Ki Sung-Yong

I think a lot of Celtic fans underrate Ki because he didn't have "dig" or the heart, (like Kayal, Brown, Ledley and Vic all have) which is fair enough... he didn't. Don't think anyone can deny he has great technical ability though. In a league like the EPL where practically nobody has heart he thrives. Great on the ball, especially with lots of time like in the Prem. Also never wastes possession, always finds a pass even if it is backwards/sideways. Finally he has a great shot on him. He is a good player for Swansea cause he suits the way the play and the league they play in.... he didn't suit the way we played or the league we play in.

 

Suits us perfectly Pauly boy. Hasn't come near scoring get yet but not for lack of trying, has a tendency to have all his shots blocked but promisingly they always on target as opposed to in the crowd which is always frustrating. What pro footballer can't hit the target ffs. Whenever he gets the ball on edge of box the screams of shooooot come, when he finally smashes one in its gonna be pandemonium.

As a club without a profile outside West Wales he's also giving us publicity in Asia, lots of Koreans jumping on including a new contract signed today with some gaming company. Future promising and I hope he settles here. Wouldn't look out of place in a Chelsea or Man Utd midfield, type of teams that can accommodate a luxury player

 

He wasn't good enough for our starting 11 with Kayal Wanyam Ledley there.6 million was excellent business considering he was squad player. He just wasn't suited to the SPL. But i'm a big fan of Ki and very happy he's been superb down south.

 

Swansea are massive.

 

I don't rate Allen at all. Would much rather Ki at Liverpool than Allen.

Swap deal?

I called it ages ago, Ki is a very good player and better technically than all our other midfielders, yet bizarrely he wasn't good enough for Celtic or the SPL. It made no sense then and it makes no sense now, but Ki is better in a better league than a * one!

Bang on.

Almost every Scottish person you meet now acknowledges the need to implement a more European style from the bottom-to-top of our footballing structure, and know we need to improve the technical rather than the physical side of our game - and yet 99% of fans still get mad when a player can pass it better than he can knock lumps out another player!

It's ridiculous but sadly I can't see it changing.

 

Hopefully we have a clause that we get a cut when they sell him. £6million was a steal for a player of Ki's ability and marketability. If he'd played for an English, German, Russian or Italian team he'd have gone for atleast £12million. When Swansea sell him on, possibly to a team like Spurs, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea or maybe even Bayern, Milan, PSG or whoever they will probably get over £15million and we will look daft.

As the season goes on and more and more people notice his skill and passing, I think hes the best passer in the EPL on statistics, all he'll need to do is score 2/3/4/5 of his long range goals and it wouldnt suprise me to see Man U lining him up to replace Scholes.

 

He's already played for the biggest club he will ever play for...



:icon_mrgreen:

 

Just looking at his stats, Ki has the 3rd best pass completion behind Arteta and Gallas, the 2nd best long passing behind Scholes and 42nd best crosser, not bad considering hes a centre-mid.

Out all the top passers too he makes the most key passes(I assume they are ones that lead to goalscoring oppertunities. Averaging more than the other top midfield passers Scholes, Arteta, Britton, Allen, De Guzman, Cleverley, Mikel, Barry and Kagawa. He also beats them on crossing.

Looking at the stats id actually say his is the best in the EPL as he makes more crosses, long passes and creates more chances than Scholes or Arteta overall(the main competition) and his accuracy is 0.6% better than Scholes and 0.3% worse than Artetas but if you factor in hes creating more, crossing more and making more long passes it really is the best.

 

The in your face style of play in the SPL obviously did'nt suit him but in the premier league he has much more time.He is probably a better player for his experience in our league than if he had gone direct to the premier league.

 

I like Ki. He frustrated me at times for Celtic because I don't think he done enough defensively, his defensive awareness wasn't as good as Ledley's or Kayal's or Wanyama's, but he was a better passer of the ball than all three. Ledley is an underrated passer of the ball I feel, and I wouldn't be surprised if he had the highest pass completion stats for us this season in most games he played.

