Why start Greenwood? aka the invisible man!

BoroPhil said:
Yeah but it is his first full season. One year older than Pharrell Willis. If Willis breaks into the team next season and is 2nd in the goal contributions charts but fades after xmas I think we'll be delighted.
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I think if the player with 5 goals and 3 assists from 32 appearances is second in our goal contribution charts next season then we’ll be continuing to tread water and absolutely nowhere near winning promotion.

Willis broke through last season and has been missing for months with a serious injury. He’s lost a year of his career, pretty much. The difference between him and Greenwood is significant. One is a youth team product with little or no experience, one arrived to go straight into a first-team set-up that was supposed to be targeting promotion.

If Willis or someone else from the youths gets 5 goals and 3 assists next season then great. If we sign someone to put straight into our team and they give us what Greenwood has done this campaign then that’s not good enough imo. It isn’t anywhere near good enough for where we want to be. Unless we’re happy to just keep plodding along in division two.
 
viv_andersons_nana said:
I think if the player with 5 goals and 3 assists from 32 appearances is second in our goal contribution charts next season then we’ll be continuing to tread water and absolutely nowhere near winning promotion.

Willis broke through last season and has been missing for months with a serious injury. He’s lost a year of his career, pretty much. The difference between him and Greenwood is significant. One is a youth team product with little or no experience, one arrived to go straight into a first-team set-up that was supposed to be targeting promotion.

If Willis or someone else from the youths gets 5 goals and 3 assists next season then great. If we sign someone to put straight into our team and they give us what Greenwood has done this campaign then that’s not good enough imo. It isn’t anywhere near good enough for where we want to be. Unless we’re happy to just keep plodding along in division two.
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That's the point though, before this season Greenwood didn't have a lot of experience himself. This is more of a breakout season for him than you are giving him credit for imo.
Maybe you are right and he won't kick on from here, I'm certainly not convinced he will one way or another. But there is a chance we develop him this season and he goes somewhere else next year and continues to progress and improve.
 
viv_andersons_nana said:
t. If we sign someone to put straight into our team and they give us what Greenwood has done this campaign then that’s not good enough imo.
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I’m not sure we signed Greenwood to play 40 odd games this season…. Probably more like 15-20 including the cups

Think he was signed as a backup / different option to McGree / Rogers etc but injuries have obviously affected plans
 
AytonMews said:
I’m not sure we signed Greenwood to play 40 odd games this season…. Probably more like 15-20 including the cups

Think he was signed as a backup / different option to McGree / Rogers etc but injuries have obviously affected plans
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If we are signing players on loan to play 15-20 games then it’s just a colossal waste of money imo. It’s borderline negligence. Any player signed should be good enough to go straight into the team otherwise you’re accumulating a wild, incoherent mess of players like Sunderland or Everton. We have this obsession with building a squad. But if you buy players for the team the squad takes care of itself.
 
We couldn’t possibly keep 23 “first team players” happy… or indeed afford to sign / pay 23 first team players. You need squad players.
 
BoroPhil said:
That's the point though, before this season Greenwood didn't have a lot of experience himself. This is more of a breakout season for him than you are giving him credit for imo.
Maybe you are right and he won't kick on from here, I'm certainly not convinced he will one way or another. But there is a chance we develop him this season and he goes somewhere else next year and continues to progress and improve.
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Yep, take your point about his own lack of experience tbf. But to me I just haven’t seen enough from him. We need better quality. Last season Ramsey got 5 goals and an assist in 11 appearances. He made a real difference to the way we played. That’s the standard we need. If they’re not at that standard then personally I don’t think we should be signing them. We absolutely need much, much better quality.
 
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AytonMews said:
We couldn’t possibly keep 23 “first team players” happy… or indeed afford to sign / pay 23 first team players. You need squad players.
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We added Greenwood when we already had Jones, Forss, McGree, Silvera, Rogers, Crooks, Coburn and Latte Lath to play the attacking positions. We’ve stockpiled numbers. You should be buying players to go into the team imo. I’ve always said that on here. I don’t believe in spending money unless it’s to improve the first eleven. Spending money on a loan player to play 15-20 games is an even bigger waste of resources. Your youth system is supposed to be for that.
 
It’s a good job we did sign him, with the injuries we’ve had!

Probably a nominal loan fee and paying about £10k a week of his wages. He’s made some useful contributions for that.
 
AytonMews said:
That’s nice in theory, but not really affordable or achievable in the real world
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We are told money is at a premium at Boro and yet people are defending the idea that the club would spend good money on someone who’s ideally only going to play in half the games, and has barely contributed anything of note since Christmas. He’s got three times as many yellow cards as he since January 1st. It’s not good enough.

One of the biggest reasons we’re still treading water in the second division is because we continue to blow money on players who don’t produce. The squad is packed with them. It needs to change. That ‘warchest’ we keep reading about on here needs to be spent on the team. The actual team. Otherwise we will be in exactly the same position this time next year.
 
First team players want first team player wages though

Squad players like Greenwood etc will be on less.


We simply can’t afford to pay 20+ first team players like Lenihan Dieng etc… you need a few cheapies
 
AytonMews said:
First team players want first team player wages though

Squad players like Greenwood etc will be on less.


We simply can’t afford to pay 20+ first team players like Lenihan Dieng etc… you need a few cheapies
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We already had cheaper players. We sold or lost the quality from last season and largely spent the money on players who were no better than what we already had.

We needed two quality strikers. We signed one. We needed two quality wide players. We signed one and sold him within a few months. We needed a defensive midfielder. We didn’t sign him. We needed a quality left back. We added two left backs and the jury is out on both imo. We added a good keeper and a brilliant young centre half. The rest? Take Latte Lath out and there’s barely anything to build on.

We are no further forward now than we were last summer. We are arguably weaker imo because we’ve spent another year’s of money to regress. To stand still at absolute best. It’s been a completely wasted season. We’ve raised some money in the transfer market but as it stands I’m not that confident we’ll spend it wisely. We went into January needing to strengthen and came out of it weaker. It’s mental that they did that imo. Absolutely bizarre.
 
A player whose main asset is he is invisible would be a handy squad member to have. For a start we could field 12 players and say we have 11! And he could foul all game and the opposition would think they were possessed. And the goals we could score! A player could have a pretend swing and the Invisible Greenwood could carry it all the way to the back of the net! Sign him on!
 
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