I tend to agree. I like Dieng. His goal tally last season was incredible. He does some good work breaking up play too. However, he's not the quickest getting around the pitch and although it's early days I can see that he could struggle with that aspect. I can see him being used more as an option off the bench if Harper lives up to his potential.
Agreed, and I think therein lies the current disappointment. As a League Two club last year we had a stronger squad and two decent XIs, whereas now as a League One club we are desperately short. Hopefully MT can rectify this within the next 24 hrs, but I do think we shouldn't have allowed it to have gotten to this stage in all honesty!
How did we let it get to this stage?
Sparkes lacks real pace but he’s not doing too badly this season. Don’t Collins and Kite do the donkey work anyway?! Dieng is the one who picks a pass and gets on the end of crosses to score goals. Harper gives us more physicality hopefully and gives us options and the elusive plan B.
No money, players prefer the big Cities or The North. Take your pick…..
Well, hardly our fault.
True but that’s the way it is. Hopefully Harper can get up to speed quickly. Bit worrying that Taylor regularly says players need x amount of matches to learn our ways etc. or need to adjust to the step up from U23 football. Shows where we are with signings and what our budget gets us.
If Dieng is 'picking passes' and 'getting on the end of crosses' it suggests he's a box to box midfielder, which was kinda my point - having pace might be useful in this role.
I thought Tim played quite well last Saturday; it was a tough midfield battle with both teams trying to play a high internsity pressing game and all 3 City midfielders made sure Accrington weren't able to come out on top - that then meant there was a bit more space for Rakeem to try and exploit when he came on.