We get a mention and is a half decent read... http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulfletcher/2011/04/craig_mackail-smith.html#289561 Dont think NP would spend 3m on him in the summer though? Or if we need him?
I'd definitely be up for a part exchange with Mclean, but I doubt we're going to be throwing that sort of money around.
Article says he is out of contract in the summer, so he is a free agent. We wouldn't have to pay the Posh anything surely
I had also over looked that, for free all of a sudden have we found what we want be our number one target up top?
With him being out of contract it's entirely a question of wages. So who has the most money? Answer the three relegated sides. They will be getting rid of their top earners and replacing them with the likes of Mikhail-Smith. Eg. If Wigan come down Rodallega will be sold off to the likes of Birmingham or Fulham or West Brom or Sunderland and replaced with Smith. He'd probably quadruple his salary and his new club would probably at least halve theirs. If we were to compete, it would probably screw the wage structure we have worked hard this last season to establish.
Despite what the BBC article says his contract runs out next summer not this one. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/9425263.stm Besides which, he's really not that good. L1 goals mean naff all, look at McPhee, Abbott, Elliott, Paynter, Rhodes, Lambert (going to Southampton because no CCC club went for him), Cox, Sharp, Constantine, Eastwood, Hayter, Sam Parkin, Adam Boyd, Knight. They've all scored over 20 goals in a 3rd tier season in the last 8 or 9 years. Have any of them even looked like scoring regularly in th Championship? Eastwood had a good start but has gone flat since then. Where it matters, last season McLean scored 8 in 39 when their fans said he was carrying an injury. In the same team in the same season without carrying an injury Mackail-Smith only scored 11 in 47. Hardly a big improvement.
For what it's worth Football manager 2011 has his contract running out next summer also. You may think it's only a game but 99% of the time it's right on these things.
For every name you can come up with that didn't make the step up, there'll be another player who did. Matty Fryatt certainly has and if you look at some on this seasons top scorers, Danny Graham was playing for Carlisle a couple of seasons ago, Grant Holt was playing at Shrewsbury and Steve Morison was playing at non league Stevenage Borough!
Yes you can, but when you're being asked to pay over ã1M (ã2M upfront and another ã1M in addons in the demands from P'boro) for a striker you don't want to be basing it purely on evidence from a lower league. You certainly want more than a 50% chance of them being good enough. With CMS he's even had a season in the Championship and didn't do much better than a player we already have on our books, who we generally don't think is good enough, and who was carrying an injury at the time. We've already been ripped off having paid ã1.3M for what would be our 4th choice striker, lets not go throwing another ã2M away on what will probably end up being our 3rd choice striker.
That's true, there's certainly a risk in paying big money for players from lower leagues, all the examples I gave came on the cheap.
Hooper looks to be doing ok at Celtic too following on from where he left off at Scunny. He was non league wasn't he?
Charlie Austin hasnt played for Burnley has he? But he will probably be a good asset (not sure how you spell that). I do know that he played for Poole FC or something like that 2-3 years ago, pretty impressive
He was spotted as an 18 year old at Grays Athletic, though he did go through a few league clubs before arriving at Scunny, he probably is worth the money Celtic paid for him.
