We all said we needed a new defence…

Dunno how many times I’ve read it and said it myself, we need 2 centre backs. Guess what? We’ve got two centre backs in.

brilliant business.

where’s all this demand come for another striker? We’ve got two strikers in very good form, aswell as a proven league 1 striker on the bench in Cosgrove. Why on earth do we need another?

Honestly I love an occasional bed wetting but the reaction from the fan boys and that one daft bird (on social media) and morons on this board is ******* laughable.

Don’t worry what Bolton are doing, worry about what we are doing. We was piss poor at the back, and we’ve gone out and (hopefully) solved that.

I’m 9999% certain that anyone who thinks this has not been a good window hasn’t got the faintest clue about football.

 

So here is the answer

well I’ll start with a question. How many goals have our strikers (excluding Cole) scored between them

answer : 4


We most definitely needed another striker. Indeed, Collins said so himself.

 

Ridiculous answer, why exclude Cole? Let’s not exclude Cole, and how many have our strikers now scored.

 

I'm not sure about the striker thing.

We've got young lads who imo SHOULD be being used as the rotation strikers but the problem is we've signed a carthorse on a long deal who's keeping them out of the team. Would yet another striker get a chance or would he too be behind max 'got the best agent in england' Watters?

 

Because we play with more than one striker.
It’s not a ridiculous answer at all.
It’s blatantly obvious that we need another striker to complement Cole because there’s so few goals coming from the others…
And as I say - Collins said we wanted another one in.

 

Yes we need a striker. So let's load up the parameters on the spreadsheet:

Position: striker
Age: 21-28
Experience: at least 100 apps at a good level
Goals: can score 10+ a season in lg1
Fitness: match fit and ready to contribute now
Injury record: minimal injuries
Availability: club willing to sell him
Price: £1m or less
Wages: willing to accept probably less than 5k
Playing time: willing to sit on bench behind cole & Mcatee
Work permit: eligible for a work permit.

Results: no results found.

Turns out quality strikers are on everybody's shopping list and finding one that fits our bill isn't easy within our budget.

Can't blame the board for not panic buying when on the books we have: cole, Mcatee, Cosgrove, watters, Shaw, marsh, jalo.

7 strikers is too many to justify another spend and place on the wage bill.

Im disappointed with our options up front but that goes back to the summer, not January.

 

All fair points.

getting rid of Norwood is coming home to roost

 

All that being said I'd be buzzing if we brought in Dwight Gayle on a free. Football fans are the quintessential hypocrites and I love that.

 

Why would you exclude Cole from a tally of how many goals have our strikers scored this season.

You've also excluded McAtee too.

So what you're saying is, the number of goals scored by our strikers who aren't our regular strikers, is 4. That's like counting our number of clean sheets this season, but excluding Roberts and Killip.

 

He was on £60k a week the season before last. Yes, he fits into our wage structure.

 

Tedic 1, Watters 4, Norwood 11, Cole 15. Another forward may have been useful but hardly make or break.

 

We're a Connell injury or illness away from Jon Russell starting for the rest of the season.

 

Can afford to come and play for us for 10 Bob a week then

 

Excluding cole makes sense because he's trying to point out that the contribution of the rest isn't much and you can't rely on one player up front. McAtee should be included though unless he's saying McAtee is a midfielder

 

Why on earth would you exclude an asset that we have?

You wouldn’t judge Man City without Haalands goals, why we out here chalking off Cole’s goals?

Really bizarre way of looking at things.

We’re the second highest scorers in the league I think someone posted?

Would we all *like* another high quality striker? Yes.

Do we *need* one?
No.

 

But if you're excluding the two players who start every game, and generally play 70%+ of the games, you're reducing the sample size massively. I get the point, but assuming they stay fit, we've got 2 good strikers for the level.

 

Aye, you put that proposition to him.

 

The thing is though, most of the goals a striker scores aren't individual goals. They're made by the whole team and the striker is on the end. The way we play we play so that Cole is on the end.

Cole has 16 Goals with an xG of 10.7. I'll use Watters as an example, he has 3 Goals with an xG of 1.43.

That means Watters is converting more of the chances he gets than Cole is.

 

I know that, that's why I said I didn't really get the excluding McAtee part. You've got to exclude the one striker who massively skews the stats though because he could get crocked tomorrow.

 

Xg is nothing but made up rubbish to make money from pretending it's this be all and end all stat