Most liked posts in thread: Callum Cooke

Don’t we have the best original colours in England

 

The fact that there's no anderson or akpan in midfield means we're already stronger than last season. Happy with cooke think he'll only get better under stuart.

 

Great news. We saw his ability last season before Bowyer did his best to ruin him but playing for a footballing team this season should see him flourish. Welcome back Callum.

 

Elliot Watt has signed. Will be made official very soon.

Probably just got the easy ones over the line first. DMH, Clarke and Cooke were all pretty desperate to return.

 

There were periods last season where his form was great and he proved he has a lot to offer.

Matched with a desire to come back, he also must have seen something in Stuart’s and Kenny’s plans to feel there’s something to achieve here. There will be a lot of players without options out there so given he reportedly had some but was set on coming back here is only another plus for me.

We desperately need a CM who is comfortable on the ball, he is that. Nothing other than a good signing IMO.

Now we need a scrappy leader to sit alongside him!

 

I don't think last seasons squad was the real issue, it was Bowyer - he held us back.The league position was ok when you take into account the horrendous tactics deployed by Bowyer. We were only just outside the play offs when all said and done. Macca came in too late. His style hopefully suits them better.

I think we need a right back, winger and another centre mid. That is after Watt is made official. In an ideal world he moves on Longbridge to free up wages and BRE and Guthrie too so we can replace. Improbable but not impossible.

 

Hope he stays. I think SM will use him as a lone striker and get plenty of balls into the box where he is at his most dangerous. You could see how frustrated he was last season with the quality of service to him yet he still scored goals. I hope that chat SM had with Vaughan was productive enough to convince Vaughan he has a big role to play this coming season.

 

Reads like Cooke was desperate to return and enjoyed his time here. Bizarre as majority of his time was under anti football Bowyer! Must like the lads and his short time under Macca.

Or maybe met a bird up here...more likely...

 

Much better signing this. Based on last season he’s got enough about him to be a success here. If we get Watt I’d like to see a midfield enforcer signed too. Think it would give theM two much more license to get forward then.
Still around 3 or 4 short for me. Maybe a little more. Hopefully we don’t stop any time soon

 

If you don’t see the issue with last season’s squad then we’ll agree to disagree. We can blame it all on Bowyer’s tactics but we didn’t actually get that much better under McCall.

 

Not for me. Pritchard is better out wide. Can fill in and it’s good we’ve got options if short but we need specialists in there. Missed out on the lad Sarcevic who went to Bolton. We need a real hard man leader. All the good sides had one last season. We still don’t have it and haven’t had it for the last 4 seasons or so now. It’s missing

 

Good signing. We need a proper hard man in the middle though. We haven’t had a proper midfielder who could tackle since, actually I don’t know when.

 

Interesting comments on the diamond - as a coach I have seen it used to devastating effect but it is reliant on an effective tackling player in the holding role at the back of the diamond (think how good an average team like Southampton can be when Romeo is playing well in this position) and a creator at the head. Problem is when you just try to get 4 midfielders/wide players to fill the diamond without the necessary skill sets to do it.
I have seen a team playing 4-2-4 or 4-3-3 against it starved of the ball to their wide men as they were getting overrun in the central 60% of the pitch (Man City obviously do this so well) and it also means the full backs of the diamond team can bomb forward dragging the other teams offensive players back with them.
But if its done badly (as sadly we proved on many occasions when we used it) the opposition wide men can have a field day - if you watch from an elevated position we just look very narrow

 

Sutton and Watt both midfielder weren’t here last season

 

And deffo a Winger. Pritchard, Mottley and Ismael not enough.

 

What a long season were in for again

 

Damage done. Confidence shot. Simply too late. Plus our best striker Vaughan had gone.

There was issues, it needs improvement but it wasn't abysmal by any stretch. If we were sat in 15th I'd agree but I think we were 7th when Bowyer went. They probably overachieved as a collective when they were forced to adopt anti football and had zero man management or motivation. feck knows what he said to them at half time.

 

Who says Sutton is “inferior”