Speculation: Lewis Baker

[Pepe the Horseman]

Lewis Baker >>> everyone else, ever.

[Snowflake Royal]

Hell yes, though I feel bad for the restricted opportunities it would mean for Rino, Olise, East, Holsgrove and Frost

Personally can't see East being up to it on what I've seen. Holsgrove is a year or so away, and Frost needs a good loan.

Rino and Olise are good enough to either cover for any of them, or play out wide in Olise's case

That's basically my assessment but a little harsher on East, but it doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see them get a chance to find out.

[royalp-we]

With Pelé & Adam looking set to leave at the end of the season - another Baker loan must surely be on the cards?

I’d be delighted with Swift, Ejaria, Olise, Rino, Baker as our options in the middle next year. All (relatively) young with points to prove.

[Nameless]

With Pelé & Adam looking set to leave at the end of the season - another Baker loan must surely be on the cards?

I’d be delighted with Swift, Ejaria, Olise, Rino, Baker as our options in the middle next year. All (relatively) young with points to prove.

You’d think Baker would want to stop being a commodity and settle long term at a club.
If we really intend to turn some of our assets into cash it’s not inconceivable none of those 5 might be around whenever we star playing proper games again. Obviously we’d have a big hole in midfield but those 4 players are young, talented, English (mostly) and would raise a decent amount.

[royalp-we]

You would think so. Unfortunately he’s still under contract at Chelsea. He seems to want away from them and Fortuna had an option to buy, but the loan didn’t go too well.

Like you say, I think he’s the perfect competition alongside all the english youngsters we have in those positions. Hoping the club will be seeing a large saving through the 7/8 out of contract players leaving, plus the likes of Barrow, Baldock, leaving too, before looking at offloading the real assets.

[Nameless]

You would think so. Unfortunately he’s still under contract at Chelsea. He seems to want away from them and Fortuna had an option to buy, but the loan didn’t go too well.

Like you say, I think he’s the perfect competition alongside all the english youngsters we have in those positions. Hoping the club will be seeing a large saving through the 7/8 out of contract players leaving, plus the likes of Barrow, Baldock, leaving too, before looking at offloading the real assets.

Not going to be how it works though. If there is a decent offer for Olise (say) we’re not going to tell clubs he’s not for,sale until we’ve shifted Aluko and Barrow
Key think for us is to understand howFFP will be handled. If the EFL suspend FFP we won’t be as pushed to sell

[Sutekh]

You would think so. Unfortunately he’s still under contract at Chelsea. He seems to want away from them and Fortuna had an option to buy, but the loan didn’t go too well.

Like you say, I think he’s the perfect competition alongside all the english youngsters we have in those positions. Hoping the club will be seeing a large saving through the 7/8 out of contract players leaving, plus the likes of Barrow, Baldock, leaving too, before looking at offloading the real assets.

Not going to be how it works though. If there is a decent offer for Olise (say) we’re not going to tell clubs he’s not for,sale until we’ve shifted Aluko and Barrow
Key think for us is to understand howFFP will be handled. If the EFL suspend FFP we won’t be as pushed to sell

Why would Reading want to unload Baldock unless his wedge really is ridiculous? He’s been one of the brighter elements now we have a manager who appears to know what he’s doing.

[Nameless]

You would think so. Unfortunately he’s still under contract at Chelsea. He seems to want away from them and Fortuna had an option to buy, but the loan didn’t go too well.

Like you say, I think he’s the perfect competition alongside all the english youngsters we have in those positions. Hoping the club will be seeing a large saving through the 7/8 out of contract players leaving, plus the likes of Barrow, Baldock, leaving too, before looking at offloading the real assets.

Not going to be how it works though. If there is a decent offer for Olise (say) we’re not going to tell clubs he’s not for,sale until we’ve shifted Aluko and Barrow
Key think for us is to understand howFFP will be handled. If the EFL suspend FFP we won’t be as pushed to sell

Why would Reading want to unload Baldock unless his wedge really is ridiculous? He’s been one of the brighter elements now we have a manager who appears to know what he’s doing.

Agreed, I like Baldock and he’s different to our other attackers.
Question would be whether he will get games when all our other options are available.

[Sutekh]

Not going to be how it works though. If there is a decent offer for Olise (say) we’re not going to tell clubs he’s not for,sale until we’ve shifted Aluko and Barrow
Key think for us is to understand howFFP will be handled. If the EFL suspend FFP we won’t be as pushed to sell

Why would Reading want to unload Baldock unless his wedge really is ridiculous? He’s been one of the brighter elements now we have a manager who appears to know what he’s doing.

Agreed, I like Baldock and he’s different to our other attackers.
Question would be whether he will get games when all our other options are available.

He was over Xmas when the likes of Joao was playing and as we know Reading seemed to be most effective with a Baldock/Joao pairing.

[Westwood52]

It would make all sorts of sense all round for him to come back here. He's almost 25 ffs, he needs to settle down and sort himself out.

