Udinese fans must be so pleased with this purchase. Hope he doesnt come back next season now, patience has gone.
Honestly, can you see Vakoun getting a kick in the Italian top flight ? He will end up on loan somewhere in the Belgian boon - docks is my best guess .
I was given some advice when I was younger that "done beats perfect" and Bayo is the living embodiment of that. Scruffy, awkward, unpopular...but he scores goals and is on course to be our highest scorer in a season for nearly a decade.
I don't think that it is fair to compare Vakouns return this season with any season in the Premier League . Last season he came 2cnd to the bloke who amassed 10 . The season before he got bombed out on loan . But crucially , he has had no genuine competition up top this season so he is going to play regardless of performance . He dug the team out of a hole last night , granted, but it was a hole that he had dug himself . We were dreadful up top .
Third in the top scorer list with 10 in 25 isn't bad, though. He doesn't get much service either. We need another striker, obviously, but more importantly we need a proper central midfielder and a ball playing center back. Bayo being somewhat limited is far from our biggest problem.
Do you think that a lack of service and his struggle to gain good possession, which could bring Chak Vata or Baah into the game more, be related ?.
Partly, yes. Also as much to blame is Chak running up blind alleys and being too slow to release the ball, and Baah firing crosses in at 100mph - though to be fair that is something he has noticeably improved on in recent games.
Service works both ways A strikers job is to give good service to those that he wants good service from Lads, it was Cardiff yesterday , not Liverpool .
Though yesterday's cross was borderline unplayable. Despite being unmarked a couple of yards out I'd actually give Bayo extra credit for putting the ball in the net without any trouble. Could easily have ballooned over the bar with the pace on the cross.
We moved on Raj for scoring but not being good enough to knit the play together. Now Bayo may be 3rd top scorer but doesn't hold the ball up well enough. Maybe a cheeky Jan bid for Ollie Watkins, Isak or Ivan Toney might be in order ? Bayo is nowhere near as good as most of the strikers we've had over the last 13 years. Nor is the rest of the squad and we don't have any money to add quality signings. Fans need to get used to the fact that we will now be watching poorer players in pretty much all positions than we have been used to for the past decade or so.
I disagree with this part personally. The entire team is catered towards getting him service which he does. The problem is his movement is so bad that he turns a good opportunity into a bad one. If he stopped running to the back post every single time he’d get more shots, more goals and we’d win more games.
Lots of opinions today about Bayo, and I think each one is valid. He is a strange player. Lonely job up top but when a striker keeps going and eventually gets his reward in a horrible game like that, then I can’t help but like him a little bit more.
Yep, strikers continually running to the back post is a cop-out…the quality of cross has to be almost perfect to stop the CBs preventing a goal. Running to the near post increases the margin of error for the crosser and can also result in own goals and/or deflections for others to benefit from. However, it also increases the likelihood of getting clattered by any number of defenders.
Whatever you think of Troy and his ability later on but he spoke about something recently about number 9s not knowing their wingers and it’s important to “know your wingers” when it comes to crossing situations. All Larouci does is cross low, all Baah does is whip it with speed across the goal. Both of these crossing techniques are made for near post runs or staying central to the goal. It’s not a surprise that the only time Bayo got a shot off last night was when he was in the middle of the goal.
There's been an interesting change in Bayos game in recent seasons. Previously, despite all his flaws (and there are quite a lot!) - his one biggest strength was that he was incredibly consistent in getting into positions where he could take high value shots (whether they'd end in a goal or not was another matter...) Below is his shot maps for the 22/23 season, where he joined us in the summer and was loaned to Charleroi for the second half of the season - the locations of those shots are incredibly consistent and I was firmly #TeamBayo then - whilst his finishing was questionable (as were other aspects of his game) getting those sheer number of chances in that area would naturally lead to a decent amount of goals, even with poor finishing (think I made these claims back then as well if anyone feels like digging them out!). Previous seasons at other teams looked pretty similar as well, so he was a beast in getting into the right areas. But over this season and last there's been a bit of a shift - instead of taking a huge amount of average quality chances in a very specific location, he's definitely been attacking the 6-yard area more and getting off some really big quality chances (finishing consistency still debatable though). Not sure what my overall point was here, despite his other limitations, the Bayo we're seeing now is scoring at a good rate (for now at least), but I still see a huge value in the Bayo of old - being able to create so many shots in such a specific location must mean some good movement + positioning in order to create that volume of shots. That being said, I still think we can do better in the market. Still mad we didn't make a move for Mika Biereth though.
I actually quite like Bayo. He misses some absolute sitters but I actually think he has improved this season. For example if he'd only scored one at Sheff Wed he'd have 7 in 25, which would get him to 13 goals over the season or 7 in 1647 minutes which is a goal every 235 minutes which by rough maths would get him to 17 over a 46 game season. I'm not saying he's anywhere near the level we've had but he's perfefctly serviceable even with his poor finishing. a Goalkeeper, CBs that can actually run and a midfield that consists of more than just Louza would be way higher up my priority list.
Funny that Troy can see this as an analyst but spent his last few seasons doing exactly the same as what you've described Bayo doing, hiding at the back post!
As everyone is aware I am not a Bayo fan but I would not accuse him or any striker of "hiding"at the back post as it is one of the options a striker has . Maybe taking a wrong option is a better critique ?. The first one is nipping in front of the defender at the near post , back post away from the defenders who are dealing with the danger or holding your run like Chris Wood did the other night knowing defenders will instinctively run toward the 6 yard area . Then there is anticipating a second ball. This really cannot be coached and is why certain players seem to always be in the right place at the right time however it can be coached out of them and there does seem to be a general lack of a "fox in the box" type of player at the moment although the technical ability of players has improved much over recent years .
I remember Lineker being asked how he would anticipate where a cross was going to go, before it was crossed, so he could get on the end of it. His reply was that it was his job to dart into space in the box. It was the crosser’s job to find him with the ball in the box, not the other way round.
Correct . And the trick is to find or make the space in a congested area . Most footballers , at any level, will think like a defender and will run towards the ball . A striker will generally, but not always, find the space that has been created by the retreating defenders .
While that is entirely true, we've seen time and time again that our wide players are rarely capable of spotting anyone in the box. They seem to make cut backs and crosses completely blindfolded. So many times you see a cross drilled across the box before anyone has arrived or a cut back being played when everyone has already raced into the box. Our coaches frequently talk about being ruthless and clinical in the final third, but they don't seem to practise it very much.
