It really was a joy to watch and the fans behind the goal must have been almost 'rubbing their eyes in disbelief. ' COULD Pukki turn out to be the £15M to £20 striker that many craved at the start of the season???
7 goals in 13 league appearances speaks volumes. Add another as sub in the cup and 3 more for Finland and it certainly looks that way to me. The difference between him (and Rhodes) and Oliveira is the awareness to anticipate the ball coming into the box and the composure to put it away when it does. Oliveira relies much more on individual brilliance and when that dries up, so do the goals. With 30 games to go, Pukki has a great chance to score 15-20 goals as he and his teammates develop deeper understanding. Rhodes has 4 goals in 9 starts and 6 sub appearances plus 3 more in the cup. He too stands a good chance of reaching double figures for the season. Pukki sums it up like this: “I think I’m a totally different player to what I was at the time when I was at Celtic. I grew up a lot in my time in Denmark and of course, the level is a bit higher than I’ve been used to lately. So it’s going well and I think the guys in the team are marking it easier for me as well to be there. I’m just trying to help the team.” Another big difference. http://www.edp24.co.uk/sport/norwic...-a-different-player-to-celtic-spell-1-5764263
A very good point. Any of our youngsters going to a big Club know that they will not get a game and will probably be sent out on loan to a Championship Club for the next 3 seasons so as long as we are there or thereabouts they might as well stay where they are. If they go to a lesser Club they will probably be back in the Championship fairly soon so again there is no point as long as we stay at or near the top of the league. If, and it is still a big if, we go up we will probably pass the likes of the Murphy twins and Pritchard going the other way which proves a point that a move can be bad in the long run. I was pessimistic about our chances at the beginning of the season and thought that SW and DF would need 2 or 3 seasons to turn things round. Quite clearly I was wrong - thank God for that. It was obvious that in view of his background DF would give youth a chance and in view of his history SW was always going to be looking for players with talent who had either failed previously or not found the right Club. I am just amazed and grateful that such progress has been made so quickly. I am more concerned that a bigger Club might come asking for SW and DF.
Yes 1950, but would SW/DF be given the time/freedom at another club?? Also, they have built a team with NO star names, but through team spirit and every player 'buying in' to how DF wants hiscteam to play.
Im not sure i fully agree with you 1950. You say: If they go to a lesser Club they will probably be back in the Championship fairly soon so again there is no point as long as we stay at or near the top of the league. If, and it is still a big if, we go up we will probably pass the likes of the Murphy twins and Pritchard going the other way which proves a point that a move can be bad in the long run. I don't see how us going past them proves any point. The 3 you mention will have spent 1-2 season's playing at a higher level (playing some) but at significantly higher wages, it would also have fulfilled an element if ambition that we looked unlikely to, playing in the PL. Yes their wages might go down if relegated but might still be better than we offer even upon promotion. Add to that our own very likely relegation if we went up and it's hard to criticise there moves. That would be the same for Arrons, Lewis and any of our top performing players. We simply will never pay enough for there not to be better options for any of our best performers. Financially at least. Bah!
But didn't the accounts suggest that SW is on approx £100k. He may love his freedom but I'm sure he'd sacrifice a little to triple his money. Fool if he didn't. Bah!
Difficult to generalise which is why I said ' can.' Using Pritchard as an example - he was starting to get praise and reviews near the end of his stay here and agitated to get a move to Huddersfield where I suspect he is not earning a great deal more, has not shone, has not started regularly and is now likely to get relegated. It is unlikely that he will attract the attention of another Premiership Club. There is an argument that if he had stayed here for another season and continued to improve then a better Premiership Club - like Leicester or Everton - might have been interested. We are, after all, talking about younger players who, like Madison, can try and plan their careers better than older players.
It's all if's but's and maybe's. Had he stayed in January, he may have shot us up the table or perhaps had his reputation tarnished by our slide to second half of the season ingnomy? He had just had a bad injury, maybe he see's the bigger fatter contract as insurance if it happens again. He was a season and half in with City at that point. With our financial situ, it was basically certain he would leave in the summer anyway. But from his perspective he made a call, rightly or wrongly that he would be better off at Huddersfield, I say rightly or wrongly, but financially it is hard to argue he got it wrong. He will have been paid more and got a staying up bonus to boot. No promotion bonuses for City. In a football sense, if he had impressed through to the summer then maybe someone else comes in, maybe with bigger wages? But they were unknowns. He and his manager will have hoped and believed he would make an impact and help them stay up. He might even have believed playing for a lower PL team and impressing (OK he hasn't) would have been a better vehicle to the bigger PL clubs than playing for a struggling midtable championship side. The other thing to remember was that at City he was going to be playing out of position and second fiddle to Maddison. He will have believed in himself and thought that if being bought and told how much he was needed at HTFC that he would have his platform to impress. I think his and Maddisons situations were poles apart. Pritchard had positively starred for Brentford and having gone for us not Brighton would have expected to star again. That didn't happen under Neil. He then got injured and then bailed at the first oportunity after playing pretty well for 4-5 games. I think he will have seen City as a big mistake and psychologically speaking probably just wanted out. Huddersfield offered him that with bigger wages in the PL. Why would he decline? In his position with City not looking likely to get promotion I'd have done the same. Maddison on the other hand was younger, starring for us (even if we were ordinary) but on the rise with many options open to him. It was his first season in the championship and he too timed his exit right for him. Bah!
I was never entirely convinced by Pritchard. He had some good games and some very ordinary ones. Spurs concluded that he would never make it to their PL level. He did do well at Brentford but he spent the season before he came to us at West Brom where he made a total of two appearances as sub. His time at Huddersfield has hardly shown him to be a PL quality player (one goal in 18 starts and 3 sub appearances). A Maddison he isn't. When blogs spread rumours of PL interest in our young players, there's not much to back it up. Too many Championship players have failed in the PL for clubs to take chances without significant evidence in performances over time. Of our youffs, only Lewis is near that category at the moment.
I think we are a better side without the Murphys Pritchard and controversially Maddisson. All luxury players . The funds generated by those 4 pretty much paid for our new look team with change. Extraordinary really
No arguments from me. He was guilty of slowing the play down so much - but he also baggef us MANY points!!
I'll argue it, we are not better because Maddison is not in the side, this side with Madders instead of Steipermann, McClean or Vrancic could be even better. Maddison has the skill and footballing brain to have made us better and I'm sure he could follow instructions and keep us flowing, the big difference would be the goals for. Madders had little choice but to do it all himself last season, were he still here but in these recent teams we'd be invincible! Bah!
Our 3rd goal on Saturday was 13 seconds from Aarons getting the ball to being in the back of the net!! WOW
Zim racing back switched the ball to Max, not passed back to the keeper. That in itself is a major change in outlook
This from Robin Sainty's article today - 'It’s description on the BBC website as “a tap-in for Teemu Pukki after Max Aarons’ ball into the box” hardly did justice to the fact that Aarons had sprinted virtually the length of the field and played two exquisite one-twos before putting the ball on a plate for his team-mate. Had that goal been produced by “Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds” or “Frank Lampard’s Derby” I suspect that Sky would probably devote a whole programme to it.' And if had been scored by one of the top six, the MotD pundits would have been having o***5m5 about it!!
