is Diomande the answer

Jury still out for me. There's been flashes but no consistency and an injury in the middle. Maybe with more energetic players around him he'll flourish, but he's not been able to control many games.
 
FedericoNieto said:
We had what is now the “Serie A midfielder of the year” right under our nose and we deemed him not good enough, instead we now trawl Europe taking punts on various lower level players. It’s all just a bit strange
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It’s a good example, as I think £4.5m would have got Ferguson tbh.

Given we needed combative players with bundles of energy, Ferguson should have been a given.

One of the signings this summer should be Miller or Watson. At some point, we need to gamble again on the local talent pool.
 
Hasn't been helped by our collective dip in form.

Honestly, I think he's the least of our worries. We saw back in February when we had a functioning team with decent depth, that he was an asset. No reason to doubt, that he won't be an asset next season.

That's assuming we actually restructure the squad properly and address the present imbalance that seems to alter our team on a near weekly basis atm.
 
barrowman said:
So a £5m project with potential? Great and here’s me thinking we didn’t have much money.
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Didn't he come through some African football academy that some of there players have went for fortunes

People want players from abroad before there out our price range then moan there not the finished product
 
I'd guess he probably covered the most ground in the team yesterday.

Difficult when the rest of the midfield are so slow and pedestrian.

He always looks to get the ball going forward, he can play in the half turn. He will be a key player for us next season when we have other players with the same speed and athleticism around him.
 
albop said:
Didn't he come through some African football academy that some of there players have went for fortunes

People want players from abroad before there out our price range then moan there not the finished product
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Personally I’m not clamouring for players from abroad at all. I think the lack of a decent Scottish spine to the team is one of our issues.
 
Hides too often, you seen the difference when Raskin came on, he was demanding the ball not scared to take responsibility.

Raskin was on for half an hour he had 24 touches made 10 passes.

Diomande played the entire game he had 28 touches and made 11 passes.
 
He has come from a smaller team half way through the season and has had an injury which required surgery in there too.

He obviously needs time to settle just like anyone else and has already shown he has quality and will be an asset to us.

I love to see how quickly posters on here settle in to work if they moved to Denmark in January and had the spotlight on them.
 
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I think he looks better in a more advanced role, some nice touches and maybe better at pressing, intercepting.

He's relatively new to the scottish game and hopefully we see improvement next season with better players around him.
 
Undecided on him. Has shown some decent touches and turns against the dross. Pretty ineffective yesterday, albeit we were down to 10 for a large part. What is a concern is if we’re tied in to the reported £4.5M purchase which is apparently coming from next years budget.
 
A young lad from Africa who’s only played in tepid fixtures. Isn’t a surprise it might take a year or two for him to find his feet in games like yesterday.
 
I'm not sure he's worth a £4.5m punt to be honest. That's too much money for us to be taking a punt on right now. If he was coming in for something like £1.5m then that would be a no brainer. Not much we can do now but hope he develops like Calvin Bassey!
 
Looked good early doors yes he has potential but he needs to quickly develop and improve over the summer.

At £4.5 million we need more from him.
 
Set up to fail yesterday. 100% on the managers tactics for me.

He wasn't very good but it can't be easy when the ball is being constantly launched over your head and the two guys beside you either can't run or can't be bothered running.
 
jani-kauppila said:
The problem with signing potential is exactly that: it's potential.

Diomande aged 24/25/26 might be a player able to dominate these games. The player we have right now is promising, but today was poor.

Definitely worth persisting with, but needs better around him.
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Yes, similar to what I would say.
 
He was excellent in a good side for us. Hasn't set the heather alight against the animals, but nobody has.

The guy's potential is absolutely massive and he's a classy, classy footballer. The way he takes the ball on the half-turn is sensational.

He's better further forward. He's being used as a double pivot beside Lundstram, who fucks off into the back line or jogs off doing who knows what. So he's left on his own trying to dominate a midfield three.

He's a driving No 8 or even a 10. He's being used deeper because he's the best actual footballer we currently have available but he's wasted there.

Now we've got Lundstram out of the picture, it gives us a chance to use this guy as we should. Put Raskin and Sterling in the middle and Diomande ahead of them. We won't be dominated with that trio.

The fee is sizeable for us but it's a worthy investment. We'll make a real wedge off him in a couple of years. Let's see him in a good team before we send him the way of £12m Tillman eh?
 
Kilwinnin Bluenose said:
I'm not sure he's worth a £4.5m punt to be honest. That's too much money for us to be taking a punt on right now. If he was coming in for something like £1.5m then that would be a no brainer. Not much we can do now but hope he develops like Calvin Bassey!
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I think he’s looked bright for the most part, but as I said earlier in the thread, does he look like a match winner?

At the moment, no, but he does deserve longer to settle and then we’ll need to see how he adapts to newer players around him.

