No more excuses for Hooper unless he gets close to Jerome's goal to games ratio in a much easier league than the Prem I can't see how he can be considered our best striker, if he can't adapt to different formations then that is not the managers fault.
I've watched Hooper a few times when he played for Scunthorpe and I was never impressed with him! He is nowhere near as good as Murphy.
I don't know all the ins and outs of it, but I do know Holty definitely wanted out when Lambert was still here so I'm afraid your assumptions are wide of the mark.
Holty was a guy who covered practicaly every blade of grass on the pitch in every game, including the wings. He clearly liked playing there against the Baggies - witness his cross from the left which led to Morrison's goal in the away fixture in 2012 and the cross from the right which eventually led to Snoddy's goal in the 4-0 romp that kept us up the following season.
Though I still think Jerome is our natural number 9, Hooper has 6 goals in 12 matches so the ratio is similar, but it's just that he's missed matches through injury.
Yeah in fact Jerome has scored a goal every 140 mins and Hooper has scored every 136 mins of game time.
I'm not sure if its just because you feel drowsy and keep yawning but you need to wake up. It has nothing to do with 'my opinion'. It is bonafide fact, whether you like it or not. Grant Holt did NOT leave Norwich City because of Calderwood or Hughton, nor did he 'play on the wing' for us. I mean, why make stuff up like this? We've all got eyes - we could see he wasn't enjoying his football under that regime, but it isn't why he left and as I intimated in a previous post, he requested to leave long before Hughton and co rolled into town. I'm astonished CH convinced him to stay as long as they did to be honest, fair play to him. His leaving had nothing to do with football.
Hooper is our most natural striker. In my opinion he's comfortably our most instinctive finisher, has the best positional sense and therefore he is our best number 9. Doesn't have to play the number 9 role, he's good enough to play the number 10 role too, as he's shown before. He's played up front on his own for Celtic with Commons behind him, he's played in a two with Stokes, he's played in a 3 with wide forwards like Samaras. He's got good control, decent vision, he's a good player and he's a good striker. Other than sometimes coming across a little lazy (which I don't think he is, its just his style) I can't really see what the problem is with him.
Pretty much agree with your summary Supers and he has provided a few assists for Jerome too. I'm hoping he'll either start, or come on after an hour or so on Saturday and AN's team selection will be interesting, especially in midfield!!!!
I can see your point Supers and I certainly don't have any problem with Hooper, who has been excellent since he came back. What I can't see is playing Hooper up front if it means leaving Jerome out. IMO, this is why both Adams and Neil have played them both up front in a 4-4-2 and Jerome up front and Hooper in a deeper role in a 4-2-3-1. Hooper is the better passer of the two and therefore suits that role. It's a different situation from that at Celtic where Hooper was generally the main striker. Personally I don't put a lot of importance on numbers as I like to see movement and interchange up front to confuse the opposition defence but it will be interesting to see which way Neil goes with Andreu (and possibly Dorrans) in the squad (4-1-4-1?).
He didn't play one the wing though. He was a lone striker that moved everywhere. He had a good cross on him but you see that often with decent strikers because they tend to know the perfect cross to get on the end of. He might not have gotten in the box as much in his last season but that was the case for all our strikers under Hughton. Look at Hooper or RvW!