Suppose it depends on finances. And if Swift is likely to hang around - though heard nothing about that not being the case

A midfield with Pele at the base and Ejaria, Swift and Baker rotating round in front is too tasty a thought for me to cope with at this time of the morning

From memory didn’t Baker play at the base last season.Technically he is quality and I was very impressed with him.Strange that he has struggled in Germany,but perhaps Championship is his level.He is never going to make it at Chelsea.I would suggest he is probably on £50k a week.Way beyond our budget.He wants to settle somewhere and probably likes Reading as he is a London boy ?Half of his career is already wasted;maybe he would settle for £20k a week with us.We might be able to stretch to that ,when we offload a lot of fringe players out of contract.Tricky situation,particularly in our current financial situation and uncertain future revenues.

[royalp-we]

Not going to be how it works though. If there is a decent offer for Olise (say) we’re not going to tell clubs he’s not for,sale until we’ve shifted Aluko and Barrow
Key think for us is to understand howFFP will be handled. If the EFL suspend FFP we won’t be as pushed to sell

Why would Reading want to unload Baldock unless his wedge really is ridiculous? He’s been one of the brighter elements now we have a manager who appears to know what he’s doing.

Agreed, I like Baldock and he’s different to our other attackers.
Question would be whether he will get games when all our other options are available.

Admittedly, he’s loooked ‘ok’. Scored a couple of goals.

My gripe is that Baldock hasn’t played enough and signed for £3m, likely to be on a decent wedge too. Many forget he signed the same season as Aluko and has managed to play less games than him. We are trimming the squad and need players capable of playing 30 or 40 games a season, Baldock hasn’t managed that since about 2014. It’s just a waste of resource for clubs like ours, paying a high wage and managing just 15 or 20 games a season.

Don’t get me wrong there are others in the squad too, but this is generally the reason why we are in a bit of a mess.

[Sutekh]

Why would Reading want to unload Baldock unless his wedge really is ridiculous? He’s been one of the brighter elements now we have a manager who appears to know what he’s doing.

Agreed, I like Baldock and he’s different to our other attackers.
Question would be whether he will get games when all our other options are available.

Admittedly, he’s loooked ‘ok’. Scored a couple of goals.

My gripe is that Baldock hasn’t played enough and signed for £3m, likely to be on a decent wedge too. Many forget he signed the same season as Aluko and has managed to play less games than him. We are trimming the squad and need players capable of playing 30 or 40 games a season, Baldock hasn’t managed that since about 2014. It’s just a waste of resource for clubs like ours, paying a high wage and managing just 15 or 20 games a season.

Don’t get me wrong there are others in the squad too, but this is generally the reason why we are in a bit of a mess.

Baldock was signed at the very end of July 2018 which is about a year after Sone Aluko. He played in just less than half of the league fixtures last season (15+6) and is probably going to play some part in just over half of the league fixtures this season (currently 11+7).

Sam’s lack of game time has mostly been down to José Gomes who gave him pitch time in only 3 of the 34 league games JG was in charge (and one of those was as a 90th minute sub at Norwich). He’s been a fairly constant starter or sub under both Paul Clement and Mark Bowen and aside from a couple of minor injuries he would have played more of a part under both managers.

Therefore, as with any player, while the club should be open to offers for him, I’m not convinced he should be terribly near the top of the “ones to try and get rid” list particularly as his star currently seems to be as high as it’s ever been while at the club.

[Nameless]

I’m sure someone can do the maths but if you expect every player to start 30-40games what size squad would you have ?

[Franchise FC]

I’m sure someone can do the maths but if you expect every player to start 30-40games what size squad would you have ?

Without subs you’d need 17 to have them all playing c30 games
Difficult to manage with keepers though

[Snowflake Royal]

Why would Reading want to unload Baldock unless his wedge really is ridiculous? He’s been one of the brighter elements now we have a manager who appears to know what he’s doing.

Agreed, I like Baldock and he’s different to our other attackers.
Question would be whether he will get games when all our other options are available.

Admittedly, he’s loooked ‘ok’. Scored a couple of goals.

My gripe is that Baldock hasn’t played enough and signed for £3m, likely to be on a decent wedge too. Many forget he signed the same season as Aluko and has managed to play less games than him. We are trimming the squad and need players capable of playing 30 or 40 games a season, Baldock hasn’t managed that since about 2014. It’s just a waste of resource for clubs like ours, paying a high wage and managing just 15 or 20 games a season.

Don’t get me wrong there are others in the squad too, but this is generally the reason why we are in a bit of a mess.

Baldock is one of a huge string of players for us in recent years who would be a good bet if we'd signed him for less, paid him less and had fewer options in his position.

As it is we have Meite, Joao and Puscas. All are younger, all contribute more goals. If we consistently played two upfront it wouldn't be as bad. Although we've also had Loader, and let Novakovich go whilst he was here.

I like him, he has great workrate and that helps the team. But he doesn't really do enough for his cost and with him in the side we have one fewer source of goals.


As for Baker, I just don't really see much room for him in a squad where I think he should be directly competing with Swift as the playmaker. Neither one of them should be sitting on the bench given Swift's performances this year, but put them together and you have to either miss out on Rino's workrate or Ejaria / Olise's trickery.

