Vardy has missed 10 clear chances, Aguero 7 and Gray 3 He's nowhere near their quality, but what it shows that all strikers miss chances. Gray gets highlighted because we create so few opportunities. Take away our ridiculous amount of wonder goals last season, you'll see a team that creates a woeful amount of chances for players to score.
So are you saying if we were playing Leicester or City yesterday and that chance fell to either of those strikers you would expect them to have missed it?
I've acknowledged that he had a good start to last season - but that also coincided with him being in the best shape he's been in for four seasons and the team in general being playing excellently and full of confidence; neither of those things look like they'll be returning any time soon (if at all).
so why didn't one of the other players on the pitch for 77 odd minutes score? they had chances missed them all. Gray gets one in 13 odd mins that I agree he could've done better but coz it didn't go in he should be thrown out of the club. Ridiculous. Unless we have better strikers in our squad I will like others question why he would get on the pitch but until then I want him on around the hour mark to try and score when the others on the pitch have been ineffective.
Why not? They are both human and can make mistakes. Both of them are far superior strikers to Gray so the likelihood of them scoring would be high but not 100% nailed on.
Vardy has also scored 14 goals, so his conversion rate is hugely north of 50%. I’m not sure of the point you’re making other than Vardy is infinitely better than Gray, which is clear for all to see.
Delefeo is playing alongside Deeney on the team sheet to score the goals also. The fact that he wonders around the pitch to pick up the ball when the game starts is up to him.
It's not just the miss though, it'e pretty much everything else he does. Lack of control, passing the ball 10 feet without putting it straight out. His record is not great but he offers very little else. He is not even close to being good enough at this level
Vardy has a midfield behind him to create chances, chances which he also misses frequently. The team is woefully low on confidence, and you're expecting our sub striker to score the one opportunity he gets every 180 minutes. If January comes and we sign a striker that bangs them in then fair enough I'll admit I'm wrong. But if you put a striker in a side that can't pick a pass, and puts corners out for throw ins then your strikers will struggle to score goals Edit: https://www.premierleague.com/stats/top/clubs/total_through_ball
Likewise. I'm looking forward to not travelling 2 hours round the M25 for the joy of seeing Watford fail to win again. The good news for those going, though, is that I predict Watford will at least score in these matches. I have yet to see Watford score at home this season; they only manage to do so when I'm not there.
Of course, he's a great striker. But the point is that he does in fact miss chances. The difference is that he gets a chance to score multiple times per game. Gray, and the rest of our strikers get one chance a game to score. He's scored 11, missed 10 Gray has scored 2, missed 3 There are no doubt better strikers out there, but if you have a midfield that have produced 4 through balls all season, then any striker coming in is going to struggle
It's not ridiculous at all. He is hopeless. No composure, no touch, poor passing, no pace and limited strength. The first thing he did yesterday was to ran the channel, collect the ball then put the simplest of passas out for a throw. Thus taking the pressure right off the Palace backline. He does this constantly and is frankly a waste of a shirt.
I thought Sarr was extremely good yesterday, seemed like the penny has dropped as to what he is meant to be doing, I am hoping that Pearson and co will make him even better, if so we will struggle (one way or the other) to keep him next season!
Agree. Our players always seem to scuff the ball, they never make a clean connection or they balloon it over the bar. I would be interested to know if Gray does the same in training or does he hit the sweet spot and send it fizzing into the net?
This is one of the weirdest things of all; physically he's a beast, more than happy to display his physique at the slightest hint of an opportunity, and yet he's incapable of using his strength as a tool. It's like he was hypnotised at some point earlier in life to have the body image of Peter Crouch without the height any time he steps onto a football pitch. You would think this would be one of the easiest things to coach into him of all his limitations, but it has apparently been beyond our numerous rotating cadre of staff.
I’m at the point now where I think not having a decent striker is/will cost us a lot more then our defence. I think we’ve got to the point now where we are conceding a low enough amount of goals to still pick up results, but not having anyone to convert the chances when they arise is costing us dearly.
