Newcastle United FC 1-0 Watford FC - 03/11/2018

So you want a striker that has fewer chances but is more likely to score them and make them themself? Or is there an untapped reserve of "proficient" goalscorers all knocking around in teams that don't create chances?

And, yes a nine goal striker could bring you an extra 18 points, if every single goal was a winner but I'd wager that's probably never happened.

 

We had Suarez but let him go as he wasn't very good.

 

Of course, I was just illustrating the point. A 15 goal striker might not yield anything, if he only scores in losing games. I am just illustrating one of the reasons why I prefer to look at how good they are at taking chances rather than goals total.

But look, I don't want an argument about it. I understand that you think we shouldn't be looking for anyone better and if we did, then we would be unsuccessful for the money we can afford.

I disagree. Let's leave it at that.

 

I wonder why?

 

I think we’re being a little harsh to claim none of our strikers are good enough from the prem league. Deeney / Gray look good / ok as a pair. Success has played well as a lone striker. A consistent goal scorer may lack other qualities that success has for example.

But truth be told I think the club are banking on the young players like Pen and Cucho to come good and they will probably settle for our current strikers for now. This may cause us some frustrating days but overall the clubs dealings have clearly worked as we look a great side at the moment.

 

The way I see it, both Gray and Deeney are good forward players, but they are not goal scorers at the highest level. Drop them into the Championship and they would be lethal. To call them Championship is fair, in terms of their overall ability in front of goal.

Deeney is more of a target man, who holds the ball up well, and can spot a pass. His link up play is good and he's very good at defending corners also, so he's more than useful. Gray will work hard, has pace and can stretch a defence. These are good qualities, but he's a rabbit in the headlights when he's through on goal. He's just not composed enough. He will score the odd goal here and there, but we need better than that if we are to become a top half of the table side. The rest of the team is at this level already.

Okaka only has just come back into the side, but apart from his debut against Everton, and the odd good finish, he's been a huge disappointment. That miss yesterday, is not the first time I've seen him do this. It was an extraordinary bad miss by hitting the ball that high. It shows he's too eager and just rushes his shots.

Even though we got £40m for Richarlison, we probably sold him too cheaply and certainly too early. Imagine playing him up front with Pereyra and Deulofeu supporting him on the flanks. He had 4 years left on his contract, so until we had identified a suitable replacement, we probably should not have sold him. If he continues in the form he's on now for Everton, they will probably double their money on him. After all they sold Lukaku for £90m and already Richarlison is better than him, IMO.

I believe we can sign better forward players, and had one last season in fact. Success looks good in the build up play, so is a valuable member of the first team now, but he doesn't strike me as someone who will score a lot of goals. However he could improve as he's still young of course. He's more of a power house though. I just think if we found another Richarlison type, and add it to Deeney and Success, then that should be good enough to instantly improve the look of the forward line.

 

Good news. As long as you don't sell him on to WFC.
The fact that he's behind Ings, Long and Redmond must tell you something ?

 

That Mark Hugheshas no idea what he’s doing is the main thing it tells me.

Is Austin better all round than any of the 3 strikers we have (I don’t count Okaka)? No he’s not. But is he a better finisher than all 3? IMO he is. By some distance.

My point is that we already have players who can get wide or central and get on the ball, without our striker joining in as well. I’d rather have a striker who concentrates on getting on the end of chances. And I think our style can allow for that.

It’s for this reason that I fully expect Deeney to come back in for Success next week, fitness permitting.

All this aside, I think we’ll likely be in for Sala from Nantes if we do sign a striker in January. We are supposedly still heavily scouting him and he’s scoring regularly again this season.

 

Please tell us all that you are joking.
3rd or 4th choice striker at a relegation threatened club, is that really what you think we are needing?
Was over rated at QPR. championship material at best, and certainly no better than what we have already.

 

Fair enough that people don’t agree. However, the fact he’s not 1st or 2nd choice at Southampton is puzzling because he’s far better than Long. I put that down to Hughes and his style.

I’m not claiming he’s better than what we have in terms of all round play. But he is a better finisher IMO, and we would have taken points against Arsenal, Fulham and yesterday if we had a more clinical finisher.

