Spreading the burden

Some day I am going to make a compilation of Shearer's missed sitters. He missed tons, bucket loads, howling my-nan-could-have-scored-that tap ins.

Do you know how many easy chances Shearer missed ? Do you ?

No. No one does. Because what is important isn't how many goals strikers miss, it's how many they score. Mitrovic is scoring at a respectable rate and provides a very useful focal point for the team.

 

This all day long.

 

I like it, a starting line up of 17 players but tell the ref it's a 3-5-2 formation. Should give us a good chance.

 

But we can't pin all our hopes on a still developing striker who's just doing reasonably well.

We need guaranteed goals if we're going to go up, hence Mitro needs a striker partner, ideally Murphy.

 

The fault of the club this one. He was brought in last season with high expectations. What we should have done is signed him and an experienced strike partner that could take the burden off his shoulders. People say that he isn't a young kid - In football terms he is. He's only 22 ffs and still developing/ learning the game. He is not going to come in to the team and score 20 goals.

 

No question we'll need to bolster our strikers if we go up. I thought the question was whether we rely on Mitro or Murphy as our main striker for the next month or so. Assuming Rafa sticks with one striker, it is Mitro for me all day long

 

So you don't think Mitro is good enough to play against the likes of Bristol City, Huddersfield, Reading and Brighton? As a posh **** would say, jeepers that is harsh.

 

Holy bad comparisons, Batman. Let's leave this one well alone.

I mean, I know what you're TRYING to say - I watched Andy Cole (sorry, ANDREW Cole) on many an occasion and that lad sure knew how to miss (he was a pro-misser in his latter years at Man U). But he missed like Gayle misses. Hell, they all miss, except maybe Ruud Van Nistelrooj. Whisper it in quiet, dark corners but even Zlatan misses.

The problem for me is, as a striker, Mitro gets himself in a decent position to score two, maybe three times on a good day. He'll then miss all those chances two out of every three matches. And he's missed about five sitters, including a penalty, this season. Out of, what was it, 11 matches? The way we play, we have a pressing need for the striker to score, because when we get in a good position it's usually a VERY good position; we create in detail, we don't just toss the ball in the box. We create three or four golden opportunities. The issue with Mitrovic I have at the moment is he misses a large percentage of a smaller number of chances. Under KK with Cole/Beardsley, we'd create a dozen decent opportunities, so the odds were stacked in Cole's favour he'd score one.

Besides which, this is a silly argument - a lot of you guys appear convinced, and that's cool - I hope above all hope Mitrovic becomes the next best thing to Sir Al. Honestly, I do. He's a NUFC fan, he's got real heart and passion and clearly has potential. But right now, given this season and last season (I mean, Villa was just absurdly bad!), I'm on the fence. That's all I'm saying. Just one guys opinion, it doesn't really matter! Plus only Mitrovic can change my mind! And I genuinely hope he does.

 

I didn't say that did I?

I said he needs a strike partner, i.e. Murphy, Mitro shouldn't be a lone striker.

And it's a good job Rafa and the squad don't share your hubris, or we'd lose far more games.

 

I take your point about the misses by Mitro but don't agree. Yes he misses but then so do all strikers. I am in the camp which says he will score goals but he will always miss as well. He will never be prolific a la Shearer but he will get his fair share. This is on the premise that we play to his style and give him a run of games playing to his style. It's like asking Michael Owen and Obafemi Martins to be target men against 6' 6" defenders (oh, hang on Fat Sam did) asking Mitro to be a Gayle/Bellamy style striker. It's just not his style.

One thing I would pick you up on is any suggestion that Andy Cole missed lots of chances. He missed some but boy oh boy was he a goal scorer in his time here. Only second to a certain Jimmy Greaves in poaching terms. Problem at Man U was that they tried to make him a footballer which he never was going to be. He improved as a footballer at Man U but not to their standard but spoiled him as a goal scorer which ultimately was all he ever was and all he ever needed to be which is what Keegan recognised.

 

i like mitro but you can't use Alan Shearer as a comparison mate !

Try comparing him to fabrice pancrates first

 

Well that's one extreme to the other!

For me Mitro is a better version of Shola, strong and imposing and gets a few goals without being a regular goal scorer, but isn't a bungling oaf like Shola.

 

Ok, I'll rescind any reference to Cole being anything other than lethal for NUFC. Maybe Sir Les was a better example, he did miss a few sitters if memory recalls and was not the guy you wanted one on one with the keeper.

For Cole, it was remembering back to that game he played for Man U vs. West Ham, a title decider; he must have missed at least half a dozen chances (maybe a dozen!) and all I remember thinking was "if he'd been in black & white, he'd have scored the lot."

 

Fabrice pancrates has an excellent goals for games ratio

Stats arnt everything

 

What, 1 goal in 16 games for us?

Crap goals ratio, **** player, and so bad in training he was made to wear leopard skin tights as a punishment.......no exactly a complimentary comparison for Mitro.

 

Its a good job he doesn't share your tactical acumen or we'd have been relegated and sold all of our best players

 

And neither is comparing shearer to anyone

 

I didn't compare Mitorvic to Shearer. I said that judging a striker on the number of chances he misses is stupid because even the best miss boatloads. The focus should be on the number a striker scores. I described Mitrovic's goal scoring as respectable, not Shearer-esque.

 

You mentioned him