I forgot Pereyra was playing the first half, he did get more involved second but still nowhere near good enough. The only excuses I can give is that he wasn't 100% match-fit having missed the last three games and he has had his confidence knocked from playing in such an uninspiring system under QSF. Deulofeu was better than you give him credit for, granted his set-pieces were poor, but he got in some good crossing and shooting positions and generally looked more up for it than on Wednesday. The positives about yesterday: - Much solider defensive performance all-round, and lot more creativity than most games this season - We kept going for the full 90 minutes, and not once let our heads drop, so hopefully we've got the fitness issue sorted - Our key players (RP, GD & AD) are still not performing like we know they can, so we know there is still room for improvement. If that was the best performance we could muster and still couldn't win, then we would be doomed, but if Pearson can get them to the level of last season (and with all three of them still the right side of 30, I don't believe they are already permanently burnt out), then we will get more opportunities to score and them chipping in their own every now and then and thus convert draws to desperately needed wins. Like I said earlier, yesterday's draw has made it harder but not impossible and Palace have a good defence and very good away record. Let's keep it going at, er, Liverpool...
We’re obviously going to lose against Liverpool, but the one thing I’m hoping Pearson can bring is the belief that we can get results against the big boys. We have a truly abysmal record against the big teams recently as we know all too well. I think our recent managers haven’t given the team the belief we can get a result, we’ve just gone into games like that resigned to failure, while other teams have managed to get the odd result against the big hitters. Man City are having a very patchy season, yet we rolled over and lost 8-0. Did we ever believe we could get something out of it? Probably not. Pearson doesn’t strike me as the type of manager who would put up with that attitude in any game, something I think we’ve been sorely missing.
Compared to which strikers off the bench?. That's my point. I'm willing to forgive his limitations more than many others on this forum purely based on the limitations of the squad. I'm not even saying he should start every game necessarily if that's what the managers decide depending on formation choices. But all I know is when its 0-0 after an hour he should come on to try to score and let him miscontrol the ball from time to time as long as we have a chance of winning.
I'm not necessarily defending Gray but what I don't get is that Success has also had numerous chances (with him coming on at the same time as Gray in many games, if not starting) and has only managed two league goals, yet no one lays into him the way people do with Gray. Is it because he's five years younger and we didn't pay £18m for him?
When was the last time we scored a header? Am I right in thinking that it must be some time deep into last season? The most recent, off the top of my head, would be Cathcart's at home against Spurs well over a year ago, but I'm torn between thinking it sounds about right and that I must be missing examples because it still couldn't be that bad. Why do we offer such little aerial threat? We're not even a small team. It's a bit pathetic.
We don't attack the ball. We have no natural headers of the ball. Dawson is the only one who I would expect to get near the ball from a freekick or corner. The rest are just dreadful at it. A club like Watford have to be good at set pieces. We're missing out on such a regular supply of goals. We've got no one who is a freekick specialist either. These are qualities we severely lack in the squad, and are attributes that would be top of my shopping list in terms of future recruits.
A couple of observations... Got to question Kiko’s attitude, he played like a man possessed yesterday, so what’s he been doing for the last twelve months? Unfortunately, Andre Gray doesn’t have a footballing brain, it’s not his fault, so perhaps we should lay off him a tad. Deulofeu should be played as an impact sub, give him the last twenty minutes in games, instead of seventy minutes strutting round like a tart
This is the nub of it. It wasn't so much that he didn't score his chance yesterday. It was that he scuffed his shot (with plenty of time to get it right) and it just trickled through to their keeper not requiring him to have to make any sort of save at all really. Neither do I get this 'wrong foot' stuff. Surely it's imperative that a striker in particular should be able to take a chance with either foot. They're PL players ffs. I used to me able to kick with both feet because I'd taken the trouble to learn to kick with my wrong (right) one. Always kicked with my right in a rather different way though. With more of an arc. Body further away from the ball. But if it was on the deck then I could catch it right but with less power. Only a volley coming across me would be likely to have found my right out as that's more about timing and eye/body co-ordination. This skill was achieved by endlessly kicking a tennis ball against a wall with whichever foot it fell to. So why doesn't Gray also have that skill (if indeed he hasn't). He's a PL striker as opposed to a park No.10 ffs. Of course he wouldn't necessarily have scored if he'd hit it sweetly. Their keeper could have made a 'wonder save'. Doucoure was set up by Sarr in very similar circumstances in the dying seconds against Arsenal. He caught it OK but forgot to give it a bit of air and the keeper was able to make a good save. But continuing to scuff presentable chances on a regular basis is indefensible for a PL striker.
