Right, but loans are only a short term liability. 6 months is a lot different to a 2 or 3 year contract. And why focus on sharp,Ohio and Lokilo when the same is true of Delap, Morton and Carvalho who are here under the same or similar circumstances. It's a bit selective don't you think?
Yes very selective to highlight the fact we’re having to sell our home grown talent to fund the loans and wages of **** players
As I've said before, I think either he or Jaden will go unless they both push to leave or a silly offer comes in, and that's the model amost all championship clubs are having to adopt to stay competitive with the parachute sides. Develop a player, sell for profit, reinvest, rinse and repeat. You think it's feasible to keep hanging on until the contract runs out and they go for free? It's just sustainable recruitment. KLP left last year and we reinvested to help build the current side, which is stronger. No reason why it shouldn't be the same with Greaves or Jaden.
If Greaves goes I think we will be in for Chambers again (on loan) potentially. More than adequate replacement for a promotion push.
-> he was moved on because LR didn't think he suited the way he wanted to set us up, which as the gaffer is his right to do so, just as us as fans have the right to question why and what could have been of we'd kept hold of a 13 goal a season striker. Yep. With better service from actual wingers, and a better midfield, he'd have likely scored way more than 13. Yes, recruitment is a team effort (Acun, Tan, Rosenior) but if Rosenior wanted to keep Oscar, I'd wager he would still be here (or would have been brought back in January). The major (but not only) question mark I still have over Rosenior is in terms of his coaching and judgement in relation to attacking play. We simply haven't improved under him in this respect inspite of support in 3 windows, 16 months of his coaching, and having much higher quality players at his disposal. I see the Oscar situation (whilst retaining / persevering with Connolly, bringing in Sharp and Ohio) as being prime example of his poor judgement in terms of what's needed to make us a highly effective attacking force.
Even Howdens said were about 14 better off than last season and that was with Oscar, so I can't see how it hasn't improved. If he's been sacrificed to help fund/support that improvement then for me those numbers justify it. Has it got further to improve? Absolutely. And I'm sure it will continue to with time, stability and familiarity.
Oscar is a funny player, the longer he hasn’t played for us the worse he’s got. It’s normally the other way round. In July everyone was terrified about losing him and talking about £20m transfer fees. I’ve said all along I think it was a mistake to let him go and the more I watch this team dominate play but nobody getting on the end of anything in the box the more I think the slider moves from opinion towards fact. Yes he has flaws and he isn’t the complete player but he has the knack to be in the right place at the right time and we really have missed that kind of presence so many times this season when we’ve struggled to score. Anyone arguing against that is just arguing for arguings sake. And fwiw my opinion is if he’d have been here playing as our main striker he’d have been good for 20 goals this season, if he managed to score 13 in last seasons team. He also had an excellent pre season so it seemed like he was ready to hit the ground running. Hopefully he will be here next season and we will be able to see for ourselves if he’s capable of being a good goalscorer or not.
There were plenty saying he was only good in fits and starts last season. And the figures bear that out. I'd suggest it was the opposite, that the longer he's been gone, the better player he's become. We've replaced his goals and we have players who aren't passengers in the team for 3/4 of the games he played. Would I rather have him coming off the bench than Sharp? yes. But it's a bit impractical to have your highest earner as a squad player and he'd surely devalue from where he is if he's not playing week in week out. Have you asked yourself why he's in Brazil via France and no other championship club were champing at the bit to sign him? Surely he'd be an absolute steal at 4m if he's as good as some seem to think?
Yes he is a good penalty box poacher. So is Connolly as we discussed earlier in the thread. And so is Billy Sharp. Neither of the latter two are getting many chances lately and neither would Oscar if he was here and playing. If he was here and playing, his considerable wage would have to come from somewhere, so in all likelihood we'd have to have not signed some of the quality attacking players we've added this season, probably meaning we'd be in an even worse position to create chances. I can't understand why this crucial reality continues to be ignored. This is a very good team with some significant weaknesses, but the lack of a poacher we couldn't possibly afford isn't one of them. We've got two who we can afford sat on the bench every week.
Don’t know why people think our goal scoring is significantly better without Óscar in the side. Except for Preston, we’ve scored the fewest goals in the top 10 and our goal difference is ****e compared to the teams around us.
In 2013 we won promotion to the Premier League with our top goal scorer, and goal difference, in single figures. It's still all to play for and very doable. The views expressed in my posts are not necessarily mine.
We've scored 10 goals more this season then this time last season. Yes it's an improvement which was badly needed, but to use significantly is a tad OTT. Some people on here said at the end of the summer window that what we ended up with wasn't going to score us the goals needed, then those again said the same at the end of the Jan window..... Were they wrong?
It’s not as big a difference people are making out. Some interesting stats for the stat enjoyers. 9th for goals per game 16th for clean sheets 24th for interceptions per game 23rd for tackles won per game We’re not conceding loads of goals per game (7th) but we’re also not scoring a lot compared to teams around us which means we’re dropping a lot of points whilst the likes of Norwich are in rip-roaring goal-scoring form. That’s why I think we probably won’t make the playoffs and that is entirely down to the manager who allowed last season’s top scorer to leave without bringing in adequate replacements.
In the first half of the season it was enough, although should've still been more really. So yes they were wrong at the end of the summer window. If people said in January that we still didn't have enough with Delap injured then they were right. Think most people thought we'd done pretty well in that window though. Ohio was the obvious gamble signing and to me it's pretty clear that we took a punt rather than go with nothing to replace Delap. It is what it is and it's absolutely **** all to do with Oscar being loaned out at the start of the season. Personally I think we should still be able to find ways to score some goals without Delap but with 3 available strikers and loads of quality wingers and 10s.
7 in 26 is still a worse goal per game ratio than Óscar’s 13 in 35. The other strikers Rosenior brought in were a fat Connolly, a fat, old Sharp and a kid on loan that he’d rather leave out the match day squad in favour of a midfielder up front lmao. Genius moment by Rosenior, that.
