The Strikers

I stopped reading at the point you said you'd take Miller over Lavery. I'd have Bruenker over Miller who has no asset to his game whatsoever.

 

Oh for a Robbie Blake or a Nahki Wells eh..?

 

It's a damnung indictment of league 2 when there are better strikers in the national league this season. A successful striker is the hardest position to fill because everyone wants one, but heck does this club need one. With the amount of chances we're creating I could see a decent one hitting 25 goals this season.

 

Twelve months ago it was obvious we went in to the season without enough quality up front and the problem still hasn’t been fixed.

20/21 - Novak, Donaldson, Guthrie, Samuels
21/22 - Cook, Lavery, Robinson, Angol

I’m not sure this season’s front four are any sort of upgrade on where we were a year ago. Lose Cook or Novak and the options are/were limited.

Unless something changes this is what will cost promotion, for the sake of a couple of hundred grand. A couple of hundred grand spent on Kelleher who keeps Staunton out of the squad and Gilliead who doesn’t offer an awful lot.

Got to question Turnbull’s role, so far his recruitment has been mixed at the very best.

 

None of the strikers you mention have scored more than Cook in the league. You mention the quality of those strikers you see on Quest, but you dont mention all the chances those same strikers miss, just like Cook may do, because Quest will not show them.

Your criticism of Robinson based on yesterday is very harsh, he was on the pitch for about 5 minutes for heavens sake.

Whilst agreeing that Lavery has been anonymous in his fleeting appearances, your praise of George Miller is puzzling, he offered nothing whatsoever yesterday, he was very poor for us, he looks like a schoolboy who has won a competition to play for the first team.

I trust in Derek Adams to bring us success and I am happy with how we are playing and the good start to the season

 

I watched Robinson when he came on and he made some good runs but our midfielders haven't the brains to play through balls and just kept playing it wide.The way we played yesterday when Walsall went down to 10 men was the ideal scenario for their defence ,not one midfielder, winger or striker ran at them and just were so predictable. Adams after match ìnterview was worrying if he thought we were fantastic and said it was as good a game of football that you would see anywhere. We should have put on another striker at half time not with 15 -20 mins to go and change things up instead of the boring side to side shite we served up.

 

I think it would be less of a concern if you felt that say Crankshaw, Vernam, Gilliead and Cooke could weigh in with 5 or10 goals or so each, but I’ve not seen anything to suggest they can. Lavery and Robinson need to make an impact because January is a long time away.

 

Between Cooke, Gilliead, Vernam and Crankshaw, they managed 10 goals in 171 appearances last season.

Lavery and Robinson, 9 goals in 70 appearances lasr season.

No real surprises on these numbers, as most of these players have plyed their trade in recent years, at the lowest level of the football league

 

Just seen that Bristol Rovers signed Leon Clarke. He'd certainly have put one of those chances away yesterday.

36 now but considering we're struggling in that area he would have been a decent short term option.

Regarding the original post though, it's nonsense. All he's done is listed the scorers yesterday and none of them have a better record than Cook.

 

I still can't understand why the manager didn't take a couple of punts in the loan market? Especially for a squad that is obviously lacking in forwards. Yes, they could have been worse than useless, but for the minimum outlay they cost, the club are not much worse off than if they didn't bother. We must be one of the very few clubs in the lower leagues that don't add a bit of padding to the squad by utilising them. Especially in an exceptionally attritional league like this one.

 

Is it the strikers or is it the bloated midfield formation, The guilt edged missed chance yesterday fell to Vernam, not a striker.

Cook is allowed the odd off game. Lavery looks physically weak but that doesn’t mean he is rubbish maybe he will make clever runs into space, Robinson won’t be match fit.

Overall we do seem a bit light on decent quality upfront.

And Evans is a waste of a wage, Sutton is a better player and probably earns a third of what he does.

 

Spot on. Cook is joint second in the top scorer list - albeit its very early days. He'll get goals in this league. What we needed to do - and hopefully will do in January, is add just the one quality attacking player that could thrive in this team.

The goals will come, I'm convinced of it. I'm more worried about us at the back. We don't look solid at all.

 

Funny old game I thought Evans had a decent first half, with regards Sutton after hearing Adams post match comment if looks like the lad needs to get his head down and impress Adams.

 

Sorry Ray, that's far too long to read.

 

Did Miller even touch the ball yesterday?

 

Leon Clarke is possibly the uks oldest living male, he must be at least 109