David Brooks

AFCBade said:
Cant see us keeping brooks - too many clubs interested
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Doesn’t matter how many are interested. If we don’t want to sell then we don’t have to. Reports are we have placed a 40m price tag on him. Would drive him there for that. But if not he’s here next season.
 
Waz afcb said:
Doesn’t matter how many are interested. If we don’t want to sell then we don’t have to. Reports are we have placed a 40m price tag on him. Would drive him there for that. But if not he’s here next season.
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Agreed....everything, and in this case, everyone is negotiable.
 
Waz afcb said:
Doesn’t matter how many are interested. If we don’t want to sell then we don’t have to. Reports are we have placed a 40m price tag on him. Would drive him there for that. But if not he’s here next season.
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Depends if brooks wants to force his way out. Seen what happens when players don’t want to stay. I would sell for sure at £40m - although that’s cheap vs likely grealish fee
 
Brooks could turn out to be an amazing player. Or injury prone and look more like post restart form we saw.
I’d definitely try and bring him in more central. Looks wasted out on the wing and seemed to drift out of games. Creativity has been our issue, so play him as a 10.
If we have enough teams interested and could squeeze £40mil for him than I would sell as that’s great money for him.
 
Brooks wide right in a proper front 3 with overlapping full backs would be a position which really suits him.

Wide right in a 4 man midfield is a waste of his talents but so would playing centrally in a 4 man midfield.

It’s not wide v central which is the issue, it’s about the freedom the formation allows him.
 
Tinpot Club said:
Brooks wide right in a proper front 3 with overlapping full backs would be a position which really suits him.

Wide right in a 4 man midfield is a waste of his talents but so would playing centrally in a 4 man midfield.

It’s not wide v central which is the issue, it’s about the freedom the formation allows him.
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Some of his best performances came in a 4-2-3-1 formation. Playing wide, with freedom to come inside as the formation was fluid and the three did move around and had freedom to double centrally or out-wide.

Some claimed it was a simple 4-4-1-1 or even 4-4-2, but it wasn’t.
 
DJ said:
Some of his best performances came in a 4-2-3-1 formation. Playing wide, with freedom to come inside as the formation was fluid and the three did move around and had freedom to double centrally or out-wide.

Some claimed it was a simple 4-4-1-1 or even 4-4-2, but it wasn’t.
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Eddie’s teams are (sorry were) more fluid than 442 quoted but the defence gets exposed when wide players like brooks and king were expected to track back to help defend. Brooks did it well when we beat palace in 18/19 when he helped mark Zaha out of the game but not always the case.
 
AFCBade said:
Eddie’s teams are (sorry were) more fluid than 442 quoted but the defence gets exposed when wide players like brooks and king were expected to track back to help defend. Brooks did it well when we beat palace in 18/19 when he helped mark Zaha out of the game but not always the case.
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couldn’t agree with this more. The flaw with Eddie’s formation and tactics (imho) is that it always provided our pacey / creative players with a free role in attack, but it required them to track back and help out the full-backs when defending. It’s a knackering and arguably unsustainable role to expect a forward to perform over 90 minutes - not just in terms of fitness but also in terms of mindset and discipline ... and explains why we always tended to sub off those players after 60-70 minutes. King, Fraser, Stan and Brooks were each pretty good at playing the role, but each of them still failed at various points and it only takes one instance of not busting a gut to get back for us to concede, eg most recently, King against Everton - he tracked back for 43 minutes of the first half and the one time he didn’t, they scored. Harry Wilson was an absolute liability in that role.
 
AFCBade said:
Depends if brooks wants to force his way out. Seen what happens when players don’t want to stay. I would sell for sure at £40m - although that’s cheap vs likely grealish fee
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He’s an utter w*****r if he tries to force his way out. We’ve paid his wages for a year!
 
Waz afcb said:
He’s an utter w*****r if he tries to force his way out. We’ve paid his wages for a year!
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I wouldn't blame him at all. Eddie previously has stated that when signing young players he has to also commit long term to help them realise their potential. That landscape has now changed.

Ultimately these guys only have a 15 year career. Despite that, there are ways to leave and ways not to, as we have found out this season.
 
Waz afcb said:
He’s an utter w*****r if he tries to force his way out. We’ve paid his wages for a year!
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No we didn’t, the insurance company did. And as for Brooks owing us another year at least (your comment above), no he doesn’t, he doesn’t owe us anything. He is no different to any other employee in any other business, he does a job, he gets paid. And like any other employee in any other business sometimes people get sick (or injured in this case) that’s life.

The reality is a footballer has around 15 years to ply his trade and make enough money for the future, it’s a very short career. And like many other people in life, if a better opportunity comes along then more often than not people take it, footballers are no different. This misguided notion that players owe “us“ just isn’t realistic.
 
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This is the one which will hurt the most for me, given how little we have seen of him. I really thought he could be the linchpin around which a promotion-chasing team could be built.

At the very least, we should hold out for the right amount here. If Sancho was going to be 108m, surely Brooks is worth at least 40m?
 
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