Really?

Doucoure was our POTY last year and it is well-stated that his injury leaves us woefully short in the CDM department. If Wharton is to replace anyone, I would suggest it is more likely to be Lerma.

Spent a couple of hours this afternoon looking at videos of Wharton.

From what I’ve seen I reckon he would play well alongside Doucoure but not so much alongside Lerma. If you throw Ozoh into the mix, then to me this would leave Doucoure, Lerma, Ozoh and Wharton for two spaces in the side. This of course relegates Richards back to where he should be as first swap at CH and largely makes Riedewald and Hughes redundant. As a result I reckon we could see them both move on in the summer along with Tomkins and Clyne and possibly Schlupp.

Assuming no sales of core players I would see our squad looking more balanced as follows:

Goalkeepers
Johnstone Henderson+1
RB- Munoz, Imray
LB- Mitchell +1 (possibly Adaramola but I reckon we’ll need to buy a LB).
CH- Guehi, Andersen, Richards, Holding
CM- Doucoure, Lerma, Wharton, Ozoh
RM- Olise, Ahamada, Rak-Sakhi
LM- Ayew, Schlupp, Ebiowei
AM- Eze, Franca
CF- Mateta, Edouard

That’s a half decent 25 player squad (with a couple that could be played as youngsters so don’t need to b in the squad), but there is obviously room for improvement and the addition of quality in the forward positions particularly.

Edited by Eaglecoops (30 Jan 2024 4.33pm)

I dont see why people are saying who he replaces , thats so and so out the door and suchlike .

The whole point and what we have lacked as opposed to much of our premier league opposition is the depth of squad ability to rotate ect .
As we have seen with Olise you can't play young growing bodies every week ,they need to come in and out of the side .

In short there is room for everyone

And we still need a striker

If Parish lands Wharton I’ll be glad all over again.

What a solid nucleus him, Lerma, Hughes and Doucoure would be allowing us to switch things up a bit , rest and rotate players according to the game plan.

Edited by XKudu (30 Jan 2024 5.51pm)

Spot on. 2 players for every position, other than 3 keepers and strikers plus one other, should be what we are aiming for. And in reality after 10 years should really be.

My complaint has been the lack of depth in the squad. That has been the worse it has been since we were promoted. The first starting players may be better but our bench options have been so poor.

My only concern is attacking options still are poor.

This post has been merged from a topic called 'Adam Wharton' by becky

He'll take one look at Wharton and tell him he can have a start as a ball-boy