Saint Domingo
Player Valuation: £90m
Yes fully agree.
I just think it’s a huge ask for teenage players, especially centre forwards or centrebacks, to start games regularly, especially more than one of them together unless they are a phenomenon like Rooney.
Gordon is a prime example, flickered onto the scene under Ancelotti but then took a slump in form which had some writing him off as not good enough, he’s had to work back to get to the level he’s at now. Dobbin is perhaps not even as good as Gordon, Simms may be even further back.
I think they’re being brought through in an a decent manner at the moment. They’re getting on against tired legs when mistakes won’t be punished as much, and they’re increasing their game time. That’s all good in my book
Rondon gets a lot of criticism, and his limitations regarding his pace are well known, but if people can put aside their hatred of him they’ll see that in the game yesterday a number of times he made the ball stick and released Gordon or Gray on the counter. When Dobbin came on he had far more personal threat due to his pace but he lost the ball a few times so it was coming back to us. I wouldn’t want to have started that way because then if you need to pull off a young player and make a change, Rondon isn’t the sort of player you bring on at that point. When you look at the chances Gordon and Gray both had in that game, it’s hard to say the primary tactical plan didn’t work.
