Thanks JK for correcting me I knew he came from a side from Portugal but couldn't quite remember which one
If, and it may be a big if, AN can get him playing the way he indisputably can, then we will have a very capable player in the squad. We are the only team he has failed at. We all have our thoughts on the reason or reasons for that.
Well I wouldn't say he's been a success at St Etienne. After all at the start of the lan they were looking to buy him, con't seem to be so keen now, do they?
He scored a goal every 320 minutes at St Etienne. Ok, that's not stellar and not as good as his goal every 190 minutes in Portugal, but that's still 1 goal every 3.5 games. It's better than Hooper did in the PL last year. That works out as getting a return of 10 or 11 in the PL if you were to play every match, which would be very respectable.
I agree with that Rob, and you could apply a similar logic to Jerome's previous record in the PL and his potential this year. The hard facts on Jerome at Stoke in the PL are that he scored 7 goals in 15 starts and 35 sub appearances. Given that sub appearances can be anything from 5 - 30 minutes in most cases that works out to a goal every 3 or 4 games or about 10-12 goals if he played a whole PL season. Grant Holt's 24 goals in the Championship dropped to 14 in the PL, so that ratio could be about right (ie. Jerome's 20 goals in the Championship dropping to 12-14 in the PL). Even 12 goals would be 4 more than our entire strike force produced our final year in the PL.
You seem to be missing something though, regardless of how many goals he scored in Holland, Portugal or France (all significantly inferior leagues, and therefore I don't think a goal every 3.5 games is anything to shout about) he scored one goal (no assists) in 25 games for us in the Premier League, so why would anyone suddenly assume he's going to score 10-12 next season?
That's fair Munky, certainly nothing to shout about. It was just a question of whether he was a success at St Etienne
One thing I have been wondering about, is whether his previous club and us, contributed to his 'failure' here. I am thinking of his price tag. Obviously the 2 clubs agreed the 10m (?) fee, so did that put too much pressure on RvW from us the fans, and the club? If we had paid 1m for him, would we still be on quite so much about his failure here? Also, after his only goal against Everton, did that raise the expectation we had of him? If he wasn't 'mature' enough to handle that pressure, then is that his fault or the people that put hum under that pressure? Was Hootun under pressure to play him all the time because of the fee we paid for him? Just a couple of thoughts I had recently. Not saying that is the reason.
Good point. I was in Portugal at the time we signed RVW and the general opinion of the local fans was that we had overpaid for him. He was never a 10m Euro striker,at best 1-2 m.
I will always maintain that we paid about £5m too much for him purely because of his name. If he was called Ricky van Wyk then he'd be a £3m player in my opinion - and even that might have been too much! The thing that annoys me the most is how easy it is for people to find excuses for him, particularly blaming Hootun for his abject failure last season, but I never see it the other way around with him being blamed for Hootun's failure and our relegation. We mustn't forget that a significant part of Hootun's transfer budget was spent on a supposed superstar Dutch international striker who was going to bang in the goals for us, and the fact that he didn't was a huge factor in why we went down.
RVW Hooper & Lafferty are all duds in my opinion. They had last season in weaker leagues to prove a point but the Prem is very unforgiving. I would happily trade all 3 for someone like Austin but I hope we don't splash out another huge fee on a continental striker without offloading 2 or 3 of them. I hoped Lafferty Hooper and RVW would be great for us but sadly I don't think they are good enough. I would love to be proved wrong though.
This is the point I was making. I would expect a Premier league calibre player playing in Ligue 1 to perform better then he has.
I think the club generated a very high level of expectation around RvW which was quite unfair to a new player at any club. I' talking about the 'Be afraid of the big bad Wolf' campaign in particular and the 'Feed the Wolf and he will score' (not sure if this was from fans or the club). Specific promotional activities based upon him is a lot of pressure to put on a player, and also creates a large amount of expectation from the fans. I would like to see AN give him a chance because I do think there is a genuinely talented striker in him, I felt as if he was starved of service during his time with us, too many good runs that he made early in the season were ignored in favour of switching the ball wide.
Good post - I agree. Although I often sway between thinking maybe he was a dud all along and we should cut our losses. I simply can't make my mind up. I suspect that many of us, me in particular, just desperately want him to be good because he comes across as a good guy and there was so much build up. Plus, if he really got on a roll it would be incredible the whole of Carrow Road roaring "FEED THE WOLF AND HE WILL SCORE". A pipe dream perhaps...
Better to give him until January to see if he can be effective in the Prem under good stewardship, than sell him on the cheap for £3m or less only to see him bang in 20 goals and play for Holland again with his stock going through the roof. I M O
If AN decides to keep and use him I would think that he has been judged to be good enough. One thing we know, he will get a lot more service of a better quality, so if he is not successful it is because he really is not as good as we were led to believe.
It would be interesting to see his conversion rate in his season with us. He was injured for periods and let's face it, he wouldn't have had a lot of chances to tuck away anyway. That one goal as a percentage may not be too shocking. Was it Battersea who did a comparison of conversion and "on target" percentages for our current strike force? Be good to see what RvW looked like (at least the "on target" figure anyway).
