I know we should always be wary of showreels but I prefer my defenders to stay on their feet a bit more, i.e. Des Walker rather than Richard 'last-ditch' Keogh.
Obviously reserve judgement for when he plays and, of course, the Italian league tends to breed solid defenders, but the fact he seems to like to slide into every tackle he makes concerns me. The speed of the Premier League means he'd need to win almost all of them to not leave his defence horribly exposed.
Hopefully so. The Premier League is a pretty unforgiving place and if you slide into the vast majority of your tackles as a defender, you need to ensure you, a) win the ball every time, and, b) get it to a safe place. Nobody can guarantee that.
I remember Alan Rogers having to knock that out of his game early on when he was perhaps understandably trying a bit too hard to harness the spirit of Psycho. Once you're on your arse, you're out of the game if you miss the tackle.
Those stats suggest that he is exceptional (vs Serie A yardstick) in winning headers & “defensive duels”. He’s not afraid to be physical & aggressive. Of course he’s going to give away some free kicks, cos that’s the nature of string defending.
I don’t get sone of our fans; they correctly say we badly need to improve our defence, but the moment we take steps to do so it’s “oh dear, he goes to ground too much” and “oh dear, he might give away free kicks”.
Do you spend your entire time worrying about the rest of your life in the same way? “Oh dear, my new T shirt might run in the wash”, “Oh dear, the book I’ve just bought might not be any good”.
How about we see how he adapts to our league and how well he plays for us, instead of wetting our pants on the basis of a few clios on YouTube? Just a thought.
Are people wetting their pants? Forest don’t have a game for a month, it’s fun to speculate where new players might fit in, how they might do and what their strengths and weaknesses might end up being. And also to trying to spot what is being hidden in favourably edited YouTube clips.