world for them to release Mendez-Laing on goal. This was a period of the game when we were on top, but Easty needed to bail Seddon out otherwise it would have been an absurdly simple goal to concede.
I don't know if it's just a lack of concentration, or a more fundamental lack of understanding of positioning and space on a football field - but either way, it seems to happen all the time when Seddon plays LB.

I don't think Ciaron Brown makes the same mistake......but as has been pointed out elsewhere on this thread, Brown doesn't offer you a whole lot in an attacking sense.

I don't know how anyone could look at our squad, remember last season and then watch the game on Saturday, and not think that LB is one of the key positions where we need an upgrade. But KR seemed to say otherwise. At this point, I'm just praying that it's him spouting randomly at a press conference (as he is wont to do) rather than what he actually thinks.......
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It's worse if you go back to 1:00, the ref has blown for a free kick and Seddon give Derby the ball back to allow them to take it quickly! That's basic level game management, either pick it up, kick it away, dribble it back a bit, knock it into the centre circle but for Christ's sake don't just give the other team the ball when our defence is scattered hither and thither.
 
tonyw said:
But having signed three outstanding out-and-out wingers in the past couple of weeks, I can't see that 3-5-2 is the intent this season.
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We're led to believe it was the sale of McNally that led to a change of heart (away from 3-5-2), although it sounds like we were still in for Cadden after McNally left so I'm not sure how you reconcile Cadden with a 4-3-3 either.

Plus we don't really have the utility players with high workrate like Ryan Williams to make 4-3-3 work. I'm not convinced that our out and out wingers are necessarily conducive to 4-3-3 either.

It's almost as though KR signs players for their individual merits rather than a clear idea of where they fit into a system, let alone an actual formation.
 
Joey's Left Boot said:
This is starting to cross the line into bullying territory.
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Have to agree with your comment.

I wonder how many of the posters on this forum would like it if people (who have no real footballing brain and shouldn't really criticise) keep criticising them for what they do or they don't do, in the job of work?

There really are some super criticising know all's on this forum :mad::mad::mad:
 
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Bullying is a very strong word and I'm not sure we're there, but the level of criticism is mainly uncalled for and certainly unnecessary.
 
Joey's Left Boot said:
This is starting to cross the line into bullying territory.
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I would argue that thousands screaming ‘YOU’RE SH1T AHHHH!!!!’ in the face of an opposition player who’s just made a mistake, or fans booing their own players off the pitch, is much more crossing the line into bullying than calmly (by most people) dissecting a player’s performance on a backwater football forum that said player would have to actively log on and look up the thread to see is…
 
HampshireYellow said:
I would argue that thousands screaming ‘YOU’RE SH1T AHHHH!!!!’ in the face of an opposition player who’s just made a mistake, or fans booing their own players off the pitch, is much more crossing the line into bullying than calmly (by most people) dissecting a player’s performance on a backwater football forum that said player would have to actively log on and look up the thread to see is…
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Or getting sent 9,000 abusive tweets in five months, as Harry Maguire apparently did last season.

If this forum is not supposed to be a space for reasoned criticism, disagreement and debate about Oxford players and the manager, what is it for?

(besides which, there's nothing on the thread today that even comes close to the level of aggression and vitriol that we used to get twenty years ago from the likes of JCR about Ian Atkins, James Hunt and David Waterman!)
 
Not quite sure where this thread is going tonight, I’ve not read all of it thoroughly, but there’s clearly a lot of debate about our two main current full backs and the number of assists one of them provides and the number of defensive errors the other makes.

Ultimately for me a right or left backs primary function is to defend. Assists and support further up the field are fine when the game allows that, but above all else defensive attributes are the main proviso.

I don’t believe Seddon is robust enough, or good enough at defending, and he is trying to do too much attacking when this should be the secondary element of his game. Long is much more effective defensively than in an attacking sense which surely is more important.

Long for me is probably the perfect back up RB and RCB cover, but no longer quite good enough to regularly start if we genuinely want to get promoted, though I’m never disappointed or concerned when he is in the starting side, he rarely lets us down. Seddon unfortunately has lost confidence and seems to be confused about his role in the side whatever formation we play!

Whatever way you turn things and how much favouritism there may be for a player, we concede too many goals, and don’t keep enough clean sheets, some of which is also down to the midfield not backing up the defence enough, and poor goalkeeping at times.
 
Seddon played better than Taylor and Brannagan vs Derby. Taylor should be scrutinised for fluffing his decent chance and brannagan did f all. ;)
 
I can see why we might want Hardie (or Camara if any truth in that) but why would either want to come to us - a sideways step at best for Hardie & Camara appears to believe he should be at a higher level than L1 anyway - we are at best no bigger than Plymouth and in no better position than them so what would be the attraction - unless they are each partial to being criticised regularly on a fans forum peut etre
 
We are not "bigger" than Argyle. Big invoice from our "planning consultants" to settle.
 
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