Hit me with it, how **** is he? From the outside looking in it’s seemed like he’s often struggled for form and couldn’t always hold down his place. Is he good for a backup keeper or are we making a mistake?
He’s enjoyed sitting on our bench for about 8 years and is fine as a backup keeper. We paid him a ridiculous amount of money, too much for a a No. 2 keeper, which is where some fans have taken issue.
Agreed, he’s a decent back up for Spurs. Problem is we put him on a stupid wage that was totally out of whack with our club. No chance we would renew that contract, and rightly so. I wish him well but we need to sign a first choice keeper that is better than him & McCarthy and relegate one of them to second choice if we want to progress
I am not execting much news within the coming weeks with regard to new signings. I am far from convinced that Ralph will be at the helm in August and just think if someone new is coming in, it will be a few weeks before we hear that. It will be interesting to read of any expressions of dissatisfaction from out going players. For my money, we need a clean sweep across the board and would not be at all surprised to see the likes of Stephens, Bednarek, Adams, Djenepo, Diallo , Valery, Ellyounoussi, Long, Tella, A Armstrong and Smallbone all moved on,. I think we will struggle to keep Livramento, JWP and KWP. There was a comment about Ralph's signings somewhere in here during the last 24 hours which suggested only a few of them have actually worked out. I was surprised that no mention was made of the fact that Ralph was instrumental in improving JWP but I agree that his signings have been under-whelming. I think KWP and Livramento have been his most successul acquisitions. The love - in for Lycano strikes me as odd and I cannot see much of an upgrade with him upon the kind of decen performances Jack Stephens put in earlier in the season before he got injured. I would argue that Perraud is a very decent acquisition and a bit under-rated by the fans.
That's partially/largely on Armstrong, though. We saw, with Ings, that the tactic doesn't exactly dissuade players from making runs in behind; we found Ings with quite a few, to good effect. Armstrong has a habit dating back to before his time with Saints of dropping off the back line in order to have the ball played to his feet, but he simply is not good enough to beat PL defenders head-on, and collecting the ball deeper feeds his fetish for taking long shots, something that really isn't his strength. He has pace, but he doesn't have the intelligence to make that pace work at this level.
Schad This is where I would really disagree with you. Armstrong was unfortunate during the first few home games not to score. I feel he is technically superior to Adams and able to be more of a nuisance. I just feel he has not really been given the chance to demonstrate that he is anything more than a fringe player. Whenever I have seen him , he works hard and and looks sharp. It was a big step up for him yet he has largely been denied the chance to take it. Had he hit the net lasy August, I feel he would have made more of a name for himself. Ralph's lack of belief in him has been hard to justify and those of us who have watched Armstrong play would ( as a rule) come to a more positive conclusion than yourself.
Afraid I have to disagree on all counts here. Armstrong has never been a good finisher; he just made up for it in the Championship by taking more shots than any player in the Championship ever had. Now that he isn't afforded the same number of shooting opportunities, he doesn't score goals. I also find it difficult to argue that Armstrong wasn't afforded a chance. He started 12 of our fist 14 matches of the year, despite not looking particularly good. He was then dropped because, simply put, he was playing poorly, and Broja wasn't.
Gabby was a much more prolific scorer, though. 5x as many league goals as Armstrong, in about 1.5x as many minutes. It's not hard to see why Armstrong doesn't score: for the most part, he doesn't shoot from the places where goals come from. Here are the shot charts for the fhree players who saw any significant action as strikers: You can pretty clearly see their tendencies. Broja will roam the box looking for space, but mostly wants to shoot from 12 yards and in. Che is a bit more willing to have a go from angles, but gets quite a lot of shot attempts centrally, in and around the six yard box. And Armstrong likes to operate wider, and shoot basically any time he touches the ball. The bigger the bubble, the more likely it is to be a goal, and what's notable about Armstrong is how infrequently he got to places where he was likely to score. On average, Che's shots produce one expected goal every 5.8 attempts. Broja's would produce one xG every 7.6 attempts. Armstrong's would produce one every 11.1 attempts. That's independent of the quality of their finishing: Armstrong just takes a lot of really low-percentage shots, and nothing in his track record suggests that he can finish those at a higher-than-average rate (the opposite, actually). That's why I'm really unconvinced that his pace is a major asset. Rather than looking to break behind the defense, he wants to drift into places where he can receive the ball and shoot, but very few of those shots are good uses of possession. But that's the way he has always been.
In fairness to you, Schad, you’ve been saying this since we were first linked with him, and you’ve been borne out.
The problen with this is he's not good enough to change/build our entire style around. Even if we did that I doubt he'd reach 10 goals as he simply doesn't have the skill set to play at this level. His first touch is generally poor, he lacks game intelligence and is also far too head down. His finishing is nothing to shout about either. In short he looks like the Championship striker we signed. I'd probably.give him another season but I don't expect him to improve much and if a decent offer came in I'd sell.
That made for interesting reading One thing to add was that his problem of shooting too often from difficult position may well have been exacerbated by the fact that he felt the pressure after stepping up from the Championship and taking a while for the goals to flow.
Good stats, which are quite damning for Adarma. Isn’t this the sort of stuff that Ankersen looks at, when determining the type of player to go for? I seem to recall a video in which he explained how, in one season, Newcastle had vastly over performed and produced these type of stats to support his claim and how he knew that they would struggle the next season.
Stuart Pearce has left WHU to pursue “other challenges”. We could do with a defensive coach, and getting our defence to improve would be very challenging.
