Another loaned CF, another striker who struggles to score goals, another who seems constantly injured. The idea of loaning CF's send a shiver down my spine when looking at the previous list of strikers who've made the temporary move to SJP: Rondon, Slimani, De Jong, Ferreya, Doumbia, even Harewood and Kuqi in the previous Championship season. The only one who did well was Loic Remy. Its is obviously tactical ploy by the FCB to not have to go out and spend vast sums on a decent striker. Strikers are expensive as they score goals and goals win games but winning games means higher finishes and high finishes means more money for the club. If they are on loan and do well their prices sky rocket out of our league and we can't keep themIn Ashley's tenure I can think of 3 strikers we've played in the first team who did well in the EPL and were of any note - Andy Carroll (youth player), Demba Ba (Free), Papiss Cisse (£9m). Probably closest behind them is Owen in the EPL... make of that what you will! Even including Owen thats £25m on 4 strikers (or an average of £6m per decent striker) across 11 years of Ashleys rule. If you took others into consideration it would be much much lower. Why not go and buy decent strikers instead of trying the stop gap method of loaning them?
If the proposed new rules on loans do come into effect then that might result in us having to buy someone.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/45678196 I know its kind of unrelated but I didn't want to start a new thread so i put it here.
Well we know why, but the question is whether it serves us well. There are some benefits to us loaning in a striker, namely less capital expenditure and the security that if he becomes irreparably injured or turns out to be ****, he can be sent back early or at the end of the season and we aren't stuck with an Ndong situation. As mentioned, it worked out with Remy, Slimani was okayish, but other than that it has been a bit of a flop. I think this is probably down to the market going crazy, and suddenly a £20million pound player like Remy in his peak becomes £60 million, and a £10 million player like Rondon becomes £20 million, and the loan fees go up accordingly. I think we're just steadily looking further and further down the prospects because our budget hasn't changed in line with market inflation. The other thing I see, is less class strikers sticking out in the leagues that we might take a punt on. That Kristoffer Peterson looks like he would be a good signing for someone, but I don't think he'd suit Rafa. Apart from that, I don't see anybody in our bracket, unless Ben Yedder decides to drop a bombshell that he's Geordie.
I think there is a massive lack of quality CF's in fact I think there is a massive lack of entertaining players full stop. Too much focus is on players who can run around a lot now rather than pure skill and ability.
People now prefer a James *yawn* Milner or a Jordan *backwards* Henderson to a King Hatem. I'd rather close my eyes than watch sheite
The strikers you mentioned - Cisse, Ba, Owen and Carroll - all fairly injury prone in their own right so not just our record of signing strikers that are injury prone. On the other hand - Joselu is never injured!
