Jonathan Tah

Is Tah press resistant? Not sure he is the right profile.

The CCB profile we need is someone who is press resistant like Licha but has the height to play central. The reason is because Amorim likes to set up his CCB to join midfield during the build up play. IMO, this is big responsibility in our build up play because the player needs to be press resistant and very composed on the ball to beat high level press in PL. Scalvini or Huijsen would be the profile CCB we should go for.

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For us, he played as the central defender in a three at the back system. He did his fair share of front foot defending, especially in counterpressing situations but not as much as the R/LCBs. Instead, he was more important in defending counter attacks. His speed (I think he reached 35 km/h in some games) and strength is excellent for that and was a key enabler for the high line we play. As said, he lost a fair bit of muscle mass before his ascend to form and it made him more agile and improved his acceleration but he there were two or three occasions when he was taken by surprise by the strength of a really physical striker (Antonio, Boniface, Lukaku).

Last season, he was very basic in the build up. His biggest strength is transitioning after winning the ball. Where other CBs pass it backwards to the keeper, Tah has excellent vision and often finds a surprising forward pass that sets the team up for a counter attack or possession phase, sometimes he even combines it with a bit of tidy footwork. This season, he has also improved his passing massively. One of his long balls to Frimpong lead to the red card against Neuer. He's decent at those passes now but still nowhere near Hummels, Boateng, Bonucci, van Dijk and those kind of CBs.

His heading is very good. Alonso occasionally likes to defend deep in his own half and we have to deal with lots of crosses in those phases. But for a very long time, Tah was one of those CBs that left you wondering how somebody so good at defensive headers could be so terrible at offensive headers since he went whole seasons without scoring one. That improved as well under Alonso and Tah was one of our biggest threats from set pieces, often being involved in our trademark late goals in some capacity.

All that being said, I still can't say he'll be a huge success wherever he goes because I'm not sure how he deals with more negative stress than he had in the last two years with us. As said, in the past he was extremely error prone. It seems he really has developed in that respect particularly but we all know bad habits die slowly. Really hope he'll hit the ground running wherever he goes, though, since he comes across as a very likeable guy. Was very popular among the young players and overall an important figure in the dressing room, speaking multiple languages and all that.
Thank you for that useful reply. You said he's in the centre of a back three. For us that seems to be Maguire/de ligt position, as the more agile, quicker CBs are deployed as LCB or RCB in theory.
 
You also have Fredricson who looked great on his debut and Kukonki who Amorim is apparently massively impressed with in there too so that’s 9 players for three positions already even with Lindelof and Evans leaving.

What we really need is a keeper, a right wing back, a central midfielder, a left sided 10 and a striker and although I don’t think we’ll get all of those we at least need to prioritise things financially in order to to at least try to get those positions sorted.
We can’t go into a season relying on

Martinez and shaw being fit
Having lost Evan’s and Lindelof
Relying on a teenage CB who has played 1 match
Relying on another 16/17 year old CB who has played a few minutes
Even relying on Heaven (as much as I like him), he’s played half a dozen matches

Whilst I agree we need all these other spots upgrading we shouldn’t neglect what usually becomes a poisoned chalice with injuries, especially if we can fill that gap with an experienced CB on a free
 
Thank you for that useful reply. You said he's in the centre of a back three. For us that seems to be Maguire/de ligt position, as the more agile, quicker CBs are deployed as LCB or RCB in theory.

In Alonso's system, the R/LCB often become classic fullbacks depending on the situation. That's not ideal for Tah but Alonso actually played him there as well immediatel, after he took over from Seoane if I'm not mistaken. De Ligt and Maguire would probably be too slow for the Tah position because Alonso required recovery speed for his high line from his three defenders. I think this is why Bayern sold de Ligt to begin with. That transfer didn't reasonate well with a lot of fans, actually, because he was their best defender in the 23/24 season but I guess he wasn't fast enough for the football Kompany wanted to play.

If Amorim has no problem with his CB being a bit slower and wants the others to be fast, then I'm sure Tah could play RCB/LCB as well. For Germany, he's playing a more traditional CB role anyway.
 
Signing 30 year olds on top salary, what could go wrong.
I remember United fans saying no thanks to a 35 year old Thiago Silva on a free because he was old despite being great for PSG, then he went on to be one of the best defenders in the Premier League for three years straight. Not saying Tah will go on to be that, but he is a very good defender, and centre backs often remain at a high level because of how important positioning and experience is in that role. Tah recently turned 29, by the way, so him on a free makes sense when we use 3 at the back and some of our CBs are frequently injured.
 
