Kjetil Osvold's Cat
Kingsley Black
I get what you're saying mate, and definitely don't want to disrespect it, but the 'won't see a lot of the ball' can become a self-fullfilling prophecy - it doesn't have to be the case if we don't want it to be, but even to the extent that it is enforced at times through playing away at established quality teams, the better we can look after the ball ourselves the better I feel - we'll avoid pressure better if we keep hold of the ball, and we'll be able to get ourselves in attacking positions better too, with fluent use of the ball even if we have well under 50% of it in some games, if you get what I'm trying to say.You can be a physical player without being a defensive player though, Joelinton ripped us apart in the centre and he's a converted striker, although in all honesty he played striker like he was a converted midfielder , but the point I'm getting at is he isn't particularly defensive same with Phillip Billing at Bournemouth, a 6'4 monster centre mid but not necessarily the most defensive, just very physically competitive. It does feel like we need somebody like that in midfield; Colback and O'Brien are both scrappy and not scared of a tackle but couldn't compete physically with Joelinton yesterday. Yates will offer more physicality but we could do with another in my opinion. When you're a team like us who won't see an awful lot of the ball physicality throughout the pitch is the bare minimum needed to compete, then you start worrying about technical ability.
Anyway, no problem to agree to disagree (we probably don't completely disagree anyway!).