From the day we signed him, I thought he was too slow, too one-footed and too specialised (goalscorer only and nothing else to add) to follow us into the Premiership. I suspect that NA was of the same opinion. I think he'd have been seriously found out in the Prem. SRL can get away with being slower because he's always in the right position and his thinking is several seconds quicker than most players. Sharp was completely one-dimensional, IMHO. Great for the Championship but I think he'd have looked a fool this last season against much better defences. On that basis I wasn't even slightly surprised that he was loaned out. All opinion and, as usual, we'll never know what might have been. Vin
I think Sharp could be a good option off the bench if we were chasing a goal and the opposition were just sitting back and defending. He finishes well and has a knack for being in the right place at the right time. The big question is whether we're likely to be in that situation often enough for it to be worth him staying.
If we're aiming for a top 10 finish next season we need to be looking at players with a lot more quality than Billy Sharp. No offence to him, his a great little striker but we need to be looking at a higher calibre of player now.
To add to my earlier post..Sharp is a good goal-poacher and opportunist in a side that's on top. We've been on top in so many games this season. We've had over 15 shots in loads of games whilst dominating possession and failed to score or only got one goal, especially towards the end of the season. Our main problem has been finishing or scoring scrappy goals, we've been very wasteful. We also don't seem to have anyone wanting to score easy goals inside or close to the 6 yard box. Sharp would have done well for us as far as I'm concerned. He only had 11 starts last season(6 sub appearances) and got 9 goals. 1 goal in 1 game in the league cup. That's a very good record. He was also on fire in the pre-season friendlies. We made a mistake with Sharp IMO especially considering our top scorers after Lambert were Puncheon and Rodriguez on a tie with 6.
Yes I see your point, but he isn't a well rounded enough player to be the 2nd striker/midfield player in a 4-3-3 formation. Not quick enough and not enough skill, wasn't ahead of the game. Not sure he would help in breaking down tight defences and he wouldn't be great on the counter. He was good in a 4-4-2 formation when we were in the champ and we were dominating teams- in that situation a poacher is ideal. But this is the PL and you can't simply extrapolate his goal stats for last year to this. Teams are tougher defenses are stronger and most importantly we're not raping teams taking 65% posession most of the time. He was never going to displace Rickie, so where would he fit in? Bring him on for punch or lallana as an impact? How would our midfield cope then? Well as mentioned above we will never know but I think we would be outplayed in the centre of the park.
We've played 4-2-3-1 every game with Pochettino, not 4-3-3. Where has 4-3-3 from? If he started I was talking about playing him with Lambert similar to last season with Sharp dropping deep out of the strikers to help defend. 6 goals is nothing. Le Fondre got 12 this season and 8 came from the bench. I would never play Sharp without Lambert on the pitch. I'd bring Sharp on for the CAM or a CDM and revert to 4-4-1-1 if we wanted to nick a goal in a close game or something like 4-1-3-2 if we were behind. We've averaged over 61% possession and over 15 shots per game in 7 games against the bottom half teams under Pochettino. Out of those 7 games against the bottom half we've only won once despite completely dominating. It's all irrelevant anyway because he won't want to come back after being loaned out and I very much doubt he will be asked if he wants to back either.