One thing is for sure though, if we’re spending £4.5m on him we’re going to need him to be gradually developing into that sort of game changing player I’m talking about.

That’s a lot of money for us these days and we need it to be spent on players who will help to elevate the overall quality of the team, and, it has to be said, do it reasonably quickly.
 
Looked good when he came in. Now it's hard to tell as he's now just part of the disorganised mess that Clement puts out there.
 
Runs about a lot, mainly the opposite way of the ball, games pass him by.

Yesterday, touches

Tav 63, Davies 45, Sterling 38, Lundstram 31, Silva 28, Diomande 28 Souttar 27, Barisic 26, Lawrence 20, Dessers 12

He made 11 passes over 90 minutes

Lawrence made 10 over 60 minutes

Raskin 10 over 30 minutes.
 
CaptainCourageous said:
Hatate and O’Reily cost nowhere near that and are streets ahead.
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You could argue both were pretty poor in their first 6 months at Celtic too. Given time and support they became decent.

Dio has quality and has shown it. I'm willing to give him time to adapt, playing in Sweden is a bit different to us and he's playing beside lazy players who do nothing to support him.
 
Valley Bluenose said:
I think his positional awareness and tactical discipline needs a fair bit of work if he’s to be the success we want him to be
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Very much this ^^^
He hasn’t the time on the ball he is used to, so it may take a wee while, hopefully by the start of next season he is sharper after half a season and a preseason under his belt.
 
I like him and think we will see better of him with better quality round him.

If you watch him off ball he is screaming, arms up at other players about playing forward or open passes. Even himself when on the ball he raises his arms looking for someone. Sure it was Dundee game he gave Tav a mouthful for trying the usual golf chip pass when nothing moves in front of him

So a bit to go overall though
 
Albus said:
You could argue both were pretty poor in their first 6 months at Celtic too. Given time and support they became decent.

Dio has quality and has shown it. I'm willing to give him time to adapt, playing in Sweden is a bit different to us and he's playing beside lazy players who do nothing to support him.
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Hatate rattled 2 goals in against us about a week after he arrived in Scotland

O’Riley has been good for them from day one. He has 22 goals in 89 league matches for them and isn’t played as an out and out 10.

Both them cost less than £1.5million.
 
Not for 4.5m. He's shown flashes in most appearances but there's an undoubted naivety to his play both in and out of possession. Since we based the midfield around him and JL every team has been able to play through us with varying success. Obviously JL's form falling off a cliff hasn't helped. If the price was halved I'd consider taking the gamble but not at 4.5m
 
yarrumdavid01 said:
I remember posters saying the same about the lad at PSV who has just signed permanently for £15M
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Tillman was an iq test and there was a very vocal crowd of supporters who failed it, genuinely absurd opinions. Everyone will get things wrong but i'll never understand how supporters could watch Tillman play for us and think he wasn't good enough.


Diomande hasn't been as good as Tillman was, but he's also playing in a worse team and didn't get a pre-season. There's clearly ability there with him that none of our other midfielders have and hopefully in the summer we can build a far more balanced midfield that gets the most out of all of them so they don't have to watch the ball fly over their heads as often as it currently does.
 
Agent Harris said:
If the question is name a player who’s overrated after a couple decent performances vs dross and not worth spending 4.5 million on then yes Diomande is the answer
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If we had more players capable of putting in decent performances against dross we’d have walked the title
 
He looks alright.

Not as good as Kamara right enough which is worrying.

Also looks like he needs a slap up steak dinner. Looks about 7 stone.
 
Some are over-rating him but he has potential. Fact is, Lundstram has carried on running the midfield since Dio joined. Always has more passes and touches, by a distance. Only played 45 yesterday and completed 16 passes to Dio’s 11. 31 touches to Dio’s 28. And he had as bad a game as you can have. Don’t think Diomande is ever going to be the player to take the game by the scruff of the neck and control the game, which is the kind of centre mids I think most of us want. Lundstram’s replacement will have to be that kind of player so that Diomande can play more as an 8.
 
BucksBear said:
Really not convinced. seems to make too many mistakes. Penalty was a bit dubious, but I didn't see a player on the same level as the Celtics midfield 3
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I think he's a very decent player and will improve once we put better players beside him.
 
FedericoNieto said:
We had what is now the “Serie A midfielder of the year” right under our nose and we deemed him not good enough, instead we now trawl Europe taking punts on various lower level players. It’s all just a bit strange
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That boy would now be our captain.
 
Looks very promising but needs to play in a midfield controlled by a quality number 6 to get the best from him

Hopefully the summer sees that position as a priority
 
Jury is out but he deserves the benefit of the doubt and a full season next season. There is definitely a player in there and maybe I’m being unusually optimistic for today but I do see him becoming a key player and eventually making as a big profit.
 
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