Alex Valle

Still finding his feet, so to speak ha ha- Seemed to loose his footing a few times.
Was sloppy a few times.
His loose play will get punished bigtime midweek

 

I thought he done pretty well until his final ball a lot of the time yesterday. He had that one time in between their first and second goal where he was poor in defending an Aberdeen counter but I thought he was mainly ok. He done well to get in good positions wide left but as I say needs to finding someone with the cross; there was one with Idah in the second half in particular.

 

Agree with that for the first 60/70 minutes or so, then seemed to lose confidence. Think we have to be careful of that.

 

Only we could sign a LB from Barca who isn't an upgrade on Taylor..

 

He's defintely better than Bernabei, but Taylor is a seasoned pro with a lot of experience, and he has so far seen off all suitors.

Would like to see Valle in a more settled back four with CCV back and a more compact midfield, to have a better assessment of him.

 

Aye, it was tongue in cheek.. Taylor is underrated and too early to assess Valle..

Edit: Having said that our recruitment at LB since KT left has been totally unacceptable.

 

I think he tired in the game, and that impacted his performance towards the end. I said it in another thread but I don’t understand why Rodgers didn’t put McCowan on at the same time as Idah and then we could have flung Yang or Palma on for Valle at the end when they were just penned in and Trusty was up playing like a left winger. Yang might have caused some chaos with his dribbling and Palma could have popped up back post.

 

He definitely tired. He seemed to do Ok when clattered early on but think he got a bit lost in the physical challenges and nature of the game and his passing became pretty poor, even when not under pressure. Rodgers needs to have an option ready if Taylor isn't available to get him off the park as can't be asking him to be an ever present.

 

I'm not worried about Idah. I think people look at the price tag and forget he was bought to be developed. He has pace, height and strength and you have to imagine Rodgers believes he can develop him given how much he pushed for him; but he has flaws that needf to be worked on. We knew that, right?

Trusty, I'll judge if/when he plays in his natural position.

 

Idah is almost 24 he isn't going to improve much more.

We got absolutely robbed for a mediocre player. He did us a turn last season but with the fee involved we should have walked away.

 

He's 4 months away from 24. That's a third of a year. So he's 23: was Liam Scales good enough for Celtic at 23? Good enough now, though, isn't he?

 

Not too mention that a professional footballers peak career years are typically 27-29 years old so there certainly is plenty of room for growth with Idah given he will be still only 24 when this season finishes.

 

No, he's not. I like him but if we want to move forward in Europe Scales has to be like 4th/5th choice. We need to stop judging players on how they perform when we're beating teams comfortably domestically and based on that we have 1 defender who is good enough for Europe and that's CCV.

Idah has shown nothing to suggest he'll ever be as good as even Giakoumakis and he cost around 1/3 with a far superior record.

It was typical Rodgers in his blindness for players outside of England. He's a decent player but he's absolutely not worth anywhere near what we paid.

 

There's definitely less value for money in the English market; but unfortunately for us, that's the market Rodgers knows.
The point about Scales was just how much he has developed since he was Idah's age. If Rodgers can develop Idah to anything like that extent, then he could be a very exciting prospecty indeed. He has a higher ceiling than Giakoumakis due to his physical stats. That kind of pace, power and height would be totally out of our budget if he was the finished article.

I'm honestly quite excited by him.

 

Well, there’s no buyback so a return is guaranteed

 

I thought he offered more in defence that Taylor though was fairly slack moving forward. I didn't worry so much when the ball went down that side as when he actually had the ball.

 

Mixed bag. I think he's got potential though...

 

Left back position is his to lose now

 

Thought he was excellent