Hirst is a huge loss, very important player for us but one who has pretty much been injured for nearly a whole season now. In all the greatness on what has been achieved the past 2 seasons we've pretty much always been short of a striker. Niggling injuries to Burns (who showed some promise this season but has been 100%) and Broadhead, I think it's gonna be tough for them to get 100% fit this season now. I really like Al Hamidi and haven't got too much of an issue with him coming off the bench, thought he really contributed well last season and was key to some of the results where we won games late on last season. Showed great intensity along with Sarmiento and often Hutchinson coming on in the final third of games. However if Delap gets injured and without Hirst its not gonna happen for us
Huh? He scored four goals without being a regular starter and he’s got one this season barely featuring. That’s not struggling. He gives us a different threat and is extremely good with his feet in the box. If needed I can see some defences being blindsided by his attributes when we need a goal late on in games.
He was an impact player substitute that didn’t always make an impact, in my opinion. He scored a few goals last season, granted, but I don’t think he did enough to be a first team starter - Hirst and Moore were much better all round players for us. His goal this season against a League Two club doesn’t mean anything to me when we’re playing Premier League sides. By all means put him on the bench for the next few games and bring him on to see what he can do at this level. But I’m yet to be convinced by the player.
If you put the current strikers in the context of the last 15 years, only Murphy gets a look in and if you wind the clock back 40 years, I reckon Al Hamadi could prove as capable as Kiwomya at least. Except that Kiwomya is not getting in a starting XI ahead of Delap! Only Marcus Stewart and Darren Bent are even in that bracket over the last 40 years. That’s doesn’t mean that lots of other well loved strikers along the way didn’t play their part. One year I think Claus Thomsen was our top scorer!
You're on a wind-up mission here, aren't you Yorkie? I think Al-Hamadi's the fourth best striker we've had this year (behind Hirst, Delap, and Moore), let alone going back 15 or 40 years! I'll even reduce it to the last ten years - are you seriously saying Al-Hamadi is a better player than Murphy, McGoldrick, Sears, and Waghorn? Let alone the three mentioned for the last year. What are you basing this on? Because we're a great team? He's been a bit-part player during McKenna's time here. To suggest he's played a large or key role in our promotion is massively disrespectful to the other players. There’s still time for Al-Hamadi to make a name for himself here. But does any Town fan honestly believe that if Hirst and Delap were both out, Al-Hamadi would lead the line and score the goals needed? I doubt it. I don't think McKenna sees it either - we're far more likely to start Szmodics up front in that scenario. What Al-Hamadi needs is a loan to a Championship club where he can hopefully get playing time and goals. Before we signed him, the highest level he scored in was League Two. Unfortunately for him, I think our promotion last season has come too soon for him. If it was me, I'd loan him out and bring in another centre-forward. As ptc said, Hirst is injury-prone. There's a strong chance we'll be fielding offers for Delap in January or the summer too.
Well no, I said that Murphy is in the conversation. But of course he’s better than McGoldrick, Sears and Waghorn. They are all in the Kayden Jackson / Alan Lee bracket. We don’t know where Al Hamadi fits yet, but based on his goals per minute and his other contributions so far he’s got bags of potential. Is it you on the wind up? He’s not going on loan before January. He’s here and he’s the second striker unless you fancy throwing Burns, Szmodics or Hutch in there.
I think we'd all like to Al-Hamadi to be a revelation, but any striker that is 4th choice in any squad at any level probably shouldn't be relied on suddenly be first choice. We would definitely benefit from another striker in Jan to cover Hirst, who's unfortunately becoming a bit of a "sick note".
We deffo need another striker. Period. Get a result today, and we would attract an in form top player in January. Lose badly, in bottom 3 and it looks gloomy, then we wont.
We could already be looking at the free agent list for a striker to maybe bring one in before January. Not always ideal as free agents are generally not fully fit no matter how much work they put in at home, unless they've been training with a club for free to keep them in top shape. Rumour has it that Chelsea are seriously looking at Delap already, and that the buy back clause from Man City is set at 20 million. If that's true I'm a little disappointed. Buy him for 15m but City can get him back for just 5m more. I was hoping we'd make a better profit than that when we sold him. It would be just like the top clubs to put a clause like that in, they sell him, he gets the regular playing time to develop without costing them wages from a loan or whatever and then when there's serious interest from other clubs, they buy him back and then sell him for market value!
There’s absolutely no way we’d have done that deal for Delap. They probably have first refusal but other than that it’s sheer and utter nonsense.
1) Mark Ashton didn’t just roll off a government funded ‘Business for Dummies’ course. 2) A deal under those terms would probably be illegal. 3) It’s in the Express. No legitimate source has picked up the story.
Newly promoted clubs often have no choice on these type of deals, you probably haven’t paid £15m for him as the fee probably has add ons not triggered, I’d imagine the buy back has a time limit.
From what I understand, add ons would actually take the fee to 20m from the initial 15m outlay (spread over a time period I assume) A quick Internet search of Delap Man City buy back clause has a few saying it's 20m, with another claiming it's 30m. Whatever, it's already been reported that Juventus have been watching him, as well as others. He's started well and certainly looks to have the right attributes for a top team to be taking notice so I'm not surprised by the early interest. Question is, would we cash in already? Contracted until 2029 it would cost a bit to pry him away. If there's any truth in the buy back clause though, that's worrying should we be approached, accept a bid and then City come in and take him back for pittance.
The other problem with this purported deal is at no time period does it make any sense. Man City can buy him back whenever they want? Under what circumstances other than financial desperation would we ever choose to sell a striker whose market value has increased beyond the fee? What if the player doesn’t agree terms? It can’t be at the end of the contract, because at that point Delap would be free to do whatever deal he wants. It just makes zero sense. We would not be taking less than £50m for him if we stay up. If we go are going down it’s a whole different story. There is absolutely no chance we’ll sell in January unless we are already looking dead and buried.
No, City can't buy him back at any time. The clause is triggered when an offer from another club is accepted, at which point City can come in and scupper the deal. That's how I understand it, no different to the Philogene deal and Villa. And as for it making sense, if the terms of the deal were needed to get the signatures at the bottom of the page and we thought it was worth it, guess what, we signed.
The Philogene deal was very different. It was a fee matching arrangement. That suggested arrangement is even more laughable. Someone makes an offer of £40m but Town have to take City’s £20m? Judging by the comments on TWTD, almost everyone thinks it’s as ridiculous as I do. Nothing to see here, move on.
