Give me a break with this central midfield non-sense. Ole has had 6 transfer windows to sort it out. It simply doesn’t rank high enough on his priority list.
Plus, he’s pissed away £100m on talent which he doesn’t utilise (VDB, Diallo and James). The excuses seem to be never ending for Ole.
So our central midfield options aren’t shite? We both know that they are; we saw as much at the weekend. There are a few issues with your response, really.
Firstly, the media consensus would appear to indicate that Ole
does want a midfielder and the club are yet to bring one in. That’s on them, not him.
Secondly, there were bigger priorities to fix at centre half, full back, attacking midfield and out wide when he first arrived at the club. This is because our back line was made out of Valencia-Smalling-Jones-Young and our attacking midfield options were Lingard and Pereira. So yes, central midfield was less of a priority at the beginning of his tenure. Now we have addressed these areas and time has passed, central midfield has turned into more of an issue.
Thirdly, your grouping of James, Amad and Van de Beek is thoroughly disingenuous. James was a punt that hasn’t really worked - these things happen and we’ll make a return on what we paid. Amad has been brought in as a player for the long term - don’t pretend you seriously believed he was ready to cement a first team spot in a team you clearly believe should be winning trophies. The Van de Beek example could well be fair enough, but we’re going to have to wait and see how this season pans out for him.
What excuses are people really making? And excuses for
what, exactly?
I’ve said all along that our current squad is good enough to put up a decent challenge to our rivals, as well as win a cup competition. But it isn’t good enough to win the title against our rivals. This is because our midfield pairing is worse than the pairing we faced at Southampton at the weekend. It’s worse than the West Ham pairing that beat Leicester the other night.
Ole wants a midfielder in the next five days. I think that’s clear. Once again, I don’t think we have the stomach to see a window through to the end.