Transfer Rumours A Bit Of In & Out

Changed to reflect the worth of the majority of these rumours. Sad, but true.

 

Looks like it will be a case of promotion on freebies so no problem with Fair Play!
Surprise when Bielsa crossed in front of me in my car yesterday at 11am in Wetherby he even thanked me for letting him cross

 

Shame it wasn't Bamford you could have let your foot slip and knock him over

How did your tests go, okay I hope?

 

Bamford is goint to smash 20 goals next season

 

Probably end up arguing but the last 2 strikers Orta brought in have been fantastic statistically speaking. Both up near the top on goals per minutes played ratio. Last season Lassoga played on his own up top yet had never played there before but still scored almost 20. This season hes smashing it for Hamburg. Bamford hardly played through injury but well ahead of Roofe stats. I think he will prove a few wrong next season we do need a top striker though

 

I think we need at least two top defenders and two brilliant midfielders.

 

How about roberts for a no10 hes crap at striker but has good feet with the ball. I reckon he could end up there.

 

I thought that’s where he’d been playing most of the season?

 

Thanks for this thread Doc. It's going to be a long boring summer. Pain of it still hasn't subsided, which is why I've not posted as much. Whoever we sign we need a proper 'captain' type leader that can direct and calm a team so we don't keep choking when the pressure is on. We have too many 'emotional' players who get caught up in the moment.

 

Thank you Rik I had various checks and another chest X ray I go get my ear cancer removed on Wed

 

Dwight Gale is available but how much would he cost in wages but he can score 20 goals at least

 

Not for me thank you. We are going to be linked with every man and his dog for weeks now so better taking most with a pinch of salt.

 

First post updated with French 22yo striker Florian Aye who has scored 19 goals in 41 starts this season with 18 goals in the league. Southampton and a bunch of Turkish clubs are also very interested but seemingly Bielsa likes the kid. He has played for France at all age groups 25 times but not broke into the senior squad as yet. Bielsa obviously likes him because he plays at No9 but also has played wide left and wide right

 

As much as I liked Lasogga, not sure how scoring 10 goals, ended up as being almost 20, nor would I describe 13 goals for Hamburg this season as smashing it.

Also whilst I've been defending Bamford in comparison with the rest of the Championship's top goal scorers this season, I don't think a shot to goal ratio of 5.3 compared to Roofe's 5.7 can be described as well ahead. Stats wise if he had played the same amount of minutes as Roofe (who's season was also injury hit), Bamford would have scored 16 goals, 1 more than Roofe actually achieved and conversely if Roofe had played the same game time as Bamford did, then Roofe would've scored 8 goals, one less than Bamford did, either way our two main attackers would've scored 24 goals between them.

Or to put it another way, if either player had managed 46 games for us, and maintained their shots per game and strike rates, then Bamford would've scored 26 goals compared to Roofe scoring 25, so at best 2 more goals than they managed between them given that they only started a handful of games together.

The big issues for us was that both our strikers were injury prone, and thus we never realistically had the option of being able to swap one for the other from the subs bench, and that also probably changed the way our attacking midfielders made decisions given that between them Pablo, Klich, Alioski, Harrison and Dallas scored 34 goals from 310 shots, where as Norwich's top 5 goalscorers after Pukki, scored 41 goals from 240 shots or that unfortunately between them Ayling, Roberts and Phillips had 119 shots at goal and managed to score 6.

So yes whilst I agree that a top quality striker would be ideal, realistically whoever it is will only get around 25-30 goals, and thus our supporting attacking players need to improve their finishing, and some of our players need to stop with the speculative shots, or alternatively we need better players in those positions.

Also apologies for this becoming a stats post in the transfer rumours thread, but I kind of ran away with my typing to try and get my point across

Edited - As just seen that Lasogga scored 6 goals in the cup as well, so that makes 19 for the season, and thus Doc's description of smashing it is not as inaccurate as I first thought, so apologies on that point of my post Doc

 

First post updated again because this is day 3 of the Odowda story. Phil Haye has now weighed in and told the story of January where he thought Odowda was being used to show Swansea they needed to sell James. It now shows a player out of favour but wanting a move. A pacy winger who scores goals and creates lots of goals. He will be in his last year of his contract and refusing to sign an extension. The price was £10m in January but will now be £6m. Story has legs but....

 

I do think though that Bamford should have got more shots away, often he was in a good position but fluffed it before getting a shot in. I agree stats could go on and on but I’d imagine if there was a stat showing shots/goals from scoring opportunities Bamford would be low.

I lost count the amount of times he didn’t get that long neck on the end of a ball, when he failed to connect on a ball whizzed across the area, when he wanted an extra touch. Shots to goals might be average but goals from chances would be far worse.

Agree with what you’re saying though and it’s lack of Goals from the number 10 Roberts position that cost us badly.

 

and that's where my analysis falls down, for either of the two strikers, as that is a figure I'm not privy to, however would also explain why our assists figure is lower than you would hope, you'd expect Harrison and Alioski to have got more assists than they did, but as you say if the forwards fail to meet the crosses etc.

I guess I like to try and bring a bit of balance into things, as it is easy to dwell on individual players errors, especially given how our season ended, but I can virtually guarantee, whoever plays in the full back positions next season will get caught out going forward, and we will concede silly goals, whoever our centre halfs are will make the wrong decision at the crucial time, due to the way Bielsa has us playing, we will berate attacking players for that shooting or lack of shooting prowess, and Pablo will continue to take the most goddamn awful freekicks ever for someone of his ability

 

First post updated again and this time another winger. Kossovan International Benjamin Kololli who ply's his trade for FC Zurich is being watched by quite a few clubs after his scoring in the Europa League. So far this season he has scored 14 goals and created another 10. Brentford are also keeping an eye on him too but seemingly Leeds have been involved?

 

I'd like to get O'Dowd in, don't know enough about the others.

We also need to add some authority and steel at the back (like Mings gives Villa), and a goalscoring attacking mid. Hate to say it but I'd take Vydra.

Great thread Doc