Good news for the future of the club if both are deployed in the right way. Both have had their better games this season when playing as part of a three. Poor as a pair as both are easily our muscled and provide no creativity.
In a three, Bates can be allowed more time on the ball to get us going forward as the spare man without having to get into a dogfight with his opposing number. Kinsella can press higher up the pitch, meaning we can play more in the opposing half.
Key recruitment on the back of this would be the right midfielder to play alongside them in the absence of Holden
I think Bates gets a fair bit of unfair stick at times. He is quite a few years behind Kinsella in his development. Bates has had some real stinkers but this is to be expected surely at his age. He has shown enough to me to say there is a good player with potential in there. Whether he will make it or not remains to be seen.
I’m obviously a bit out of kilter with most but agree with @Thanatos in that I’d have maybe given Bates a year and regretfully let Kinsella go.
With Kinsella I think people get fooled by his often horizontally sliding state. English football fans love horizontally sliding footballers far more than they do players who read the game and in doing so stay on their feet and make it look easier. We often value what we perceive as effort up and above skill and ability.
Kinsella is often found horizontally sliding because he is reacting to something - often his first or second touch. Indeed on Saturday he ended their number 8’s game because his third touch took the ball too far. I know lots of people will have enjoyed the crunching tackle but surely we have to expect somebody to be able to move the ball a yard out of his feet and not accidentally move it five yards out of his feet.
I’d also refer you to their first goal on Saturday where he didn’t track his man. Kinsella walking around whilst his man ran a bit.
These just in the last game. The fact he was mine and many others man of the match kind of beside the point because he was a 6/10 at best. His effort just made him a bit less ■■■■. But it still didn’t make him very good.
I love Kinsella’s effort and undoubted commitment but surely your central midfielder needs to be able to offer a bit more? Unless of course we are now resigned to fourth division survival as our mid-term aspiration.
I think in the short term just ‘survival’ is an outcome. In this respect keeping some homegrown on the books instead of getting unknowns in is a decent strategy.
Amazes me that instead of looking at why our midfield as a whole doesn’t provide the things you are talking about, we look at the one player in that area that’s doing is job. There are plenty of top level midfielders that do the same thing, it’s who you have around them that counts
Maybe he’s making those horizontal slides because the bloke next to him is too fat to track back?
That’s fair. Hadn’t thought of it like that. My Walsall world is framed by us being the archetypal third division club. When we are below that level, my view is that we should be fighting at the very top of the level below to re-attain our natural status. And to do that we need either very good fourth division players or good third division players.
But these aren’t normal times and my “normal” framing maybe overly rosey. Getting by and just surviving are now very real aspirations even as a fourth division club for a bit. And in that context signing average fourth division players who you know the club and its survival matters to isn’t a bad call.
I may just need a strong alcoholic chaser with each match until we can lift our sights once more.
Aside from a couple of stray passes I thought Bates was probably our best player on Saturday. Neat short and longer range passing.
He doesn’t seem the prospect he looked early on last season but there’s a talent in there. With confidence and the right coaching he’ll be playing Championship level football in a couple of years.
He’s not quite the master yet, but I’m sure that he’ll come good. The gaffer used to be a midfield anchor so I’m sure he’ll take him in hand. Not a big fan of a manager pulling off the younger players so hopefully he’ll give him a chance to grow in to his midfield position. I think that he can develop but he needs to open his legs a bit more so he can penetrate into the box and hit the target as he grows into manhood in his more advanced years. Could be quite handy though
Great to see our own lads getting new deals, let’s hope a mixture of loan kids from bigger clubs, hasbeens on meal tickets and mates of the Manager, don’t block their progress and the progress of other Academy products.
So am I? You can’t talk about Kinsella, or any player, without assessing those around him. You talked about British fans judging players by how far they slide horizontally, well I find that fans often miss the point that even world class players can look average with the wrong players around him. I’m not for a minute suggesting he is, but if we are going to assess a player you also have to assess the team he plays in.
If I was only rating his performances in horizontal slides I’d be banging on about how good Sinclair is.
Kinsella is surely the first name on the team sheet at the moment , he’s earnt a new deal . Horizontally , vertically and anywhere in between .
Bates can ping a pass when playing well but I wish he wouldn’t faff about with chancey balls across the back 4 so much - it’s nearly cost us several times this season . But if he improves , there’s a player in there .
Bates is certainly a better passer and has vision. Think it was Vale game where he hit inch perfect crossfield ball straight onto Norman’s toe who then crossed to lead to one of the goals.
Been up and down this season but worth remembering he’s still a few months off turning 20 so long way to go.
Totally agree. He picks the wrong pass quite a bit but has the vision to see them. If he continues to progress then this will get better. You can’t expect someone his age with the amount of first team games he has played to be at the stage where he is dictating the tempo of the play and running the midfield.
I see him as one that could potentially do well and have a lot of other clubs looking at him, or just as easily fade away and not make it. Definitely worth the new deal at this moment in time.
I actually think DC’s management of Bates has been alright so far. He was doing o.k last season and then had a stinker at Cheltenham along with the rest of them.
Was then taken out of the team…o.k I wouldn’t have exiled him for two months given he barely played before lockdown but you need to take kids out for spells just to give them a breather.
This season he’s started majority of games.
I thought he was about 21 now given he’s been around for a few years now so you can forget how young he still is. And yes part of the new deal is to make sure the club get a fee for him in a year or two as not many saleable players in this squad with the forwards all out of contract soon, that needs to be sorted one way or the other this month I think.
