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Sturrock on West Ham

Right so we're agreed then that having good players all over the pitch is a good thing? I'm glad we got to the bottom of that!

Of course it's important, and I never said to the contrary. You are now wriggling like a politician, and saying things I never said. This is getting silly.
 
Personally I think that having a great goal keeper is one of the most important factors. However I accept that I am wrong, just look at the prices that are paid for players. Surely this simple fact proves that the most important player on the pitch is the one that scores the most goals?
 
Personally I think that having a great goal keeper is one of the most important factors. However I accept that I am wrong, just look at the prices that are paid for players. Surely this simple fact proves that the most important player on the pitch is the one that scores the most goals?

It proves that the most important player to the fans is the one that scores goals.

The last few years we've consistently had between 4 and 7 strikers on our books, yet the chants on the terrace were never for another midfielder, defender or goalkeeper, they were always for another striker or goalscorer. Strikers get the glory and stick in the memory of supporters, which is why they drive such a high transfer fee.
 
It proves that the most important player to the fans is the one that scores goals.

The last few years we've consistently had between 4 and 7 strikers on our books, yet the chants on the terrace were never for another midfielder, defender or goalkeeper, they were always for another striker or goalscorer. Strikers get the glory and stick in the memory of supporters, which is why they drive such a high transfer fee.

goals win games. beautiful football and clean sheets do not. ps Mike Marsh was a midfielder who is our record purchase.
 
It proves that the most important player to the fans is the one that scores goals.

The last few years we've consistently had between 4 and 7 strikers on our books, yet the chants on the terrace were never for another midfielder, defender or goalkeeper, they were always for another striker or goalscorer. Strikers get the glory and stick in the memory of supporters, which is why they drive such a high transfer fee.


You seem to be saying that supporters dictate transfer fees ?
I understand what you are saying, and you could use Foran as an example to illistrate your point
I understand with premiership teams that a make up of the transfer fee is on how many shirts they will sell , what will the gate receipts go up by , and so to that extent I can see that the ecomonics of fans comes into play. But you seem to be going one rather large step further than this.
I think cahirman pay more money for proven goalscorers because ot is the most difficult position on the field , it is the most influential position regarding winning a game, and the differences between sucess and failure can be so narrow. No other position has all of this

I also feel pretty confident that last season there were more threads on here to get in a decent centre back than anything on getting in strikers.
 
This is a quote from Paul 'Sturrock on West Ham', ironically. * 'Icing on the cake' would be a clinical finisher or two.

Is he wrong as well?

I just don't see how it's the be-all-and-end-all. A good team will create chances and someone will put them away. You seem to be saying that a good striker is the difference between an average team and a good team. I think good players are the difference between an average team and a good team and the season just gone shows us that a good striker really doesn't make much of a difference.

Yes teams with 20 goal strikers often do well, but are they doing well because of the striker or is the striker scoring goals because he's in a good team?

I'd love us to sign another Freddy Eastwood, who was a class apart and could create chances for himself. But if we can't sign a player like that then it doesn't matter who we have up front because they're entirely dependent on the supply that they receive.
 
I've said before, but will bring it up again - we had Carruthers and Constantine, who both scored a lot of goals in awful sides and we didnt have a sniff of doing well - but Barnard is the ultimate example and I dont know how anyone can argue against your point Beefy.

Barnard had a great season, scored a lot of goals , but ultimately I think we would have still gone down if he'd stayed. Its just we went down with a worse points total than if he'd have stayed.

Our side was awful last year and the only reason Barnard scored so many was he created a lot himself and took pens.
 
You seem to be saying that supporters dictate transfer fees ?
I understand what you are saying, and you could use Foran as an example to illistrate your point
I understand with premiership teams that a make up of the transfer fee is on how many shirts they will sell , what will the gate receipts go up by , and so to that extent I can see that the ecomonics of fans comes into play. But you seem to be going one rather large step further than this.
I think cahirman pay more money for proven goalscorers because ot is the most difficult position on the field , it is the most influential position regarding winning a game, and the differences between sucess and failure can be so narrow. No other position has all of this

I also feel pretty confident that last season there were more threads on here to get in a decent centre back than anything on getting in strikers.

Until we sold Barnard and, from February onwards, all you saw were threads surrounding a lack of replacement for him (amongst the wages issues, of course).

In terms of finding a goalscorer to be the most difficult position, I disagree. In the last five years alone we've had Eastwood, Goater, Barnard, MacDonald, Hooper and Paynter, who've all scored goals at this level, as well as having Theo Robinson on loan. In the same time frame, the only midfielder we've had who consistently created opportunities for our strikers was Mark Gower, with the likes of Moussa, Guttridge and Sawyer not far behind. I don't include Bailey in this because, whereas he certainly scored goals, he wasn't creative in the final third of the park.

Strikers might take the glory, but a creative, influential midfielder capable of carving opportunities and pitching in with a few goals himself is a rare diamond.
 
Icing doesn't work by itself, you need the cake as well.

Whereas you can eat cake without icing.




I think he's saying he has the cake, now he just needs the icing.

Still, what does he know about football?
Obviously we are both over rating good strikers, even tho without one, we will probably finish about 7th. With one I feel we'll finish top Three.
 
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I think he's saying he has the cake, now he just needs the icing.

Still, what does he know about football?
Obviously we are both over rating good strikers, even tho without one, we will probably finish about 7th. With one I feel we'll finish top Three.

Maybe. With a better midfielder maybe we'd finish second. Or a better centre-half.

I really don't think we're even disagreeing with eachother here, to be honest. We're just going round in circles basically saying the same thing.
 
This is my point, you are right we weren't. When he left, I think the next best scorer was on 2 or 3 goals. He did his goalscoring bit, the rest of the team sadly did not.
We can argue this until the cows come home, but I've been watching football for 40 years, and I know the importance of a goalscorer. Getting relegated with one is extremely rare, and getting automatic promotion without one is rare.

I think this is a good point, TSNB, but it does have its variables. I am pretty sure we'd have gone down in '93 unless Sir Stanley hadn't given us the 'get out of jail' card he often did. Having said that, the defence had to do a pretty good job to keep us in games. On the flip side, you've got Dave Crown. We went down in '89 despite his goals in a struggling team. The year before though, his goals definitely helped to keep us up.
 
I think it included a couple of cup games, but he definitely played over half the league games.

As Beefy has already pointed out that with him in the side we scored 1.1 goals a game and without him we scored 1.05 goals a game, selling him probably wasn't the problem.....

Something about lies,dammed lies and statistics comes to mind.Dunno why.;)
 
I just don't see where people think that Barnard's goals would have kept us up. Even had he stayed fit and scored ten more goals, with the number we were conceding there's no way that those goals would have been enough.
 
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