We'll never know PowerSpurs. Er...what? Better as a striker? Really? Are you honestly saying that you believe Chadli would have scored more goals than Austin if he were played upfront for QPR last season? I guess we'll never know. I agree that players can play a number of positions. However, Mark Hughes himself said he was glad to see Kane come off. I am specifically referring to that one match. 2-0 up. Against Stoke. I said, it may well work for other situations, as it did in pre season vs AC Milan I believe. I am talking about the ability to drive fear into an opposition. We pulled our teeth out. They no longer feared us attacking them. We invited pressure. We didn't have the personnel to cope with the onslaught. We dropped points. I don't know why it's a ridiculous idea to have striking options at this level and at this point of the season.
Completely agree. It's the implied threat of a top striker that keeps defences nervous. As the older times have been mentioned, Jimmy Greaves was a classic example of that. He quite often didn't seem to be involved in general play - easy to forget about him, but take your eyes off him for one second and it was in the back of your net!..
It's also about building a TEAM. Austin may not be the best, but would he bring the best out of Eriksen, Chadli et al when he come on? This is why Chadli doesn't work as a striker, not because he lacks ability on his own account
Chadli is to our side what Clint Dempsey was to AVB's: if he didn't score goals, people would forget he was on the pitch - and, just like Dempsey, when he's moved up front he proves to be an ineffectual forward due to his inability to hold up the ball, which gifts possession to the opposition and puts the rest of the team under pressure as a result.
I agree but come to the opposite conclusion. Of course Kane coming off was going to weaken the team but we need to maximise the playing time of our young players who need to progress to a high level in order to build a strong team for the future. The chance of Austin being a player who is going to be in a top four side in three years time is close to zero. The chance of Pritchard, Alli and the like is much higher. So I don't want Austin cluttering up our squad and hindering our team building. Only sign players who improve the team, not those who can just do a job. At least if you want long tem improvement in the team rather than one or two better results in the short term
Am i the only one that would take Austin over Berahino? I'd stick Eriksen straight in my fantasy team then, if i had one.
Wouldn't be surprised if we're just wanting to make it seem like we've moved on from Berahino. I don't know why we'd pull out of the Berahino deal and then spend more on Son. He's a good player but he's pretty wasteful and I think he'd be too easily knocked off the ball in England.
Austin won't be hindering the development of any of our youngsters, though - for the simple reason that he's a forward, while pretty much every single one of our top prospects is a midfielder (i.e. Pritchard, Alli, Carroll, Winks, Onomah, Oduwa and McEvoy, as well as Azzaoui and Edwards in the Academy sides) which Austin isn't. We've done a reasonable job of removing the midfield clutter this summer so some of those players will get their chance, but if there's one part of our squad that is anything but cluttered it's the forward options.
I tried to explain. Since there is no way that Austin is going to be a top four standard player he can't possibly be worth a place in our squad. He is therefore wasting a space that could be used for someone else. This doesn't depend on which position he plays.
1) Never trust Wikipedia 2) According to Wikipedia Number 11 for Spurs is Alexandre Pato ....................
Wes Brown and John O'Shea weren't Top 4 standard players, yet look at the amount of winner's medals they racked up in their careers. All teams need players that won't be guaranteed starters, but they can come into the team when needed to do a job. Min is listed in the summer transfers list as our No.10 too.
Illarramendi has joined Real Sociedad and depending on the paper we were either never really interested or pulled out to pursue other targets. Unbelievable. Unless we've got Modric flying in for a medical tomorrow, we're idiots.
Erm, our ability to attract so called 'top four players' partly depends on us winning matches like that one. We'll see which top 4 striker comes in by the end of the window. I pray our scouts are now better than any of us could imagine. What we needed to do was keep 3 points after having a 2 goal lead in our first home game. If that means bringing on an older experienced player, so be it. If it's a young player that does the job, that's all good too. Even Soldado, or Adebayor could have done a better job of providing a threat. Did Davies improve our team? Is he 'top four standard? Not sure. What I do know is that having him as competition has improved Rose no end, and provided reasonable backup for when he's injured. For this he deserves a place in our squad. Kane is no different. He needs competition, and backup. Lloris and Kane are arguably the only two in our squad that might get in to the 'top four' teams. Kane has pledged his allegiance already. I wonder how long Lloris will hang about for this long term development you speak of, if there are no trophies or challenges for champions league.
Can't believe you are not understanding our transfer policy...think the hare from the tortoise and the hare from july 1st until august 31st then think super market dash on last day...
he signed plenty: Alan Smith, Louis Saha, Henrik Larsson, Michael Owen, Anders Lindegaard all fit that description, as does retaining the likes of Giggs, Scholes and Solskjaer so long. All of them could do a job when required.
That's the big question, isn't it? He's plenty skillful and intelligent enough, from what I've seen of him, but will he survive the rough and tumble of the Premiership?
