• The forums will be unavailable for a few hours on Saturday 6th June, when they do return they will initially be in a degraded state with some features missing, but normal posting/reading will be possible. The main website will not be affected by these updates.
    New user registrations are currently disabled.
    Some other features of the forum are also currently disabled.

Robin Roefs 🇳🇱 compendium


literally the second line of my comment.

On your other points - obviously I don’t know, and I’m not pretending otherwise.

But earlier we were targeting top keepers from Europe and now, post about five signings (?), we’ve landed a seemingly smart signing that’s undoubtedly data led but he is still an unproven keeper for half the fee we tried to get Bulka for.

That’s not the criticism people seem to think it is…

It’s just an observation that we have a certain budget and we’ve been spending as if we didn’t. This, to me, is the first sign we’re prioritising where we’re spending the money now. The fact I don’t know, is why I’m looking for signs of that.

I do get that concern, to look for early signs of things going off track- especially with regards to Sunderland.

And I'll admit this is a very new way of thinking for me with regard to Sunderland, but I honestly think we have a plan and we've already budgeted for all of the players we need.
For the first time in my Sunderland supporting life I'd be shocked if we ran out of budget before we signed all of our targets.

Would I have preferred one of the other 2?
In a heartbeat mate, but I see this signing as a downgrade purely because he's not our first or second choice.

I honestly still expect us to keep buying players of the same budget / type until we've signed everyone they've identified as needed for the positions still to fill.

And as I said at the age of almost 60 I'm shocked to find myself thinking that about our club.
 
Watched him against England U21’s earlier in the summer and he made some good saves. Looked composed and confident.

He’s not Bulka by any means but based only on that one game he may well be a decent signing.
 
Or maybe he was first choice and the other two were bollocks.

Or maybe he was tenth choice and nothing else has come off.

We'll never know.

As for there being no competition between him and Patto: that's just you speculating. Who is to say that it won't push Patterson to get his finger out and get fitter and fight for his place? He's still a young lad, in goalkeeping terms and will prove to be a good premier league keeper, if he wants it badly enough. He has all of the tools, he just needs to make sure they're always kept sharp and polished.

Patterson won't make a Premier League GK. He has barely improved 150+ games later and consistently has a goals prevented rate that has him exactly mid-table in the Championship.

People look at age but there's a far better correlation between games played rather than age, and he's relatively experienced considering the amount of games he has played.

There's a reason the club have been linked to the likes of Bulka and Petrovic and now signed Roefs, and why newspaper style links of Patterson himself going to PL clubs never had any substance.

This talk of keeping tools sharp and polished is cliched gibberish. He's 25 now, has had 3 full seasons at Championship level playing over 130 games in that division and has been given a lot of rope during that time too. It's not going to happen for him at the highest level, and the club are obviously wise to that too given our attempts to sign a GK all summer.
 
Back
Top