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Ex-Wolf Watch

Absolutely. I love Nuno and always will but there's no defending the indefensible, we had bloody ages post-Raul injury where we didn't create and he kept ignoring quality attacking players in Vitinha and MGW.

The only other three black marks against him for me would be:

- Weird subs vs Watford at Wembley, just neutered us for extra time, the game wasn't safe enough to do that
- Having a binary choice of Daniel Podence vs Dani Olmo and picking the wrong one
- Second string vs Southampton in the cup and then a full strength team vs Southampton in the league, come on now
 
Deutsch Wolf said:
Absolutely. I love Nuno and always will but there's no defending the indefensible, we had bloody ages post-Raul injury where we didn't create and he kept ignoring quality attacking players in Vitinha and MGW.

The only other three black marks against him for me would be:

- Weird subs vs Watford at Wembley, just neutered us for extra time, the game wasn't safe enough to do that
- Having a binary choice of Daniel Podence vs Dani Olmo and picking the wrong one
- Second string vs Southampton in the cup and then a full strength team vs Southampton in the league, come on now
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Giving the nod on Fabio at the point when he still had some clout. A long way behind Shi and Mendes, but he could have stopped it rather than shrugged his shoulders
 
I'm going to say he didn't have a call there. Uncle Jorge decided he wanted a drink and the owners asked him how many bottles he wanted.
 
He looked like a midfielder without a proper position within said midfield at the time, IMO. Very similar to Morgan in that way.

Didn’t help that we didn’t play with any central attackers (aside from a striker obv) under Nuno.
 
If he’d had gone on to develop with us as he as at PSG, we would have probably only enjoyed watching him for a season or so, we would have cashed in big style.
 
He's obviously taken a while to adapt to PSG (not helped by the ridiculous way they were playing prior to this season) but he looked genuinely world class the very next season after he left us. He's an absolutely outrageous footballer and his talent has never been in doubt. I can understand if we were faced with a straight decision between RAN & Vitinha as to which loans we made permanent why we went for RAN as RAN has a tremendous upside as well but we should never have been in that position. The deals we initially negotiated for those 2 players were both bargains at the time, it's testament to how quickly we fucked ourselves over with our other business in that period that we felt we had to choose between the two.
 
Johnny75 said:
Have to agree to disagree.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure if you look back at the threads on here from when he was let go (not really released as a free agent, we got a sell on when he went to Sporting) not one single person called it out as a huge error.

He was very very deep for our Academy teams and just looked like a tidy but unexceptional footballer, and definitely had nothing like the goal output he's gone on to have.

These things happen, a parallel I suppose would be something like Man Utd letting Beardsley and Platt go. Looks stupid years on but at the time seemed fair enough.

Edit: this is Pote, for the record. I thought Vitinha was an absolute no brainer to sign and that was clearly an error.
 
Deutsch Wolf said:
Pretty sure if you look back at the threads on here from when he was let go (not really released as a free agent, we got a sell on when he went to Sporting) not one single person called it out as a huge error.

He was very very deep for our Academy teams and just looked like a tidy but unexceptional footballer, and definitely had nothing like the goal output he's gone on to have.

These things happen, a parallel I suppose would be something like Man Utd letting Beardsley and Platt go. Looks stupid years on but at the time seemed fair enough.

Edit: this is Pote, for the record. I thought Vitinha was an absolute no brainer to sign and that was clearly an error.
Click to expand...
My issue with that one is why the hell was he playing in that position in the first place?

He moves to Famalição to play as an attacking midfielder, looks amazing and then explodes the season afterwards playing for Amorim's Sporting as an inside forward in a formation similar to Nuno's at Wolves.

Sporting have on occasion (usually due to injuries) played him as one of the central midfielders and he's looked exactly as you described, pretty safe but nothing special. I don't get how you can look at his qualities and play him anywhere other than in an attacking role.
 
Lycan said:
My issue with that one is why the hell was he playing in that position in the first place?

He moves to Famalição to play as an attacking midfielder, looks amazing and then explodes the season afterwards playing for Amorim's Sporting as an inside forward in a formation similar to Nuno's at Wolves.

Sporting have on occasion (usually due to injuries) played him as one of the central midfielders and he's looked exactly as you described, pretty safe but nothing special. I don't get how you can look at his qualities and play him anywhere other than in an attacking role.
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I suppose at the time we had the U23s (as was) exactly mirroring the first team's formation. So Marques was playing like a Junior Coady (and that then ended up being wasted when we no longer wanted the real thing). And any CM would have been mirroring Neves, Saiss (in 17/18) or Moutinho in a 3-4-3. There was no attacking midfielder as such and I don't think he ever looked like a Jota/Cavaleiro type at any point. Nuno also never even watched the Academy games in person and gave scant consideration to bringing any of them through.

We got it wrong but I can forgive them that, it's not one where we were clearly making an error at the time.
 
Nuno was just never going to alter things so much over one player, save Messi himself walking in.

Our "wingers" that season were Adama, Podence, and Neto, who I don't really see as analogues to Vitinha. Daniel (Podence, not Deutsch) maybe you could make a case, although I despise him and wouldn't want to sully Vitinha's honor with the comparison.

Edit: Oh, y'all weren't talking about Vitinha anymore :ROFLMAO:
 
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Yeah 5 league starts mainly on the left from memory, the exception being the Albion game when he ran the show from the middle until he tired.

I can see why we didn't sign him, but that was because of not seeing enough of him, not because of what he'd done in the rare opportunities he got. Essentially making a decision based on the opinion of a manager you sacked, but muddled thinking was the norm in that period.
 
Deutsch Wolf said:

Wolves Academy Thread

I can't believe Ricky Sbragia manages their lot.
www.wolvesforum.co.uk www.wolvesforum.co.uk

No-one had Goncalves down as what he'd become, honestly, no-one.
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I did mention in the very post you searched hard to make your point for that he's very Moutinho and being played as a winger didn't suit him.

On that I was right.
 
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It's not to say that no one thought he'd make it as a player (I also praise him a little bit on that page). It's that no one saw him as a 15-20 goal a season man. Probably not even himself.

I did read something the other week about Portugal's Euros contenders and there seems to be a school of thought that Martinez doesn't fancy him because if he doesn't score then he doesn't really do anything else. That's like a Bizarro Moutinho :D
 
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