I think what we need in midfield is to settle on a first choice combination - currently Swift, Rino, Ejaria and then have solid back up that can be relied upon rather than someone else to push them backwards. Now if we were to sell Swift, then the signing would make a hell of a lot of sense, although we'd still need an extra body or so. I'm also leery of blocking progress of the likes of East or Holsgrove after the quality of Rino and Olise, neither particularly expected, and given the loss of some other players who could have had more chance.

But then I guess by nature I'm conservative on signings and want to see those we already have get games and improve over yet another new signing.

[URZZZZ]

Agreed, I like Baldock and he’s different to our other attackers.
Question would be whether he will get games when all our other options are available.

Admittedly, he’s loooked ‘ok’. Scored a couple of goals.

My gripe is that Baldock hasn’t played enough and signed for £3m, likely to be on a decent wedge too. Many forget he signed the same season as Aluko and has managed to play less games than him. We are trimming the squad and need players capable of playing 30 or 40 games a season, Baldock hasn’t managed that since about 2014. It’s just a waste of resource for clubs like ours, paying a high wage and managing just 15 or 20 games a season.

Don’t get me wrong there are others in the squad too, but this is generally the reason why we are in a bit of a mess.

Baldock is one of a huge string of players for us in recent years who would be a good bet if we'd signed him for less, paid him less and had fewer options in his position.

As it is we have Meite, Joao and Puscas. All are younger, all contribute more goals. If we consistently played two upfront it wouldn't be as bad. Although we've also had Loader, and let Novakovich go whilst he was here.

I like him, he has great workrate and that helps the team. But he doesn't really do enough for his cost and with him in the side we have one fewer source of goals.


As for Baker, I just don't really see much room for him in a squad where I think he should be directly competing with Swift as the playmaker. Neither one of them should be sitting on the bench given Swift's performances this year, but put them together and you have to either miss out on Rino's workrate or Ejaria / Olise's trickery.

I think what we need in midfield is to settle on a first choice combination - currently Swift, Rino, Ejaria and then have solid back up that can be relied upon rather than someone else to push them backwards. Now if we were to sell Swift, then the signing would make a hell of a lot of sense, although we'd still need an extra body or so. I'm also leery of blocking progress of the likes of East or Holsgrove after the quality of Rino and Olise, neither particularly expected, and given the loss of some other players who could have had more chance.

But then I guess by nature I'm conservative on signings and want to see those we already have get games and improve over yet another new signing.

Agree with the first point, less so on the second. Baldock is an excellent player when played to his strengths, which is a high tempo game alongside a bigger striker and two direct wingers who hug the touchlines. Reminds me of N.Hunt minus the heading ability, he'll never score a shed load but you know what you'll get. But a 4-4-2 formation doesn't suit the likes of Swift, Ejaria and Olise, who will be seen as bigger cogs of the team than Baldock
I guess I'd like to keep him around as a squad option/different option but whether he'll accept that given he's not getting any younger is a different matter

I'd argue Baker and Swift aren't as similar as you'd imagine, as Swift can occupy more roles than Baker can, operating as the deep lying playmaker or getting in between the lines which leaves Baker with the DLP role. They're both good friends on/off the pitch IIRC and have good chemistry, as was evident for a period of time last season

I guess it all comes down to Bowen's plans for next season. If he returns to the 4-1-4-1 which served us so well in the Christmas run in, then Pele is a must and Baker less so. If he continues with the 4-2-3-1 formation we evolved to before the season was stopped, then a Baker-Rino-Swift trio in midfield would be very tasty, with Ejaria and Olise in competition

And then there's Adam who's forgotten in all this who's had a much better season than most anticipated, and I can see him getting a further year on his contract

As a side point however, where I guess I see where you're coming from, I count around 28 first team players at the moment which doesn't include upcoming academy prospects or the likes of Barrow coming back, an extortionate amount IMO. Even with a 20 man squad in the last 9 games, there's going to be quite a few names missing from the squad still

[Snowflake Royal]

Yes. I think if we went to a traditional 4-4-2 the situation would be different with Baldock.

On Baker - Swift I agree they are quite different and Swift is probably more versatile. Was mainly focused on our current way of playing.

I think Swift lacks a little pace to consistently play further forward, he struggles to run the ball once he's beaten someone and getting away from them. And with Ejaria and Olise there's not really a whole lot of room to move Swift forward without damaging and wasting one of them.

[billybraggsbeard]

Really liked Baker season before last when we sussed out his best position was in front of back four with a licence to break forward, intelligent player who read the game well. I can't see we will be able to hold onto Swift if a decent offer comes in with FFP, same with Moore, so will need good replacements at a fraction of the cost, but don't know how much Baker will go for or Dickie for that case

[Nameless]

For a variety of reasons Icannot see Adam staying.
He did better than expected in his cameos and got close to match fitness. But he’s on big money, will be another year older , wants to go back north and from what I hear is not exactly a good fit in the dressing room.
His wages or Baker ? No contest...

[Snowflake Royal]

Thought the whole selling point of Adam was that he wouldn't be that expensive and would be a great bet for moving into a coaching role.