The real failing isn't taking a risk by signing him in the first place. Of course, with hindsight, the risk didn't pay off but he is clearly a very good player and you can see why the club took the risk. The real failing is that 2 years and several serious injuries later, we went into this season relying on him as our first choice striker with no suitable back up as a lone striker.... made even worse by the fact we spent £7-8m on a striker we clearly feel is one for the future.
yeah could well have been that the medical team raised concerns and they were ignored because Martin wanted him, or could be they missed it. However you look at it it’s a signing that has aged poorly
He never starts and even when we didn't have Stewart he played very little. It seems like they bought him with a view to giving him minutes here and there but that he wouldn't be starting much. Either that or they only realised he was crap after wasting £8m on him! Neither are a good look.
Possibly, I just think he’s seen as not as good as Stewart or Archer so was always going to be a squad type player. You could argue that signing a striker better than those two in the Championship was a pretty tough task so we signed a younger player to rotate in with them. The question for me is whether or not Still will adjust to play to Archers strengths. If he won’t then not signing another big forward makes no sense at all. Keeping Archer makes no sense at all.
I think the issue with Archer isn't actually Archer. He's never going to win an aerial duel with the majority of championship defenders as he's too short so don't lump it up to him. He also doesn't seem the type of player who's going to already be in the box waiting for the cross to come in. So right now he needs players to thread it through the defence so that he can run onto it and at present the person who's supposed to be doing that is Azaz and he's not firing on all cylinders at the moment either. It's on WS to sort out as if we spend all day lumping it up to archer we won't be winning any time soon.
