I’m not advocating for one second that we go in for him but has anyone else noticed he is a consistently good performer in the championship? https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/championship/top-scorers He scored consistently for us, Doncaster before and now banging them in for utd. Should we have at least given him a go in the PL? It just seems odd that a player can consistently play well in the championship but never step up. Could we see him in the PL next year?!
It’s not odd, there are lots of players like that. The premier league is a big step up and some players can’t reach that level. They are often between levels. David Nugent is an example.
Particularly strikers; the degree of difficulty increases substantially, because the number of defensive mistakes diminish. If you're a good finisher with some physicality or speed who has the wherewithal to punish mistakes, you can make a very good career in the Championship. That alone doesn't make for a PL striker, however.
Stop reminding me about Billy He'd earned a bigger shot at it than we gave him...Saints behaving badly.
Very true. How do you truly distinguish between those that can step up, without actually seeing them in the PL? Rickie and J-Rod both stepped up with ease. Ings is another? And although there is a gulf sometimes it seems smaller. We couldn’t get past derby this year! It just made me think with our striker crisis some will be looking to the championship. So does anyone think with hindsight Billy should have been given more of a go?
This is the point where I feel obliged to remind people of Billy's time post-Saints: the three years where he scored a combined 21 goals in 98 games and then dropped down to League One. I'm really happy that he has resurrected his career, but no. I really don't think that Billy would have been particularly useful in the PL back in 2012-13, and I'm not sure that 33 year old Billy will be particularly useful in the PL in 2019-20 if Sheffield United makes it. Though I'm hoping they do, because that squad is littered with career Football League players, and I'm really curious to see which ones finally get a shot. There's Sharp! There's McGoldrick! There's Norwood! There's a Baldock! There's Kieron Freeman and Mark Duffy and John Fleck and Chris Basham! That whole team seems to consist of guys who have been kicking around the Championship and League One since roughly the beginning of time.
He's a finisher, but hasn't got a lot else to his game and those sorts of strikers don't tend to do well in the PL unless the team around them is providing them with chance after chance. However he hasn't had enough of a chance to categorically say he wouldn't make it in the PL, though at this stage of his career, I don't think he ever will.
My argument for Billy Sharp would be that when we were promoted we had a good team that worked well together....he may well have done better in that team than he did subsequently. The fact that he is doing well at the moment shows that the team surrounding you can be very important...especially for a striker. Not saying that he would have been for ever, but I feel he deserved a better chance....after all he had to learn about the EPL the same as other players.
He would barely have got a game because we had SRL, Jay and Adam doing the business for us at the time. I hope that he gets his chance with The Blades though, them, Norwich and Brizzle City to come up would be great for the PL IMO.
Ugh, speaking of strikers who do well in the Championship but can't handle the Prem, there are entire clubs like that. Ie; Norwich. How many times have they come up and gone down by now?
Just goes to prove what a very good Manager can achieve with limited raw materials. Just checked his Wiki and he was a Saints trainee with Matty in the 80s!
I just like as many areas of England represented as possible really (Hampshire only needs one club obs!).
I always felt sorry for Billy Sharp, I don't think he got the recognition that he deserved for the very specific role that he played for us, our signing of him was a mercenary act, we needed an additional striker to help us through the second half of our championship promotion season and he was signed purely for that, he came in scored the necessary goals, but was never going to be a regular premiership starter for us. In many ways he would have been ideal as a loan signing, because we only needed him for 5 months. Interesting to see that he is now the leading English born goalscorer in English professional football during the 21st century so far, overtaking the record set by Rickie Lambert