And, again just my opinion, but I think anyone we look at in January will be somewhat of a stop-gap. I’d much rather add a finisher like Austin for £6m-ish rather than £20m on Origi or similar.

 

By definition Gray and Deeney are Premier league strikers, they’ve both consistently scored goals at this level. But can we do better? Yes of course we can. Our midfield is fantastic, on paper our defence isn’t very good but defence is the easiest part of the team to coach to perform well and requires a player to have the least amount of skill. Our strikers although premier league standard are the weakest part of our team. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that good strikers are also the most expensive and hardest to find players.

The owners have tried to box clever and do what they’ve done with the midfield by bringing in players like Success, Cucho and Peneranda, as well as also spending money on a player like Gray. I think with him we got what we paid for, £18m sadly doesn’t but you much in that department and demonstrates just how hard it is.

With the younger players it will be a slow burner, some may not pay off, none of them might pay off, but I’d imagine that rather than spend £20-£30m the owners will just put up with what we have and hope one of the young players fills the gap at some stage.

We are the opposite to a club like Everton, with the exception of Gray we have never and potentially will never buy players at the top of their value, the owners just don’t do it, so I can’t ever see them splashing out more than they paid for Gray in a striker.

 

For some reason, the result yesterday really irritated me. It’s not often that the Watford result ruins my day, but losing to that sorry sack of donkeyshit left me feeling quite irked.

If Deloufeu had finished one of his chances in the first half, we end up winning that game by 3 or 4. Can’t really say anything more than that.

 

As ever the answer is staring us in the face...GABBIADINI. We'd have won 6-1 if he'd been playing yesterday. The mammoth adam appled foul faced ace goal getter.

 

I agree with you on some of your points.
We did not score and the reaction of the players gave away so much. We lost heart in the second half. e
We are weak in defence, that is a given.
You are right about signing players. We don't have the money to pay £100k a week. Bournemouth pay Defoe and Ake £100k+ but we don't have Russian/American money.
I admit that my original piece smacks of some frustration.
That is football for you.

 

I feel your pain and I think it's been shared by many on here.

I've put forward a simple solution to all our problems, and that is to somehow sign a more clinical striker than we currently have, in order to alleviate painful weekends such as these. However, it's still a worry that we don't seem to have player capable of scoring straight forward chances.

We are scoring "high class" goals for fun. We can smash them in from 40 yards or beat 6 players and score a worldy, but give our players a 1 v 1 with the keeper or an open goal tap in, their legs turn to complete jelly. It's a weird situation, but it's something that has cost us in 3 of our 11 league games already. So it is a basic problem with either the technical ability or composure of probably all our players, with the exception of Pereyra, who has proved calm in key moments.

 

Thanks Mrs Gray

 

Is Kieren back?

 

As has been alluded to in a post above, I think we’ll get there but it will take a few seasons to gradually upgrade everything.

The thing is if we win the three games you mention we are in the CL spots and a few points off the top of the table, is that realistic?

I know it’s easy to say a more clinical striker puts us in the position of getting more points from those three games, but building a premier league squad and keeping the wage bill under control is not easy.

I think if we had the clinical striker you talk of we’d just have deficiencies elsewhere in the team because of what they had cost.

But injuries loss of form and the sale of our better players aside we could well be just about there in two or three more seasons.

 

It makes you think though, and yes, it's totally realistic. Go back to each one of those games. Read the reports. Arsenal (a ), Fulham (a ) and Newcastle (a ). All of these games were virtually the same. Watford had chance after chance but just could not finish. All three should have been victories. I've watched our matches closely this season, and we have been that good.....so far. It's just frustrating that our results have not been reflective of the performances.

Maybe Spurs could be considered a slightly fortunate win, in comparison to the overall performance, but all other wins have been totally merited. I think we've deserved to have had 26 or 27 points in the bad by now.

 

Anyone needing to realise how good and dominant we were yesterday, watch the extended highlights. We were a class above. It was a comedy show of how many misses you can cram into one match, but our approach play was superb. Even in defeat I really enjoyed watching how we played.

Success......wow......he was sensational with his control and passing. I didn't see that against Huddersfield, where I felt his final pass let him down. But he was instrumental in virtually all our good moves....and there were many of them. A fantastic individual performance from him.

