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John from Bootle
Player Valuation: £15m
Take it on the chin? Hahaha.
You've yet to provide any proof that Dyche has ever said that he's not coached Branthwaite, ever. Even the Dyche quotes you used didn't say anything of the sort, in fact one of them even made reference to giving him pointers
Oh, it wasn't me who steered the conversation on to Dyche btw. I'm pretty sure I was replying to you for making proven to be false claims about Dyche, so please don't lecture me on where to post thank you very much.
Proper reply
Raino85
Player Valuation: £35m
The lads 17, being a regular in a Premier League first team squad at that age is a huge achievement these days. He's training every day with the first team. AT 17
The 9 subs things hasn't really helped kids at any clubs get into squads to be honest, its just made clubs get bigger squads.
John from Bootle
Player Valuation: £15m
Yeah, he's already made a big leap. What he needs to do is make the next leaps. It's fanciful to think he's close to the standard of about 5 of our centre mids at this point in his career.
mightymoyes
Player Valuation: £70m
our centre midfielders are turbo gash, that bar is not high.
John from Bootle
Player Valuation: £15m
I disagree tbh. I'm a big fan of Gana and Garner, and I like the look of Mangala. Doucoure is Doucoure, limited but offers something at this level, and if Armstrong is better than him already then we must have some potential player on our hands. Truth be told, he's behind Tim in the pecking order too by the looks of things.
It really is though, this is something that people just seem to consistently find really difficult to understand despite it being both incredibly obvious and proven repeatedly when players step up. Our central midfielders aren't great in the context of the cream of world football, but they are people who are making a living playing at the top level, in the most famous league in the world. The step up from junior football to that level is absolutely enormous, it really isn't helpful at all to pretend that a promising 17 year old kid is likely to perform better than experienced international players.
EFC_FRANCIS
Player Valuation: £35m
I don't think anyone will sit here and pretend Armstrong should be starting but giving him 2 minutes at the end of already decided games has virtually no value whatsoever. The step up is massive but as Big Red have shown time and time again you can get away with giving these youngsters meaningful minutes without too much of a drastic drop off over the short term.
He would not know a young player if he fell over one .....
He's doing fine where hes at performing at a level of his peers and involved in match day squads, odd first team mins and first team training.
That's incredible at 17 and hugely promising.
That's incredible at 17 and hugely promising.
It's a lot easier for Liverpool because they've got the quality to carry people. The chances of a young lad coming on and costing you the game are almost nil when you're Liverpool and 2 up at Anfield with the other players they have, it's not the same here where young players are going to be expected to perform as a functional part of the team otherwise the whole thing can totally unravel.
That wasn't really my point though, I've got no interest in turning this into yet another 'Dyche and Thelwell are the pits' thread. It's just this idea that it's easy for young players to come in and play and 'they can't be any worse'. They absolutely can. I totally get that we all want them to succeed and it can be annoying seeing the same faces underperforming, but it doesn't follow that throwing a kid in at the deep end is going to make things better. People wanted Lewis Warrington playing games 2 years ago and now he's struggled to get games at both Plymouth and Leyton Orient. It was totally unfathomable how Dobbin wasn't playing, only he's also not playing at a midtable Championship side now. Almost like it's not some mad Everton thing where we won't give people a chance but actually just a reflection of the ability of the players.
It's a huge step up, hopefully Armstrong will make it but it's ridiculous to make out like aiming to take the place of a current Belgian international with a £40m release clause isn't a high bar to be aiming for when you're a kid fresh out of school, and it totally devalues the achievements of these lads when people suggest stuff like that. It's also worth noting that while him coming for 5 minutes doesn't necessarily have any value to you, it probably does to him which you'd have to say is maybe a bit more important all things considered.
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Cameron Manning
Player Valuation: £35m
I agree with most of that but it must be said that when a team is really struggling, like Everton are, it is a lot harder to trust very young players with any game time———unless of course the game is won and they can be given ten minutes or more to introduce them to the premier league, so your view that two or three minutes has no value whatsoever is correct.
The problem with that is that this current Everton team can lose a game they're comfortably winning in less than 10 minutes!
This was my take from August 9th regarding Armstrong. I think he's pretty much bang on track and Dyche and Thelwell should be praised for how he's being handled. I can see why people are complaining about the cameo appearances and general lack of minutes. I think the key thing for this season was to bed him in to the first team squad, job done surely. Get his debuts out of the way, first sub appearance done, first start done. Now his mindset can naturally change to "how can I regularly get on the pitch". The call up to England u18 was a nice added bonus and will have only helped with his confidence. Hopefully he's targeting more minutes off the bench and certainly a start against Peterborough.
mightymoyes
Player Valuation: £70m
if/when Garner and Tim come back he'll likely never be seen again while Dyche is here