We can’t go into a season relying on

Martinez and shaw being fit
Having lost Evan’s and Lindelof
Relying on a teenage CB who has played 1 match
Relying on another 16/17 year old CB who has played a few minutes
Even relying on Heaven (as much as I like him), he’s played half a dozen matches

Whilst I agree we need all these other spots upgrading we shouldn’t neglect what usually becomes a poisoned chalice with injuries, especially if we can fill that gap with an experienced CB on a free
That’s like saying we can’t go into the new season relying on anyone seeing as we seem to pick up more injuries than any other club, what happens if every one of the centre backs plus an incoming Tah was fit ? You’ve then got at the very least 3-4 very unhappy players who aren’t playing and end up like Chelsea with a bloated and unbalanced squad.

I’d rather give the minutes to Heaven, Fredicson and Kukonki and if they don’t work out at least they’ll have first team experience and might be able to get decent fees for them rather than bringing yet another big name in again and struggling with outgoings and PSR.

If we were to move Maguire on so we had incoming funds seeing as Maguire’s fee was paid off some time ago and also saved on wages then I’d be all for it but there are far bigger priorities than a 10th centre back regardless of whether a few are young, there’s only a year between Yoro and Heaven and Fredicson is older than the pair of them.

We’ve got so many great to good players coming through in Harrison, Fredicson, Heaven, Kukonki, Kamason, Amass, Collyer, Kone, the Fletcher’s, Ibragimov, Biancheri, Lacey, Mantato and Chido that it’s madness to hoard players and stop their progression especially seeing as we’ve seen Mainoo, Garnacho, Amass and Heaven already come through in the past 18 months.

Our main two problem positions are in goal and a striker and we know money is going to be tight so we’ll have to be clever with recruitment and for once competent in our outgoings, it looks nailed on we’re going to get Cunha which is going to be around £65 million so getting a striker and keeper becomes harder so I’d much rather we use the youngsters where can then bring in quality for the main priorities as we’re not going to solve everything in one summer.
 
That’s like saying we can’t go into the new season relying on anyone seeing as we seem to pick up more injuries than any other club, what happens if every one of the centre backs plus an incoming Tah was fit ? You’ve then got at the very least 3-4 very unhappy players who aren’t playing and end up like Chelsea with a bloated and unbalanced squad.

I’d rather give the minutes to Heaven, Fredicson and Kukonki and if they don’t work out at least they’ll have first team experience and might be able to get decent fees for them rather than bringing yet another big name in again and struggling with outgoings and PSR.

If we were to move Maguire on so we had incoming funds seeing as Maguire’s fee was paid off some time ago and also saved on wages then I’d be all for it but there are far bigger priorities than a 10th centre back regardless of whether a few are young, there’s only a year between Yoro and Heaven and Fredicson is older than the pair of them.

We’ve got so many great to good players coming through in Harrison, Fredicson, Heaven, Kukonki, Kamason, Amass, Collyer, Kone, the Fletcher’s, Ibragimov, Biancheri, Lacey, Mantato and Chido that it’s madness to hoard players and stop their progression especially seeing as we’ve seen Mainoo, Garnacho, Amass and Heaven already come through in the past 18 months.

Our main two problem positions are in goal and a striker and we know money is going to be tight so we’ll have to be clever with recruitment and for once competent in our outgoings, it looks nailed on we’re going to get Cunha which is going to be around £65 million so getting a striker and keeper becomes harder so I’d much rather we use the youngsters where can then bring in quality for the main priorities as we’re not going to solve everything in one summer.
It’s realism to understand that you cannot rely on Shaw and most likely Licha too. I said last summer that after his bad injury he’d be more prone to picking up other injuries and hey presto..

Maguire this season has been picking up more injuries than usual.

DeLigts career is littered with niggling injuries

Maz normally has more injuries. This season has been somewhat of a lucky patch for him.

Evan’s and lindelof going

So you really want to go into a full season relying on a 17 year old and an 18 year old with barely any experience between them? Ok let’s see how that works out
 
We can’t go into a season relying on

Martinez and shaw being fit
Having lost Evan’s and Lindelof
Relying on a teenage CB who has played 1 match
Relying on another 16/17 year old CB who has played a few minutes
Even relying on Heaven (as much as I like him), he’s played half a dozen matches

Whilst I agree we need all these other spots upgrading we shouldn’t neglect what usually becomes a poisoned chalice with injuries, especially if we can fill that gap with an experienced CB on a free
You are missing the point. It's true that it wouldn't hurt to get an additional CB, but Tah ain't coming and I dont know if there is another decent CB on a free.
 
