Fair enough. I thought Phillips was pretty popular amongst the vast majority of the fan base but I suppose even Hourihane wasn’t for a long time so I shouldn’t be surprised
I still think he ran plenty but I felt like he was trying to play a non-contact sport that season. He just didn’t seem to want to challenge defenders that season. He never seemed to go up for headers or into 50-50’s. I know he spent a long time out but I was meaning the first 3 or 4 months of the season when he played regularly & was presumably fit.
Loved Cauley at the time. Accusations of him not trying are just plain daft. He always showed for the ball regardless of form.
I personally think we took an unbelievable finisher who scored every type of goal imaginable and somehow managed to break him. We had him drop deep, we had him run round til his blood was water, we hoofed the ball at him as he stood isolated... If anything, I thought he tried too hard in his last 2 years. He was at his best playing on instinct and when his focus was trying to get that white round thing between the white stick things.
I think that was a widespread opinion that his last 18 months weren't great. I think the last season with us he scored about 2 goals in total from open play he did have injuries though. I remember him been all set to move to Cardiff then he signed a new deal with us and wasn't the same player. I commented and said I wouldn't want him to come back just because he hasn't played much in the past 2 seasons really. With Phillips I like him top player.
This is minutes per contribution which makes more sense than contributions per minute: Hignett 119* Winnall 143 Hourihane 159 Phillips 170 Woodrow 210 *Second half added time is not included in Hignett’s stats as I don’t have that info for those seasons, whereas with the others, it has been taken into account, so Hignett’s minutes per contribution will in truth be slightly higher. Furthermore just for full disclosure, for a slightly complicated reason, I don’t record first half added time. This is also across their entire Reds career now, not just the apps it took them to reach 42 contributions.
It’s no biggy mate. The point of my post wasn’t to start a debate over wether they divide opinion or not. It was more to show their stats are probably better than many expected, like them or not.
I really liked Woodrow and I still maintain he’s the best “goal scoring” striker I’ve seen for us. Thats just over 20 years. Although his form did dip towards the end of his time with us. As for Phillips, I’m glad he’s starting the season well because the last 2, it’s taken him a little while to get going. Again, I like him. Sometimes I do wish he’d get slightly more involved during games but nobody can argue with his goal contributions for us. Goal scorers are like gold dust and I imagine a team will soon be passing over some gold to us for him.