I hate to say this... but I kind of hope we play a bit more direct tomorrow (and only for this game). Whilst I have been really pleased to see our move to more of a passing side compared to previous years, traditionally the Korean sides have simply outran other sides with constant pressure and attacks at pace.
Having a unit to hit up top and pin them back a little could be quite helpful.
Take it with a pinch of salt, but he wasn’t playing first team football for Melville before he left, so wasn’t deemed better than Max Tommy who isn’t bad but isn’t great either.
Could be entirely wrong, but I heard that he got signed by Aston Villa because Sam Wilkinson knew someone there from when he worked at Birmingham and said “we’ve got this keeper who’s not that good but he’s 6’6” and organised a trial for him. Giant keepers like that are always a chance at youth football, idk if he’s better than guys like Cam Brown, but he might be the beneficiary of being out of sight so Gould and Parker couldn’t see him first hand.
Definitely won't be Woud level yet with Michael starting every week in senior competition, but playing PL2 with Swansea has got to be pretty beneficial for his development. He might get a game against Romania if we've gotten good results against Korea and Honduras (or if we have no chance of progressing to the knockouts by then).
This is exactly what I heard too - heard he wasn't even rated as the best young GK prospect at Melville (Keegan Hansen iirc was prioritised ahead of him), but has turned it up a notch in England, impressing at both Villa and Swansea. Everyone involved is pleasantly surprised
Giant keepers like that are always a chance at youth football, idk if he’s better than guys like Cam Brown, but he might be the beneficiary of being out of sight so Gould and Parker couldn’t see him first hand.
He might have also benefitted from the picking of players in pro environments only , rather than a Cam Brown locally and from the qualifiers .
The OlyWhites will lineup against South Korea just like they did in the warmups v Australia: Woud, Ingham, Stensness, Reid, Pijnaker, Cacace, Bell, Lewis, Just, Wood, McCowatt