It may be strange thing to say, but that was probably one of our best performances of the season, certainly on chances created.

https://www.watfordfc.com/teams/first-team/match-report-newcastle-united-1-0-watford

 

n
No troll. Just an opinion.
I don't want to upset the forum elite members

 

It’s palpably not “simple”, though, is it? For one thing, we will be competing with around 10-14 other clubs to do the same.

If it is so “simple”, why didn’t we do it in the summer?

 

I meant it's an easy thing to say, buying a striker would fix all our problems, but I wanted to expand on that by highlighting other players also have to step up from missing such basic chances.

However, we already had a player in the summer on the books, who would have improved over time, but decided to sell. Had we kept Richarlison for another season, and developed him under Gracia's tutorage, we'd have an extremely attractive and effective team right now.

I will go out on a limb and say had we kept Richarlison, and maybe have signed another decent central defender, we would have finished in the top 6.

It's a crying shame, as no one would have come in for him after the way he ended the season last year. Silva was the only manager who would have pressed to make the move for him. It looks now they have got themselves are bargain, even at £40m.

Regretfully, we probably already had the dream ticket squad, but sold a vital piece without an adequate replacement. We're still making a good fist of it though, but those Newcastle, Fulham, Arsenal days are bound to be a little more frequent than they would have been.

 

Not a lot higher in the table.

This is the point.

We’re 8th & the highest we can realistically aspire to this season, given wages, is 7th.

Different perspectives.

We are fans & Gino spends his own money.

 

You're assuming that Richie would have been playing at the same level if he'd stayed at Watford. Maybe he would, if his poor post-Silva form was purely down to fatigue. But it's also possible that he would have just extended his post-Silva sulk

 

He may have had a bit of a sulk, but once the season started he would have buckled down. At the end of the day it would have been his own career he would have been damaging by not doing so. Going by the level of improvement across the board for so many players under Gracia, I think it's fair to assume Richarlison would have followed suit and would probably have enjoyed playing in a team creating so many chances.

 

Richarlison missed plenty of chances with us and didn’t do anything at all for several months. He looks a the real deal now, but how do we know he won’t have a downturn in form at some stage? How were the club to know he would’ve regained form, indeed how do we now he would’ve played to his potential for Gracia at all?

Hindsight is always a wonderful thing, but cashing out on Richarlison seemed the right thing to do at the time for the money and the fact that he actually only performed well for a very short period. Very much like the Ighalo situation, who should’ve sold sooner for a lot more money.

 

Performance wise , yesterday was better than Huddersfield game .

We created far more chances and conceded far less chances in the Newcastle game .

Results in football games often don’t accurately reflect the dominance of one team over the other .

Would be pretty boring league if it did really.

 

Richarlison was always going to get better. You don't need to be a tuned in super scout to realise that. He naturally got himself into goal scoring positions. That is purely down to instinct. This is what I look at when viewing strikers. What positions do they naturally take up, not so much how many chances does he miss. Young players will miss chances, but you could see his quality in some of his outstanding finishes. His bravery, power and pace. There were so many elements to his play that told me he was always going to be very successful.

Right from the start, I said I believed he will be one of the best players in the world. I know, it's a very tall order, and may not come true, but that's how highly I regard him. I've seen Ronaldo many times live and he has so many of the same attributes as he does. He has a natural instinct and this is so hard to find in a player.

We cashed in early, and who's to say if that was right or wrong, but cashing in early was always a risk, even at £40m had he continued his development. By the end of this season I suspect Everton will be beating off clubs with a stick for his signature, and they wouldn't sell for less than £80/90m I suspect.

I'm not saying we'd have kept him for any longer than one more season, but just think what a season we'd be having right now. It's not been bad so far, but it could have been absolutely sensational.

 

No doubt we have a sell on clause so we will still benefit if he does turn into the next Ronaldo. Remember that Everton paid way over the odds in the first place, take Everton out of the equation and let’s say he mirrors his season so far with them but with us instead, I still don’t think we’d be getting massively over we got for him anyway.

This season he’s got 6 goals and 0 assists, Peyrera has 5 goals and 0 assists, so we already have a player performing and finishing as well as he is anyway. He’s doing well, but he’s not doing that well.