brite blu sky wrote:Which players of our current crop ( not including academy graduates ) can yet improve ? and by how much ?
Bearing in mind that players need good players around them a good team and big challenges in order to learn beyond their natural capability.
Hart
Nedum
Micah
Kompany
Lescott
DeJong
M. Johnno
AJ
Ade
Tevez
Ireland
There's always room for improvement no matter what age you are but out of your list I feel following players are quite close to their peak and cont' expect masive improvement in their careers: Kompany, Lescott, Tevez, Adebayor, De Jong.
Hart, Nedum and AJ are players who have kept improving throughout their careers steadily and will continue to do so.
Micah and Ireland are in same bracket. Ireland, at his best, is realy good and Micah quite good. However on both cases I'm little bit worried that their progress has somewhat stopped despite at least three established managers with different approach have worked with them. Ireland is so good that just getting his best form back will be at least close to good enough but Micah's best isn't good enough for top 4 side (yet). There are glaring weaknesses in Micah's game like his headless running with ball, poor (non-existent) crossing and positioning. All things that can be, at least for a full back, fixed with good coaching which I feel has been available. I fear that he might not be listening to coaches and/or train hard enough.
You can't say anything about Micahel Johnson at this stage. So far from match fit and so many years now down the toilet regarding his development that it remains to be seen whether he will be able to bounce back.
Added to those are the obvious young players like Weiss (seems to improve by every minute he is on the pitch.... has been really good for Bolton recently when he has got the chance), Boyata (boy did he grow on those games he played) etc.
Posted: Sun May 09, 2010 9:25 am