09 Sep 2025 21:42:34
Couple of observations on England tonight, Noni is a very good player, was sad to see him go. I got pelters from some on here for saying he was decent and I wish we could of kept him. Petrovic on the other hand is totally useless, some dig out Sanchez but that Petrovic is really poor, so glad he turned down the chance to play for the champions of the world.
10 Sep 2025 09:22:34
I agreewith you about Noni Greenaway and have posted in the past about how he seemed one of the few sufficiently physical players we had in attack at times to barge past defenders and get to the yline or get a shot off on target and with goals in him too. Yes his final decision making not always perfect and shots quite often wild but then we've had few wingers in recent times who you couldn't say the same about.
In terms of current ones, Neto has had some really fine games but even he has also some headless chicken moments though can't be faulted on workrate. It's early days but one has wondered whetrher eg Gittens is an upgrade or not and we have yet to see how Garnacho fares in terms of comparison. Point is that Noni had built up a pretty good understanding with other players and not least with Cole Palmer and the scale of our outgoings and incoming in recent seasons may have had an adverse effect on creatining and maintaining such understandings in all parts of the pitch.
10 Sep 2025 11:42:05
JBS, hopefully Estevao can build that telepathic relationship with Palmer, Neto and Pedro? what a 4 that is with Garnacho, Gittens, George and Delap backing them up.
10 Sep 2025 13:02:24
Agree generally on Noni, Greenaway and JBS (questioning whether Gittens, for example, is an upgrade – very early days and hard to tell), though would add that he was always capable of having an absolute stormer on his day like last night, but was equally capable of being almost totally absent from a game, looking petulant and disinterested.
Perhaps wingers who dare to take on their fullbacks, when they're not the absolute top level who can consistently do it, will always have that trait of causing massive frustration in fans – trying things that don't come off when you're not quite at it will always be really visible in that situation, and top-level football turns on such tiny margins. Plus, we also get frustrated when they don't take on the fullback and pass it back down the line from a good attacking position!
A lot of our wingers have looked too 'head down' apart from Palmer when he's on the wing, and now Estevao. And that's probably also in part because they're very young – Noni, too. But as I've said on here before, someone like Willian also had that trait of being able to frustrate me beyond all else (when he did that slowing down thing to take a man on one on one, which often just allowed the opposition defence to reset), and he was an experienced pro at the time. If we look back on him as a legend now it's because, ultimately, across his time at the club in retrospect his general level and output was high, rather than looking at individual moments in individual games (absolutely carried us at points, as I remember – free kicks when we were absolutely rubbish during Mourinho pt. II) . We'll never know if Noni would have been at that level, but I'm with JBS in suspecting that a constant churn of players doesn't necessarily help us on the pitch.
10 Sep 2025 15:08:31
I agree that a constant turnover of players is not needed and I'm not sure if Gittens is an upgrade on Noni but I have a feeling Garnacho might be a surprise to both myself and others, he has the ability to beat his man and also knows how to score, I'm having a punt on him being a success.
10 Sep 2025 17:05:59
We are all guessing but the manager made it very clear that Noni had discipline issues. I’m sure that would have been a factor in the club’s decision to sell him.
I gave my take on Gittens pre us signing him. In my opinion he is very direct and he is willing to have a crack at goal from outside the box. I had one slight reservation about him and that was he has a tendency to play with his head down. I would like to think that our coaches can help him with that issue.
I enjoyed reading the thread lads.
10 Sep 2025 18:00:13
I have to say I don’t rate Noni, I always found him frustrating to watch. I’m not sure how much game time he will get with Saka around. When it matters Saka will always start ahead of him. Tom, I get what you said about players playing with their heads down but it’s suprising that winger who has gone through the academy process and played in a top tier league hasn’t learned that yet.
10 Sep 2025 18:43:20
I assume they all go through an academy but some never seem to learn. I seem to remember thinking the same about Ronaldo when he first appeared in a Utd shirt. I well remember how frustrated some of there players were when he continued to run down blind alleys.
As I say some will never learn, some seem to have a natural ability from an early age to see a picture but some just take time.