[CONFIRMED] WE NEED A GOAL SCORER

I think you are overstating the power Gracia has over what Gino will spend.
If we are serious about wanting to stay in this league then £10m on a striker and £10m on a defender wouldn't be out of order. Gracia will need to organise us better defensively than we were under Silva for H1 last year which he was starting to do, but try to rediscover the attacking threat that we showed in H1, esp away from home. The strikers will have the same attacking midfielders as last year in H2 and didn't do well then. I guess we will have a fit Deloufeu this time (hopefully). I just don't see us scoring many goals with the current options up front so the defence will need to be far better.

 

Don't see how that can bit in bold can possibly be squared with what happened last season. Silva was obviously pretty forceful about what he wanted, and complained in public straightaway about the last week of the transfer window. Still didn't get what he wanted, did he? Looks like just another stick to try to beat Gracia with to me...

 

H1 and H2???

 

To me if we go with these strikers and these centre backs than Garcia gets a free pass. Given the improvements to other teams the Pozzos will have given him a relegation contender squad. Anything Gracia does is a bonus from that point.

If we invest in replacing the centre backs then I think we'll have enough to stay up.

 

A striker is a must this window. Not so sure a CB is as much a priority if we can keep Kabasale and Cathcart fit. In fact keeping the 1st 11 fit is more of a priority than anything this season. Has hurt us massively in the last 2 seasons. I have seen people saying we should look at Danny Ings. I agree assuming he can stay fit I think he could be a good addition for us. Its all gone quite on the transfer front which I hope means we will be surprised soon..

 

I also think even three years down the line our fans need to re-calibrate from Championship realistic targets to Premier League ones. Finding a striker who can get you 10 a year consistently at this level is expensive and, for a club like us, difficult to hold on to.

 

sorry half 1 and half 2 of the season, business abbreviations !

 

Ah, OK. Like Q1, Q2, etc. Gotcha.

 

Obviously Burnsy, I see your point, but they are also points that we are all very well aware of already, in the vein of living within our means, and strikers being expensive, and all that.

You talk about a striker scoring 15+ goals, but I've never called for that. I'm looking for a striker who could score double bloody figures. Yes, Deeney scored 10 and 13, but as others have pointed out, a significant amount of those are penalties, and more to the point, his overall contribution/effect on the pitch has wound down over the past two seasons to the point where A) it's costly to have him on the pitch in terms of overall play B) does anyone honestly suspect he's going to score double figures this coming season?

The reality is that as we are, we have 3 options, none of whom are properly appropriate. Okaka can't last a game; this appears to be a fact, based on every game he's ever played for us. Troy would have to have undergone a damascene conversion not to be close to useless, and it's not just his body that has been letting him down. The mental side of his game has been slipping massively; his wrestling and bouncing around is nowhere near as effective as he thinks it is and does nothing but play into opposing centre backs hands, and he's so slow he doesn't even bother to make the runs needed to create space or draw defenders. Gray, as we all know, is slightly more mobile but his finishing, touch and passing ability are genuinely shocking for a top level footballer.

That leaves Gray as the best option of a bad bunch as it stands in my opinion (I know that is a very contentious subject). But if he doesn't work, or score, or continues to knock every pass played to him 15 feet away straight to a defender, what can we do then? We don't have the capability to change our attack. If one thing fails, we're basically ****ed, because we don't have anything in our arsenal to change the way the attack is playing. We just swap one trudger for one of a slightly different variety. We don't have pace, we don't have height/aerial dominance, and we don't have strength (Troy throwing his bulk around is maddeningly ineffective when you compare it to genuine effective use of strength from a centre forward like Diego Costa [and yes, I know we can't get a player of Costa's level]).

That's why I believe that we will be horrendously ill-equipped if we don't bring in another striker of some kind. Particularly if that is coupled with no further improvement of the defence. In that situation, we will be left with the leaky and injury prone defence of last season, coupled with the ineffective, low scoring attack of last season. We surely cannot go on like that? At least one of those two things has to be addressed just to keep up.

We talk about goals from midfield, but has Hughes ever been a noted goalscorer? No. Has Deulofeu ever been a noted goalscorer? No, in fact, his goalscoring record is extremely light for a player of his talents; it's just not really his game. Has Pereyra ever been prolific? Will he even be here? We can't rely on Doucoure to be our top scorer again by smashing in bangers from outside the box. Ken Sema is coming in from the Swedish league. Are we seriously relying on that? Richy is a bit of an unknown quantity all over again, and whilst I think he'll have benefitted from the break he has finally had and will be an effective player, again, are we going to rely on a 21-year old winger to score the goals to keep us up/have any level of success? I just cannot see that that represents us doing all we can to have the best season possible/survive without any scares/push on at all.

