Here's Robins' quote upon signing him last summer:
"I’m really looking forward to working with Rod. He is a quick, strong and aggressive centre half, who can also read the game well."
Not sure what player you were watching, especially during the first half of last season, but he was definitely strong and athletic, that was never his issue and the basis on why he was brought in as we lacked a player of his type during the 2016-17 season.
If anything it was his inconsistency in reading the game well that contributed to his drop in form last season. Case and point was the Yeovil game.
He didn't show any of these attributes during the latter half of the season though so I understand your point. He looked sluggish and as Mucca said, he was exposed when he came up against big strikers.
Height isn’t the be all and end all, there’s a host of world class defenders under 6”. It’s about being able to outjump and outmuscle your opposite man. Davies is our most aggressive player by a distance in the way he attacks the ball from set pieces and so on.
McDonald is good in the air, it was a noticeable difference having him from Turnbull the season before but I don't think he's an aggressive in your face type defender.
Nobody did. Hopefully we've been working on set pieces this summer.Did he ever win an attacking header though? I can barely remember him even getting near a corner.
I was talking about from watching him week in, week out.
He wasn't aggresive nor strong even when he was playing well. He always looked a bit soft.
Shouldn't we expect any of our players to leave?
Anyway, not sure what the fuss on this thread is - Earlsdon's not gone as extreme as his Sterling chat, he's saying it's have been nice to get our striker in by now. He's not wrong, is he?
Is Thompson good enough to be included in the first team picture yet? Plus, if McDonald departs, surely we'll need a player of his ilk to replace him. Isn't Thompson a like for like to Willis in regards to how he plays in the athletic CB mould.
Height isn’t the be all and end all /QUOTE]
Amen brother
Far too often in the past we've accepted it's great waiting until the last minute to get players in, and they've more often than not been either the wrong players as a result, or had to play catch-up as they haven't had the chance to bed in.no he's not. I just think there is an implication, (not by ESB), that not securing a McNulty replacement has been a massive fuck up by Robins, (it may well be).
But i'd like to think that sometimes in football everything doesn't always go your way, the pieces of the jigsaw don't always fall easily into place and I'll put my faith in the manager to sort it out.
At the end of last season Robins preferred Thompson as fourth choice CD over McDonald, so I think he's good enough to be a squad player this season.
I would agree that neither Hyam or Thompson would be in the same mould as McDonald, or perhaps more importantly, Davies. I'd add to your point that if McDonald goes, we will be left with 3 right sided and one left sided CDs. So there would be a case for bringing in a replacement. The question is, whether this would be a priority at the moment? I somehow doubt it, but it might become a priority when the other positions a covered.
to be quite honest Northern its about time JCH manned up his game and stop that bloody falling on the floor every time someone looks at him. I watched him play against Brighton for us in the FA cup and he had an excellent game when he came on and used his upper body strength and stayed on his feet which as a result gave him a goal plus a shot cleared off the line. brighton doubled up on him after 20 minutes and nullified him as a threat. So i know he can do a job for us he has got to get his mind sorted out though!Far too often in the past we've accepted it's great waiting until the last minute to get players in, and they've more often than not been either the wrong players as a result, or had to play catch-up as they haven't had the chance to bed in.
Now... I agree that if he *really* thinks Chaplin is worth waiting for, he has to wait rather than buy any old shite, but it's fair to point out that a lack of a replacement is not... normal by this point, and it's worth pointing out that we're *very* light up front when it comes to scoring options, given how we relied on McNulty last season. Given our past record with not spending money we were promised was available (I always think of Malky Mackay and how the cash set up to buy him vanished when he decided to turn us down!) it's also fair to be slightly worried that given a relatively sizeable transfer income, none of it has been spent as of yet either.
(These posts end up ridiculously wrong with having to stick to multitude of justifications in to pre-empt those who see things as black and white, and now I have to point out I don't expect us to spend all yadda yadda and yes, some will go on wages yadda yadda, but *some* spent on McNulty's replacement would be nice!)
None of that says we won't hit the ground running, but it's a bit ridiculous to suggest everything is great, smashing and super wrt our strikers! Pointing out where things have gone wrong also doesn't equate to not backing the team nor the manager - look at Nick's umpteen posts about us not changing things during games last season and being set up defensively in midfield as an example
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