Hard but fair? He’s overly criticised on here by some. Can you imagine if we had been the club that has signed Henry and/or Bergkamp? Wood imho did a lot of good. Only issue was he didn’t score enough. He had joined after playing for Burnley in a certain way got many years and in this current year Burnley were rubbish. I thought he slotted in quite well and if he’d scored a few more he would be seen as some one similar to Sibierski
Hard but fair, purely in terms of goals. I think Eddie will get more goals from him. If the service is improved I think he'll do better on that stat.
I don't know what to think about Botman. He doesn't appear to blessed with pace. In our league will that be significicant? But he's tall and win alot in the air, he can tackle and find the ball.
Bruno day. I believe it will be on the same day our sponsor is announced. That’s just my own feeling.
VVD doesn’t appear to have pace either but his positional sense is amazing. I think Botman is the real deal mate. But I still think he will end up at Milan.
If he's played in the right team, he can score 10-15 goals a season at this level, and do well, but we do not play to his strengths. He doesn't work in the type of football we play. He is ok as a 3rd choice, but we really need to play to his strengths when he comes on, otherwise he's just useless. He's a target man, and we don't play target man football.
VVD is ridonkulous! he does have pace - but as you say never see it because he's always in the right place.
As for Wood - early round of the Cup's against League 1 teams only please, rather have Darlow up top. He's here until 2024 so I can't see us shifting him anytime soon - maybe sell him back to Burnley for £2m if they come back up next year.
I think its time to **** Botman off. He's had plenty time to ponder this and make a decision and I don't believe for 1 second Howe will bring people here simply for money. It's not what he's trying to build. No point being second choice for this kid - move on if that's the case.
Second choice to the Italian champions though. The fact that he’s not told us to go away says he is considering it. Although we don’t like it we are still a hard sell.
I'm fine with that. **** HIM OFF and go get Badiashile who I am convinced suits our needs way better than Botman.
This for me. No, he's not top, top quality, but we didn't really have many choices back in January. Let's be realistic, we were in a relegation battle and virtually bottom of the league when he joined. OK so we hoped the lure of money might have interested some higher profile players, but it didnt. And would it have been for the right reasons? Wood is not what we need going forward, but back in January, we were desperate. As ToonArmy1892 says, it's £25m well spent if it helped to keep us up. Relegation would have hurt. Badly. As far as I'm concerned he did what was needed at that time. He put in a shift, even if his finishing was terrible at times. I'm certainly not going to lambast him for that. But equally, we do need better if the club is going to progress.
Wood - came in when we were one of the favourites for relegation and had no strikers of note. We then went on a ridiculous run of form in which he was a key part and suffers due to a) he didn't score enough b) we survived so comfortably that people forget how much we needed him. If we'd have Gayle leading the line for those months then there's a good chance we'd be lining up in the Championship next season. £25m well spent. Even though he's pretty ****. Botman - Of course we're second choice to Milan, they're just won their league, have CL football and are a bigger club than us. I don't get why people would be bothered by this, currently we're not in the top 10 clubs in Europe in terms of appeal, possibly not the top 20. If a player signs for us straight off and disregards a club like Milan then it's almost certainly just about the money (at the moment). I have no doubt that if he comes here (and i now don't think he will) he'll do his best and I wont care in the slightest that his first choice was a more successful club, I want players we sign to be ambitious.