For us, he played as the central defender in a three at the back system. He did his fair share of front foot defending, especially in counterpressing situations but not as much as the R/LCBs. Instead, he was more important in defending counter attacks. His speed (I think he reached 35 km/h in some games) and strength is excellent for that and was a key enabler for the high line we play. As said, he lost a fair bit of muscle mass before his ascend to form and it made him more agile and improved his acceleration but he there were two or three occasions when he was taken by surprise by the strength of a really physical striker (Antonio, Boniface, Lukaku).
Don't they play together? Or was it in an international match?
 
Is Tah press resistant? Not sure he is the right profile.

The CCB profile we need is someone who is press resistant like Licha but has the height to play central. The reason is because Amorim likes to set up his CCB to join midfield during the build up play. IMO, this is big responsibility in our build up play because the player needs to be press resistant and very composed on the ball to beat high level press in PL. Scalvini or Huijsen would be the profile CCB we should go for.

IMG-4186.png


IMG-4185.jpg
Scalvini would be perfect. Unfortunately he had an ACL injury ant the end of last season and had another setback on his return in Feb, so will only have played 6 games this season.

Looks like we’ll be keeping Maguire another year at a minimum, so maybe if Scalvini recovers and has an injury free season next year then he could be a top target for us next summer.

The other player that we could look at is Diomande from Sporting who played the CCB role in Amorim’s final year but also played the wide CB role very effectively before that too. He might be targeted by teams this summer however so we might miss out on him.
 
You are missing the point. It's true that it wouldn't hurt to get an additional CB, but Tah ain't coming and I dont know if there is another decent CB on a free.
My point was we shouldn’t rule it out for the reasons I’ve outlined. Whether that’s Tah or someone else, if we can nab someone for free we should consider it
 
Don't they play together? Or was it in an international match?

Yes, we played against him in the EL when he was still at St. GIilloise. Interesting sidenote: That team is owned by the owner of Brighton, so Boniface was scouted and signed after their data-driven "moneyball" principle as well.
 
Scalvini would be perfect. Unfortunately he had an ACL injury ant the end of last season and had another setback on his return in Feb, so will only have played 6 games this season.

Looks like we’ll be keeping Maguire another year at a minimum, so maybe if Scalvini recovers and has an injury free season next year then he could be a top target for us next summer.

The other player that we could look at is Diomande from Sporting who played the CCB role in Amorim’s final year but also played the wide CB role very effectively before that too. He might be targeted by teams this summer however so we might miss out on him.
My issue with Diomande is his aerial duel. It doesn’t look good based on numbers. We don’t want to add another CB who is not good aerially.
 
Game today showing why the team needs more cover in this area. Multiple goals conceded from defenders being out jumped.
 
My issue with Diomande is his aerial duel. It doesn’t look good based on numbers. We don’t want to add another CB who is not good aerially.
His Aerial win rate averages at 70% over this season and last season. That’s absolutely fine, in fact it’s actually very high if you compare to others this season:

Van Dijk is 71%
Saliba is 62%
Ruben Dias is 49%

Diomande is obviously playing in Portugal not the Prem so it’s not like for like, but Ruben Dias was at 57% and 63% when at Benfica so I think we can probably expect Diomande to be aroundt Saliba’s level at a minimum.
 
Olivier Boscagli would be a more realistic alternative as a free CB signing.
 
Because he is not looking to come to the PL and his agent is talking to Barca and Bayern whilst waiting to see if Alonso gets the Real job.
So if we are not linked to him why does this thread exist.
 
With MDL and Martinez both out with long term injuries I think we would benefit from one more CB ideally on a free. Whether it's Tah or the other guy doesn't matter to me, I feel like it would be for depth anyway
 
We have been linked with him according to Sky at least. Realistically he’s probably waiting for Bayern but we have been linked

He's been linked with you in German media as well, even as early as last November. I wouldn't rule out that he joins you but it would be very surprising to say the least. This is a quote from February:

Fernando Carro, CEO in Leverkusen, responded as follows: “I believe him. I believe he has some opportunities. But there aren't that many clubs that are a real option for him.”

Tah has received offers in the past, “but he didn’t want to go there. He only wants to join top-top clubs. And there aren’t many of those,” Carro emphasized.

In terms of size, you belong in that category but so far, the assumption was that Tah wanted a realistic chance to win big league titles or the UCL in the short term.
 
Hard to tell from his posts on here. He could do, I guess.

