Adam Clayton

He's not even had a couple of hours of first team football yet so anyone offering an opinion of "he looks crap to me" should be either ignored or rightly mocked.

 

Mate, he’s coming back from a double leg break, air will take him time to get up to speed again.

 

I don’t think Hughes has adventurous in his vocabulary. He’ll stick to the tried and tested as always, settle for a play off spot and hope to get up via the playoffs. He won’t want to risk going for it and losing by a late goal. We’ll set up to score one and defend by keeping the ball.

 

No time for that. If he's not up to it then he cannot play.

 

Why? Alex Gillead had been an almost ever present.

 

No time for that. If he's not up to it then he cannot play.

Gillead is playing well.

 

But offering nothing. Stats show this.

 

The annoying thing is that he has the ability yet still offers very little.

He needs to be braver, accept responsibility and take some risks himself from an attacking point of view instead of always looking for a safer, less risky option.

As the old saying goes, if you don't buy a ticket .......

 

Where are YOUR stats, I challenged you for or don’t they fit your narrative.? Considering these are in your head it’s taking a rather long time for you to divulge them?

 

Matches -33
Goals -0
Assists- 0

There are his stats for this season!

 

One never fails to make a nipple of oneself and deflects back to something else . More of a cerebral challenge emanates from the 9 year old grandsons.

 

That stats above are his bloody stats!!

 

Not often I agree with Fordy, despite us being the only joint City/Liverpool supporters on here as far as I know, but he is totally correct re Gillead. he's a hard worker, but for all his obvious abilities, he gets a nosebleed whenever he gets in the final third of the pitch. He's frightened to try a shot, penetrative pass, or cross, and always looks to lay it off sideways or backwards to make someone else take the hard options.

 

Those stats tell you about 5% of his overall contributions. Next time he wins a tackle in his own half carries the ball 70 yards and wins a corner or makes a pass in behind for someone to centre for a tap in I'll just disregard it because it's not an assist or a goal. In fact, why not just give watching the game a miss and claim he's had a shit game because nobody scored after he was last to touch the ball.

 

With respect Bumblebee, in a midfield of Smallwood, Clayton & Gillead, the later is supposed to be our most creative midfielder, so zero goals or assists is a pretty damning statistic.

 

Gilliead, does need to improve on his assists and goal scoring, which is exactly zero this season. Unfortunately i don't think he can, I can not recall a decent shot on target from him all year and his heading in front of goal is shocking.
He does a lot of work , but it is often the sort of stuff that goes unnoticed. He did have a really good game when he was made captain, without creating much chance wise.
Upgrade needed for next season i think.

 

If it was a single season that these things were being criticized for you then I'd possible agree. However, AG now has over 130 senior appearances for City and I feel that's a more than adequate length of time to question his huge lack of influence in the attacking 3rd, especially so as for 3\4s of those appearances he's played in an attacking position.

 

Its not an unreasonable opinion of him tbf. I'm not his biggest fan by any means but the habit of using assist stats to judge a players efficacy is extremely limited.

 

For midfielders of course assists are important. Look he’s had some decent games this season but if think he would be happy with 0 goals and 0 assists then you will be highly mistaken. It’s a poor return so far for the season and he clearly won’t cut it in Div 1 if we do go up. That is clear as!

 

Loss of Clayton is big blow. Together with Stubbs, no coincidence we’ve been far harder to breakdown. If the solutions to Clayton were already there we wouldn’t have signed him in the first place. Tells me enough that replacing him with the current squad will;
A. Require us changing our approach to games / tactics / formation
B. Weaken us
C. Require replacements to step us
D. Some or all of the above

Sadly for Clayton, I do wonder if rested in games where we probably all felt squad rotation should have occurred, would have avoided this injury?

we’ll never know, but hope we can successfully navigate these games without him.