Hobsons Choice
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Everything posted by Hobsons Choice
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Dyche wants 2 players in? That'll be Mee and......who's the tallest, least cultured striker in the league?
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I quite like him as a player, but £40M? Cripes. Plus Chelsea are going to be under pressure to find squad places for all their players. They are gonna have to do better than that to offload, surely.
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Instead of sending all our players to Fenerbahce, we thought we'd take one of theirs.
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Deadline day quadruple signing incoming.
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Emi levels of s**thousery, I like it!
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Badum-tish.
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We're winning 1-0 though. Emery is God.
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If we don't sign anyone I hope (and expect) Unai the wizard can keep us close to our current position in the league, otherwise it might prove as difficult to convince folks to come here as it appears to have been in January. I gotta say that Unai and the board have balls of solid titanium.
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I've never worked in a business where this was considered a realistic way of operating.
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Yeah, I do believe we have a clause allowing Barry to be recalled in Jan (tomorrow).
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We can't call back Archer as I understand.
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Maybe a wee bit light at CB, but it is mainly the forward position (s). It's not just top talent, though, it's anyone who has played even a minute in English or Top league football. As it stands we have Ollie, Bailey and Jhon. That's it for 18 games. Not even any academy folks that can play as a Striker.
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I agree with that. It all comes down to Ollie, really. He's got a pretty good injury record, but 18 games is a long old time.
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Again that depends on injuries to Bailey. I get your points there, well made. What I would add though is do you think Ollie can step it up, because he's been a 1: 5 striker, and if you extrapolate his goals out either including or excluding the Gerrard regime, he's only got another 5 in him this season. We desperately need goals.
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Spot on.
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I hope so too, but it's a lot of weight on his shoulders.
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All options in the middle, or at the back though. And none are particularly creative.
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Agreed, it's not the sale of Ings as such, it's the timing. A wide forward who can act as backup to the (so far) less than prolific Bailey, and can bag a few would be great. Watkins can play wide, but we know he's not at his best there, and we wouldn't then have any recognised strikers. I think it would be a bit unfair (although it would be great) to expect Jhon to come straight in and start firing immediately. I'm hoping he can be immense for us, but that's medium term.
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I'd be happy with a loan stopgap. We just need someone who can get around 5-7 goals during the rest of the season. A super-sub loan is what we need. As I've said before, I'm happy that we don't go bonkers in January, and happy that some of the 'fat' is off the books, but the forward area is painfully light atm.
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Problem is, none of our other strikers/forward players have been prolific either. If you work it out, none of them even at their scoring rates under Emery get even close to making up 7 goals in the second half of the season required to just tread water in terms of goal difference. Let alone those required to move up the league. Positions 10th to 6th have goal differences of between 5 and 14 higher than us, and that's with games in hand. So after losing Ings we are looking an an additional 7 goals from the current forward line (over what they would normally be expected to score) to tread water, and between 12 and 21 additional goals during the remainder of the season to get anywhere near the GD (usually a variable but decent indicator of league position) of any teams between 10th and 6th.
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Which of our loan players can we recall, do we know? Iirc it's not many.
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You old stirrer, you.
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Point beautifully f***ing illustrated.
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Bring it on. none of it will have any substance.
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So I've posted (stupidly on the Guendouzi thread) a reasoned argument why I think not signing a striker in the short term is a mistake. I've backed that up with analysis on goals scored and conceded this year, both as a whole, and during Emery's tenure. For my viewpoint I've had a number of responses which range from 'we should only go in for the right players' (reasonable) through 'Trust Emery' (understandable), to 'bedwetter' (stupid). No one, however, has given any substantial response to the question 'what do we do in the short term to score the gap in goals from the Ings sale' that was backed up by any sort of reasoning aside from a vague- they'll be picked up by the other players (who would all have to exceed their career best goalscoring ratios simultaneously to do this). And no one has entertained the possibility that there may be injuries to key players, or rather they have, but have referred to it as 'unlikely', which is fine but in no way acknowledges any associated risk. Somehow it is my concerns that are being attacked as 'unreasonable' and 'impatient'. Deranged even. I am very much more than happy to receive reasoned arguments that change my mind. If anyone else calls my opinion 'bedwetting' and then goes on to give absolutely no justification, other than faith things will work out OK, then, however, I am going to lose my s**t.
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