I'm 5,6 ft but maybe Lisandro and I can just give each other leg ups. Or you just send me to the opponent's dressing room before a match and I convince them that crosses are a terrible way to score a goal statistically speaking, problem solved :)
 
So now you think a new CB is making sense huh?
I'm saying if it's a free transfer without massive wage demands like Tah, realistically available (and not linked to Bayern or Barca) and someone who has similar traits to the injury prone players (Martinez and Shaw) instead of De Ligt or Maguire, it makes more sense.
 
I'm saying if it's a free transfer without massive wage demands like Tah, realistically available (and not linked to Bayern or Barca) and someone who has similar traits to the injury prone players (Martinez and Shaw) instead of De Ligt or Maguire, it makes more sense.
The Captain of Sweden is on a free if we need another body back there.
 
That’s like saying we can’t go into the new season relying on anyone seeing as we seem to pick up more injuries than any other club, what happens if every one of the centre backs plus an incoming Tah was fit ? You’ve then got at the very least 3-4 very unhappy players who aren’t playing and end up like Chelsea with a bloated and unbalanced squad.

I’d rather give the minutes to Heaven, Fredicson and Kukonki and if they don’t work out at least they’ll have first team experience and might be able to get decent fees for them rather than bringing yet another big name in again and struggling with outgoings and PSR.

If we were to move Maguire on so we had incoming funds seeing as Maguire’s fee was paid off some time ago and also saved on wages then I’d be all for it but there are far bigger priorities than a 10th centre back regardless of whether a few are young, there’s only a year between Yoro and Heaven and Fredicson is older than the pair of them.

We’ve got so many great to good players coming through in Harrison, Fredicson, Heaven, Kukonki, Kamason, Amass, Collyer, Kone, the Fletcher’s, Ibragimov, Biancheri, Lacey, Mantato and Chido that it’s madness to hoard players and stop their progression especially seeing as we’ve seen Mainoo, Garnacho, Amass and Heaven already come through in the past 18 months.

Our main two problem positions are in goal and a striker and we know money is going to be tight so we’ll have to be clever with recruitment and for once competent in our outgoings, it looks nailed on we’re going to get Cunha which is going to be around £65 million so getting a striker and keeper becomes harder so I’d much rather we use the youngsters where can then bring in quality for the main priorities as we’re not going to solve everything in one summer.
Agree completely.

Of course it's not ideal that Shaw & Martinez appear very unreliable with injuries, especially when looked at alongside Maz & De Ligt having spotty histories. However, with all of these senior defenders there's no way we can bring in another senior player and keep everyone happy, no way. Plus it'd be a waste of very finite resources as you say.

I'd love it if Shaw was moved on somehow, and still wouldn't see the need for an extra centre back, or left back if Amorim thinks Leon & Amass can pick up minutes.

Goalkeeper and Striker. That's where the money needs to be spent, and spent fecking wisely for once. Get those two positions to even a PL average level and we'll improve massively. Tinker around the edges as the budget allows and use our talented crop of youngsters to fill the gaps and hopefully suprise us all, perfect.
 
Agree completely.

Of course it's not ideal that Shaw & Martinez appear very unreliable with injuries, especially when looked at alongside Maz & De Ligt having spotty histories. However, with all of these senior defenders there's no way we can bring in another senior player and keep everyone happy, no way. Plus it'd be a waste of very finite resources as you say.

I'd love it if Shaw was moved on somehow, and still wouldn't see the need for an extra centre back, or left back if Amorim thinks Leon & Amass can pick up minutes.

Goalkeeper and Striker. That's where the money needs to be spent, and spent fecking wisely for once. Get those two positions to even a PL average level and we'll improve massively. Tinker around the edges as the budget allows and use our talented crop of youngsters to fill the gaps and hopefully suprise us all, perfect.
Evans released
Lindelof released
Shaw not reliable
Martinez not reliable
DeLigt knee injury & history of different injuries
Maz history of different injuries

How can anyone look at that and think yeah we’re good?
 
Evans released
Lindelof released
Shaw not reliable
Martinez not reliable
DeLigt knee injury & history of different injuries
Maz history of different injuries

How can anyone look at that and think yeah we’re good?
About that…
 
I'm saying if it's a free transfer without massive wage demands like Tah, realistically available (and not linked to Bayern or Barca) and someone who has similar traits to the injury prone players (Martinez and Shaw) instead of De Ligt or Maguire, it makes more sense.

Hes being chased by other top clubs of course hes going to demand big wages and we can actually afford it by allocating the wages left by Lindelof (120k) and Evans (60k). This is not just about adding more bodies, else why bother releasing Lindelof?
 
We have been linked with him according to Sky at least. Realistically he’s probably waiting for Bayern but we have been linked
But I thought there had to be credible sources?
Skysports , caughtoffside and United Stand and it's offspring are just garbage!