Let's be honest, it isn't the kind of signing we had hoped for however he is a better prospect than Gray and Forssell were. If he is a squad player fighting for a place fine, only a two year contract, not sure what to make of that, if he bags 25 goals we will have one season left and his agent will have his head filled with lucrative contract ideas. Can't say I am unhappy with the signing, can't say I am excited either, wind-ups aside, we have signed a striker who couldn't make a L1 teams starting line-up too often however he is only 24 and at 6' 6" he will be a right handful in the air assuming we can get the crosses in..
Better than a 30 year old journeyman, but I struggle to see why we signed him ahead of other league 1 strikers who have much more prolific strike rates - Will Grigg at Walsall hasn't signed a new deal as far as I'm aware, he scored 20 last year. Paddy Madden at Yeovil (yes, I know they've been promoted now) scored 20+ as well. Maybe McDermott sees something in Smith that I haven't, that's why he's the manager I guess. Hoping for the best though!
If you want to believe that Matt Smith is more prolific than van Persie, you go right ahead Matt Smith scored 11 in 40 appearances - that's a strike rate of about 1 in 4 van Persie scored 30 in 48 appearances - that's a strike rate of about 1 in 1.6
Of course the stats I've used actually take into account how long he's been on the pitch. I struggle to see how "appearances" is more accurate.
Yes, a player being on the pitch for half an hour at the end of the game is completely different to one playing the full ninety, yet they both count as "appearances". I'm not the first person to use goals per minute to get a bit more context in the stats and I won't be the last.
And of course I'm not trying to claim he's better than Van Persie or anything, I was just using his stats to lend some perspective to what "one goal every 105 minutes" means, i.e. it's pretty good.
Where are you getting your stats from Simon? Last season in the league he played for 1,935 minutes and scored 6 goals - that equates to a goal every 319 minutes - which is a bit different from the figure you posted
So a player who cannot get in the starting line up of a struggling league 1 side, who manages to score 11 goals all season (6 in the league), is better than a player who is considered good enough to play more minutes, scoring 30 goals, for the team that won the premier league?
Or you could use your playing the whole game excuse, in which case he scored 2 goals in the 11 full games he played
*also the stats are from 2013 alone, although I imagine they're not a heap worse over the whole season.
