The central striker dilemma

Young players need to be good enough and after that golden generation our academy went into decline. We had a good 7-8 years where it wasn’t well run and we produced very little. I seem to remember Koeman bemoaning the lack of quality we had in the youth sides.


I think it is better if JRob has the pressure taken off him. The team environment is hostile right now with the players getting booed off for drawing with Derby. Better to let the team settle and bring him in gradually.

 

The other side of the coin is that maybe his confidence will suffer if he is not trusted or "shielded". I think that he has already proved that he can make a positive impact and is one of the few bright sparks so far and I get the impression that he is an easy option for the manager to drop.

The academy is on the way back btw, near the top of PL2

 

I am all for using academy players and watch them whenever I can. I loved SAA and wanted him to get more time on the pitch. I have seen no evidence JRob isn’t trusted, but right now the fans only want results. If he gets 15 starts and 20 sub appearances that is very good for a youngster. Plenty of time for him to get the minutes.

 

Ah sorry, my bad.

 

Just watched the hat-trick. Was hoping it was all just lucky deflections of his a*se.

But nope, he presses, tackles, uses his pace and positional awareness, to score three excellent striker’s goals.

 

Maybe there is another solution, and in fact Nicholas Oyekunie, currently banging them in for the U21’s, even though he’s only 18, is being considered for a chance.

 

Yes, I did mention this (and the fact that Ballard may have asked to leave) but it’s been lost in the hysteria about him scoring a L1 hat trick.

 

Maybe the powers that be at the club can have more than one thought at a time in their collective heads!
Oyekunie is clearly making progress, last season he became the all-time highest scorer in the U18 league and now he’s starting to make his mark at the next level.
Maybe he’s not yet ready to step up another level, but he can’t be far away!

 

"Hysteria"?, i'd better take a chill pill!...
No, I just think that like the Jack contract decision, Spors has made the wrong call on this one. He has brought some very good players in though (Downs could still come good, I haven't written him off just yet).

 

I just hope he gets a better crack at it than Dom did when he gets his first team opportunity.

 

(Moved here from Ross thread)

1. It isn't 6 goals in 45 games. It's actually 12 goals in 53. Not bad for a teenager. At the same age Cameron Archer was on loan at National League Solihull Motors, struggling to make much of an impact.

2. I have zero faith in our coaching set-up, and my vexation with the club is the kind of the point of my ranting.

3. Yes. For now. A reminder that he's just turned 20 though.

4. In isolation, it's an overreaction, I guess. But given that this club keeps on losing it's youngsters, only to replace them with total garbage, it's becoming infuriating.

5. We spent 8m on Damion Downs for him to come in and be first-team ready. Ballard was free, and only needed at best to be a squad player. So yeah, obviously not going to have the same patience with DD.

 

I'd be annoyed at us letting Ballard go if he was of the same physical profile as Downs and the central striker that we are missing. But he isn't. As others have said, he is the same profile of player as Archer and Armstrong. Ballard has been waiting to break into the first team for quite some time having surpassed youth team football a few years ago, and while he definitely did want to break through at Saints, he was realistic in that he wasn't going to get enough game time if any, and didn't want another loan at this stage, so wanted to move on. We might have wanted to just loan him out again and then extend but have done what's best for him and I have no problem with that. He might well go on to develop into a player good enough for the top end of the Championship, but I really don't see that he would have improved us as a team had he stayed.

We clearly shouldn't have signed Downs for the money we did and expect him to be first choice because he is a million miles away from that, but that is separate thing to Ballard imo as they are just completely different types of striker. The mistake wasn't signing a striker instead of keeping Ballard, we just ****ed up signing the player we did who isn't ready for what we need. But signing a striker was the right thing to do imo.