On the plus side, the football.london bloke on his livechat yesterday said he believed a new striker for competition was very much in the club's plans, as soon as they can unload Okaka. On the negative side, I really don't know how much I trust the football.london bloke to have any privileged access to the club whatsoever.

 

It would be out of order if we don’t have the money and can’t raise it by selling the players we have. If that happens it is on Gracia to get the value out of the players we have, that’s all I’m saying.

As it stands, I think we have dropped a lot of money in transfer fees and big contracts that other clubs might not recompense us for. On that basis, Gracia has to maximise the most of the money we have already spent in the past few years perhaps where other managers have failed.

 

I am not beating anyone with anything. He’s the manager. It’s on him to get the best out of the tools he asks for/gets given. He may well do that. But if doesn’t, we really have to stop using it as an excuse. This club has invested a lot of money in transfers and I don’t think we are seeing the full value of what has been spent. Especially when large fees have been involved. Gracia or otherwise - I would say the same of any manager this season.

 

I don’t agree with the first line. He’s been given Navarro, Masina, Foster and Deloufeu. And not lost any key players. The squad is better than last season so expectations are that he should improve us.

 

We'll never see the true value of what we've spent. I reckon we've spunked well over £50m more than necessary on putting together a squad over the last 3 years.

Currently we have one player that has proven he's a potential top 6 player, and that's Doucoure. The rest are made up of decent potential, unfulfilled potential and 32+ year old veterans. I don't think it matters which coach is in charge, the current crop of players is no different in quality than mostly all the sides outside the top 6.

 

Cue angry post from Clive!

Anyway, football isn't a business, it's a sport, everybody knows that

 

Striker please. All. Day. Long.
Preferably two.

 

Every day is a school day.

Damascene conversion..................like it

That's a paradigm shift in new wordiness

 

Do you think he could make an impact at this level ?

 

Rumours Arsenal may listen to offers of around £15m for Welbeck. Never rated him as a top level striker (clearly not good enough for Man Utd/Arsenal), but I think he'd certainly be an improvement on Gray and Deeney.

 

If he could stay fit, yes. If not, he’d be a bigger waste of money than Gray.

Same would go for Sturridge. And Ings.

These are the type of gambles we will need to make I think to sign someone better.

 

Two different things. Clearly anyone with half a brain cell would want their manager to get the best out of the players they've been given, no-one would argue with that.

What I objected to in your other post was you stating that Gracia would be at fault if we don't buy a centre back and a striker as he wouldn't have been strong enough in asking for one. We saw last summer that a strong and vocal coach still didn't get what he asked for, rendering your argument wrongheaded. If Gino and Giraldi think the squad is good enough, no-one is changing their minds.

 

His best return in the Premier league was 9 goals

£15m + £100k per week in wages hardly seems like good value

 

Welbeck's injury record over the last two seasons is far better than Sturridge's and Ings'.

He has only really been used as a centre-forward in about 30-50% of his matches though. His Premier League record as a CF is 1 goal per 213 minutes (1 goal per 2.4 games), that's a decent return. The fee should be affordable, and as for his wage if we could get him on that and push lardar5e out it would be a like for like swap on the books. I'd do that for sure.

 

I'm quite confident that with sufficient service Gray will get double figures for goals if he's the no 1. None of this chopping and changing Gracia has to make his mind up. He scored 5 but started less than half the games last season from memory. But don't expect man of the match performances from him every week that just isn't going to happen. Gotta take some rough with the smooth.


Quality strikers don't come cheap and then there's the small matter of them being convinced to actually want to sign for us. If we get one all well and good but I'd be happy for Gray to be given the chance.

 

Ok Mrs Gray

 

Yeah but all my mates who support big teams know who they are and we can talk about it lol

hope we sine hendasone

 

SSN saying that Chelsea are willing to listen to offers for Giroud.

 

Not going to happen !

 

I'm sure he'd love to follow up his World Cup win with a move to Watford

 

Gray, Deeney, Success and Sinclaire, have all scored already in pre-season WTF is going on?

Maybe we don't need a goal scorer after all, but somehow I doubt it

 

Success appears to be in Garcia's thinking. Can't see Sinclair making it and will probably go out on loan despite scoring today. I can still see us getting another striker in when Okaka moves on. Most likely will be someone like the Russian guy but it might alternatively be a loan with a view to buy. That might be someone we would consider to be at a higher level already like an Ings or Welbeck. The Richarlison sale would allow us to push the envelope on wages at least for a year. Deeney and Gray must have competition to push them. Staying in the EPL justifies a higher outlay for one season. Also have a hunch that Sema will prove to be good acquisition along with our known offensive players. Don't need to be too gloomy.

 

Would love us to take a punt on Le Fondre at Rotherham

 

Missing piece of the puzzle IRB