06-05-2024, 08:03 AM
(06-05-2024, 07:25 AM)D'Alessandro dreaming Wrote: Kamara was essentially playing out of position all season at least relative to where he played for Norwich youth. By Kamara's own admission he had a bit of a slow start but that second half of the season in particular was phenomenal. And of course it was Kamara's first season in grown up football whereas it was Lane's third season in the football league.
Of course you can never entirely predict how a player will turn out longer term. Lots of factors can dictate whether a player reaches their potential or not but Kamara looks to have a very high ceiling. We'd not had a winger who beat his man one on one so often in a very long time and you could see the panic in defenders when he was charging towards them. The only solution other teams came up with that had any success against him was putting two or three players on him which obviously made space for others (such as Lane) to benefit from.
Credit to Mousinho for coaching that into him a bit by setting the team up to deliberately isolate Kamara to force him to take his man on. Early in he did a lot of the modern winger checking back and passing sideways/backwards nonsense. His teammates clearly liked what they saw.
It has been a fantastic season for Lane too of course. Arguably his efforts out on the left were every bit as important as what Pack, Shaughnessy and Raggett did as Lane and Kamara were are only viable wing options for most of the season.
Classic mistake of using statistics (including the almost totally meaningless ‘assists’) to compare two totally different players. They are both referred to as ‘wingers’ when neither is a winger in the true sense, they are wide midfielders.
Both players have their merits and I think both would perform well in the Championship.
I too think Lane has a great future but he needs to work in his energy levels. Everyone seems to be overlooking the 5 or 6 match total loss if form he suffered toward the end of the season, when arguably he was lucky to be selected.
I’d like to keep both but unfortunately that’s not our decision with Kamara is it?