Daizen Maeda

Good on him for calling it how it is. Telling the truth and not looking out for the boards best interests.

because let’s be honest that’s all they care about. Maeda hasn’t said anything the fans already didn’t think was going on.

but what he has done now is show us all the absolute * that was truly going on behind the scenes.

we thought Yang was the bombshell…..

 

High enough? I have to disagree.

He's great on the wing and up front usually (if he's motivated).

We seem to have a ceiling on our expectations as sellers, I really think we need to up it.

But Meada coming out publicly and saying he wants to leave will lower any potential value now.

The whole thing is just a * show now. Truly * stuff.

If the boards intentions are to hoard money
then they've severely * up in this window.

Lost us millions.

 

If - and it's a big if - £27 million was the figure Brentford offered, we’d be batshit insane to turn that down imo.

Maeda isn’t an O’Reilly or a young Tierney with considerable upside, he’s already in his peak and a player who relies heavily on his physical attributes to be effective. I’m not downplaying his importance to us, he was far and away our best player last season, but once that pace starts to go, respectfully there’s not a * of a lot else there to fall back on.

I’m preaching to the choir here, but our recruitment and player trading model has been shown this summer to be woefully inadequate. It’s all well and good selling Kyogo for £10 million, Kuhn for 16.5 and Idah for 7 but if you can’t adequately replace them, you’re not going to get anywhere. And the knock on effect is that players like Daizen who should be sold, then can’t be sold.

We seem to be hellbent on shopping in a market that no longer exists. Things have moved on ffs. Spending 750K or 1.5 million in the J-League no longer gets you close to what it did just a few years ago. Offering under 2 million for Dutch or Belgium side’s best prospects isn’t going to cut it.

Look at Feyenoord. They sold 95 million euros worth of talent this summer, yet they also spent 55 million to replace them. There’s absolutely no doubt that those replacements would have been extensively scouted well in advance, and alternatives would have been lined up in case the deals couldn’t be done. That’s the type of transfer strategy we should be pursuing.

 

Last word of any fee was £17m.

If, and again like others, a very sceptical if on the £27m shout. If that was the fee, and we knocked it back.

That’s the only thing remotely close to putting the team on the pitch infront of the bank balance.

 

That there is the reason the fee of £27m is believable at all. It’s not massive money down there, and they attributes he genuinely might be the best in the world at. Bayern players were * amazed at it, focused on that and that alone when we played them and got caught out still.

Any team in the world could be doing with that. A major team, what a sub option it’d be, a team like Brentford? It’d be invaluable, and Maeda as more a presser and counter attack style would probably be more suited than what he faces here

 

Yeah, on one hand it’s kind of believable. Prices in the EPL are obviously insane and like you say, Maeda could be very valuable in the right system/situation. The role he played at the World Cup gives a hint at how he could be effective at a post-Thomas Frank Brentford or similar level club. Moving him central against Bayern at home was the catalyst for that game changing. They went from comfortably seeing the match out to all of a sudden being under significant pressure. And that was Bayern Munich!

On the other hand, the thing that would make you doubt a club being willing to spend almost £30 million on him are his glaringly obvious technical shortcomings. There are times where parts of his game look average compared to even some of the SPL dross he’s playing against lol.

 

Moving him from one position to another has been devastating more than once last season. Scouting by stats is very popular just now. Maeda’s ground covered, pressure off the ball, tracking back etc etc. it is genuinely exceptional, Eric Dier’s snippet about Bayern’s reaction being disbelief when they highlighted it shows a glimpse of that. He’s also scored a decent amount in the CL, and even seasons previous when he wasn’t as prolific, think Ange’s CL season he still had a load of chances for xG, he put them away last season.

Stat wise he’ll be very impressive. And then they’d watch him, and that will cement it. He has loads of faults but there’s not a club in the world that wouldn’t value the stuff he is one of the best in the world at. And honestly, might be the best at.

 

Defo half arsed them chances and pen in the CL didn’t he

 

I dont think we would have rejected £27 million for him. The £17 million figure sounds a lot more accurate, and if its true that was bid in June then we were right to reject it.

Can't be harbouring players that want out however. Realistically, this was the best time for us to sell Maeda too, so it's a massive * up however you look at it.

Makes a lot of sense why his form plummeted recently, head was turned.

He has given us 3 and a half years so far, its not like he's joined and immediately wanted to leave, so I dont have any ill will towards him.

Hopefully he's able to rediscover his form up until January, where I expect he'll leave.

 

Hes just * at penaltys. Didn't he score one of his last ones by kicking the ball with his shin or something? I mind him saying after it he totally miss kicked it.

 

Look at the fact Stuttgart were bidding €28m for Oh who wasn’t even a regular at 24. There is a shortage of top strikers out there especially ones that made an impression in the CL. I doubt we would have got £27m up front for him but given we were very reluctant to sell and we are talking about a deal at the end of the window there are a lot of teams who sold players for massive inflated fees that means £27m was not that enormous a fee.

However, the lack of CL this year is why I now fear we will get a fraction of that if he goes in January.

 

Glad his situation has been made public, the guy deserved the move if the price was right, mow we have another player that is clearly * off, looking at the body language and form of many players in the first team shows there is serious problems off the field, even KT looks * off and that man has the hoops in his blood. Hopefully there will be a major discussion with players, management and boardroom staff to resolve all the problems so everything can be focused on the pitch so we maintain the standard of football that the fans demand as things on the pitch have not been right for a while.

 

The price obviously wasnt right or we would have accepted.

 

That's not true. It wasn't accepted because we were utterly incapable of signing anyone of note during that window and we blocked his move because we couldn't replace him. Inept recruitment is the only reason he's still here. And now we have an unhappy player on our hands. A * up all round.

 

If they came in with 30m we'd accept. Fact is it was at a low enough level to say no.

 

If we had even a semi adequate recruitment team he'd be gone. We left ourselves in a state where we couldn't accept a bid no matter how high it was.

 

Again, if they came in with an offer we could not refuse then we would have. Why would we sell a 30+ goal striker/winger for only 17m?

 

Only kidding anyway (ish)

Aye he’s * at them. Anything he has time at he turns into some celebrity playing in soccer aid.

Yeah that was against rangers scuffed one along the ground somehow it went in the corner. Theres yer 5th pen taker when theirs £50m on the line. Circus of a club atm.

 

How can you scuff a stationary ball, with a 5 yard run up

Exactly reason we need to keep him on the wing.

 

As I said, we denied his move because we couldn't replace him. Thats it. It wasn't down to finances, it was down to the fact that we had no one else. We haven't replaced Kyogo since January. And now haven't replaced Kuhn or Idah either. What chance did we have of replacing Daizen?