Doesnt make sense this why buy a player for next season and at the same price as Marriot. A player who doesnt score loads of goals ever, what have they seen in him? Remember when they bought Ekuban at least he had one season where he scored 16 goals but every previous season he hardly scored. So at best we get another Ekuban who is injured more than fit, looks good but doesnt score. Potential yes but potential doesnt work in this league
Marriot is potential but its a £7m gamble on a L1 player, but is probably the best of the L1 and cheap overseas bunch. the players who have proved they can score at this level are Martin, Afobe, Grabban, Prijavic, Ulloa but hes gone back to Brighton. January purchases have got be guaranteed to click from the first game otherwise its a waste of money
A lot of money for Marriott though. How has Prijavic proved he can score at this level (not saying he can't)?
Top scorer for Leggia Warsaw and in European comp then smashed 20goals so far this season in the top Greek league
Personally, if we're going to spend £7m on a player to lead the line for the next 3 seasons, I'd like him to have half a chance of winning a header in the box once in a while. Fed up having no aerial presence in the final third. Just sayin'.
This is what confuses me about the Mariott advocates, as he's only 5'9" - which is shorter than Ruth!!.
Doesnt seem to be any plan or coordination in what we want in a striker. We can go out an buy an overseas CB every other day for the U21s but look at the difference in what Chelsea want. A lump up front to win balls in the air hold up lay and create as well as score. So they look at Crouch, Carrol etc. We base our plans around a price even when there are no decent scoring stats, or type of player we are looking for?
5'11 on Wiki, which is where I got both heights from. Not the most reliable source for either, but my point is that he's not a 6'5" hulk, is he? He'd be hailed as a major signing coup at first, then 2 months later he'd be slaughtered for not winning headers and TC slaughtered because Orta didny sign someone who was 6'5"!
From the ever reliable YouTube highlight clips of marriott he reminded me of mccontract... which is a compliment. Quick feet, looked lively... he passed the eye test for me, but definitely not a line leader. Of far more concern is he’s had half a good season in league 1... following on from 1 decent and 1 poor one in league 2. Hey he’s only 23, might be finding his feet and might be the time to get a player on the up... or he might be having a streaky run that’ll dry up (no doubt as soon as we buy him!). You’d want to have watched a hell of a lot of him to be confident it was the former not the latter.
Most surprising goal scorer this season must be Sterling at Man City. No big lumps up front but the way they play which is fast pacy one touch with a front 5 Sterling has scored consistently from the first day of the season. Aguero as expected but shows what a different style of play can achieve if you have a different class of player. Always hated the lad as he was over priced show pony but ....
In regards to Marriott we could have been having the same conversation about Roofe a couple of seasons back. We’d have been well and truly robbed if we’d spent £7m on him. I’m not saying he wouldn’t turn out to be better than Roofe but I certainly wouldn’t spend £7m on finding out. This late in the transfer window the best have already been snapped up and it’s just the over priced that are left I’m afraid.
That’s because we didn’t do our business in time. It was obvious in October we’d need a quality striker. Ortas paid to find those replacements so if we’re scraping around for one on last day of transfer window, it doesn’t bode well For Orta in my opinion
Our problem is we want a proven goal scorer who will be experienced at this level but we only want to pay £4m for him... Don’t get me wrong, Rads has been a breathe of fresh air but the moment Wood left our number one target should have been a replacement up to the value of £12m and we’d have still been quids in.
