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we praise one purely for not being as shit, at some things, as the other.

"Barry's movement and technique is better than Beto's"
"Beto is more physical and chases things down more than Barry"

But if you just analyse them on their own neither are good enough.

If we had someone like Strand Larsen, Raul Jimenez, Chris Wood, Mateta, Solanke (or even Dominic Calvert-Lewin!!) then I would understand Barry as a potential signing to gradually get up to speed in the PL and be developed into a longer term starter. But because he's clearly a better footballer than Beto, he starts, even though he isn't ready to.

Meanwhile other clubs bring in players that hit the ground running.

I know every signing is a risk but we are learning absolutely nothing by playing the same way each week, and neither of those two are going to give us what we need. Time to roll the dice I think and recruit.

It's one thing to be safe from relegation but we need a bit of optimism and there's a real risk that HDS becomes synonymous with spankings and penalty embarrassment. It would be a big mistake to just write this season off and assume we can make major upgrades in the summer.