In a way I was sad to see Ki go because I think he is a good option in a 5 man midfield, but at the same time I didn't feel he was suited to the way we played. I'm happy that he's doing well at Swansea though, and I'm not surprised as he suits there style of play. Reckon when I go to Wales next month to visit family I might take a trip to Swansea and get a top with Ki. :icon_mrgreen:

 

This sums it up for me. Excellent player - it also sums up the mentality of fans in Scotland - wrote him off purely because he wasn't as willing to get 'stuck in' the same way other midfielders do. This is why we will never progress in quality as a country...

 

Yes, I'm sure the late great Jock Stein obsessed so much over statistics such as the above before signing players.

 

You cannot seriously be comparing the 2? Completely different era's - football is a completely different game now...

 

That's airbrushing over the full story. Ki was willing to 'get stuck in', infact he had a fee absolute horror tackles in his time here.

What isn't accetable for a centre midfielder who plays for celtic is any lack of defensive nous whatsoever. At Celtic you need to win every game and not concede sloppy goals, at Swansea they just need to play pretty football.

There is a world of difference. Give me a Paul Lambert over a Ki any day of the week.

 

I think that's a bit unfair.

Not only didn't he get "stuck in", he also very rarely controlled a game.

You never really came away from a game thinking he had bossed it with his passing. Also I struggle to remember thinking, "what a pass!" when thinking about Ki. Both things he should be known for.

He was a decent player for us but maybe we just didn't play to his strengths.

Good luck to him.

 

I'd take Paul Lambert over Ki any day of the week as well! His style just wanted suited to playing hatchet men on tight pitches up at Inverness etc. My point is that he had great technical ability and the EPL will allow him to show it a lot more.

 

Most definitely, however it wasn't Ki's ability to get stuck in why he wasn't as appreciated as much as he perhaps should have been (I was and still am a big fan) it was his lack of defending that did it.

Look at Nakamura, didn't get stuck in whatsoever, still tracked back and squeezed down space very, very well. Cleer defending you see? Ki just couldn't do that, in the centre of the pitch for Celtic, with full backs overlapping constantly and the wide men pushing forward, you just couldn't get away with that.

 

I never said anything about comparing the two eras.

Any good manager/scout can spot a talent without having to heavily rely on all of these pedantic stats - stats which can mask a person's performance imo.

I doubt Alex Ferguson - without doubt still one of the best managers around does so.

 

He never showed much at Celtic granted, but for Korea he is brilliant. In the Olympics he made tonnes of last minute tackles and great interceptions ect, and for Swansea he's basically a defensive mid.

 

He might, I bet Man U collect their own stats on players and analyse them - or pay that Opta mob for full data of all their games and indivdual players, not just their passing or passing accuracy but what areas of the pitch they tend to play on, how many tackles they make, how many times they lose the ball, how much distance they cover and their overall movement across the park basically everything they do on the park.

Its an easy way to point out to players what you want them to do better or change. IE. They could point out to Nani for example with his whole game on a screen how heavily he remains in one area of the pitch or tends to run 20 yards turn back and pass and point out to him they want him to move around more, occupy that space less, tend not to repeat the same behaviour, shoot more from a certain areas he scores from more etc

After all, Genius managers are really only genius managers as they can analyse stuff better than others, like spotting behaviour in players, ways to manipulate players to keep them happy, spot their abilities and how to knit certain players styles with others and come up with tactics and formations etc etc etc they're great because theyre just great at seeing those things.

Jock Stein for example moved certain players positions. Lennox from centre to left, Gemmell from right-mid to left back, Murdoch from forward to holding mid, Auld from left-wing to centre mid. He signed Wallace who would complement Chalmers as he played a bit deeper and was more of a playmaker. He noticed their abilities would be put to better use in different positions to what they'd been played in before and he tweaked the tactics to suit them. He could probably read their personalities as if they were written down infront of him on peices of paper and ended up with a squad of good players becoming one of the best teams of all time.