Oh yeah, you're right we narrowly missed out on the tribunal payment because he turned 24. He's older than I thought
I really would hate to see Hooper loaned out at all, let alone to another championship club with Becchio and RVW already out on loan. Grabban may have a lot of goals to his name, but he really is far from clinical and needs at least three very good chances to score a single goal. I would like to see Grabban rested next game so that he may come back with renewed enthusiasm in order to try and get back into our free-scoring team on the back of a massive home victory against Leeds. If Laffs is fit to play then he should start in place of Grabban on the wing and I would like to see Hooper start with Jerome on the bench. My biggest concern is that we are short on wingers and our set piece deliveries really need to improve (we did have these two guys, Pilkington and Snodgrass but we sold both...). I don't see that we would stand to gain anything in the short-term or long-term by lending Hoops to Bolton. At least Bassong there is the long-term gain that if he plays well Watford will sign him on a permanent basis meaning we don't have to pay his wages and we might get a reasonable transfer fee, even if they are above us in the table now.
"I really would hate to see Hooper loaned out at all, let alone to another championship club with Becchio and RVW already out on loan." I agree with this, and don't see any advantage in loaning him out.
I imagine it's just lazy journalism Hooper will always be associated with Lennon because of the Celtic connection.. Hooper looked sharp when he came on but until he actually has a shot saved or a goal i will not get too excited. Also i wouldn't be shocked to see him go to QPR in January .
I guess if QPR are still rooted to the bottom of the table he wouldn't want to go there. On another note and not worthy of a new thread, I see that Villa have scored 0 and conceded 11 in their last 4 games.
Yes your right about Villa, teams/managers have worked them out now. I like counter attacking football as its exciting and all that but Villa really struggle when it's not working for them. As soon as they go behind in a game it's game over most of the time as a team especially away from home will sit back and wait for the home team to try and break them down.
Until we see a fit Hooper having a good run in the first team we are in no position to judge him. It may be that he comes back, slots in a system Adams puts together to suit his style of play and scores a load of goals. It may be that his injury has taken something out of him he will never get back and he proves to be someone we need to move on. My opinion is that we'd be mad to load out one of our leading strikers, particularly to a club in the same league. At the moment we do not have one "proven" striker at this level. Jerome and Grab have both scored a few early season but also missed quite a few and it is relatively easy for strikers to score regularly if they are playing for a dominant team against relatively weak opposition as has been the case this season. Until we see all of our forwards given a chance it will be hard to benchmark one against the others. As for the argument that Chris Martin is better than Hooper because he had a better strike rate in the Champ last season than Hooper did in the Prem I imagine that he also had a better strike rate than either Rooney or Van Persie but I don't see Man U rushing in with a £30m bid. Compare like with like or not at all. Currently Martin is a better asset than Hooper as he is both playing and scoring in the Championship. If he breaks his leg and Hooper gets back in the team I'm sure the statistics will reverse themselves. The truth is probably that Martin has found a club that plays a system to suit his talents. He is doing really well at this level and if he continues to do well then a PL club may well take a punt on him. Hooper has played Champion's League and won titles in Scotland. If he has a run in the team and knocks a few in I am sure that we will see some bids in for him. I am very hopeful that Hooper will prove his worth in the coming weeks. We need him to as we can't keep dominating matches and possession but without scoring otherwise we will quickly slip back in the pack.
Hooper is a better all round player, technically however he is not as good as Martin. Martin strikes the ball so cleanly. He was always very strong in that department, its why he scores a lot of goals because his mobilty is awful.
