bannedfromHandV

Yes, but then they have all spent a fortune to have that, and in the case of Spurs, Liverpool and City they're only marginally better off than us if at all, so my point really is that we could go out and spend £15M on a striker but how much is it going to improve us? Not much IMO.

Spurs have scored 10 goals more than us from their strikeforce. Your average figures are clouding that fact. So not only are their averages higher, they have more strikers doing it. City are similar. They've scored 9 more than us and your average is clouding that too. Averages are not the be-all and end-all. As I said in a previous post, the total goals from the strikeforce is the only proper number that is not affected by minutes on the pitch. By your measurement, if Delfouneso was to come on in the next game for 20 minutes and score, our average would be 3.75. Your figures are affected too heavily by minute changes.

BOF, the figures don't cloud anything, particularly in the case of Spurs, as you can quite clearly see their strikers are going almost at a rate of 2:1 over our own, I cannot see where you think the figures are clouding this, my point though, to again reiterate, is that Spurs have spent what? Around £30M to assemble that strike force (not to mention the millions spent on Pavlyuchenko who isn't included).

We've spent a mere £10M (arguable) on our strike force and are currently only slightly worse off than them, one result and we're on a par with them again, better in fact.

I hate to keep repeating myself but this is kind of the point of the whole post, it's in response to all those clamouring for a change of strikers but who seem unable (outside of Darren Bent and Carlton Cole) to actually come up with feasible suggestions.

Darren Bent not being feasible as he would cost £20M+ and is not actually worth anywhere near that and Carlton Cole not being feasible as we've seen the worst of him before and it still wakes me up in a cold swear at 3am each morning.......

As you can see, the only clubs to have a better goals per striker ratio than us are Chelsea, Liverpool, Man United and Man City, Tottenham and Sunderland.

Nice stats, but that one sentence sums it up perfectly. The 5 clubs we're competing with for the top 4 all have strikers who score more goals than us. Which is a problem, obviously.

Yes, but then they have all spent a fortune to have that, and in the case of Spurs, Liverpool and City they're only marginally better off than us if at all, so my point really is that we could go out and spend £15M on a striker but how much is it going to improve us? Not much IMO.

What would improve us would be a striker in the £20 - £30M range but there are a select few players who fall into that category and none, that I can think of would be interested in linking up with us, hence the point of my post.

I see what you're getting at but taking the dirty heathen bastards for example, if you discount O'Connor and his one goal, it bumps their figure to 2.25.

True, but then why exclude him? He's scored a goal and is a part of their strikeforce?

Because he rarely plays...at least I don't think he does. Or, just as another quicjk example, how about Owen, he never plays in the league and he brings Man U's figure down a fair bit.

I do appreciate what you're saying, I do. Perhaps this part of it is open to interpretation then afterall!

Though I believe Owen is relevant, he has featured a fair bit in the league and has scored two goals so I think it would have been more of an injustice to have omitted him, personally.

Compares to the teams around us atm like United, City, Spuds etc. our strikers are the weakest and they dont put fear into opponents players like Torres, RVP, Rooney, Drogba, Anelka and Tevez do.

I appreciate what you're saying but then that's the point of the post really, the 6 or so players you mention above all have a very high transfer value and are unattainable for us currently....which is kind of the point of the post.

On the flip side though I would suggest that there are still probably one or two defenders who don't fancy coming up against Gabby's pace.......not quite as scary as Torres admittedly but y'know, you have to take the positives where they're available.....

Many thanks for the statistics BFHV, but i feel it is apparent that our present strikeforce lack intelligent movement to create space for a pass. If we were to sign RVN for instance, then a season, or two, in our team would make Gabby a much more intelligent and better player!

At the moment i also feel we are getting there as far as being able to attract the 20m forward you speak of. At least we should be trying. Who that forward might be is up to the manager, but he will have to shop abroad for him which might be a problem for MON?

Can't agree enough in terms of the movement issue, the amount of times I get angry watching JC and Gabby is amazing, they really do need some tuition on how to move in and around a defence.

Agree also that we will need to shop abroad for a potential target though despite fully understanding where the criticism has arisen I still don't fully agree that it necessarily spells out a problem for the gaffer.

We have four very useful strikers at the moment even though we perhaps lack a clinical finisher. If Heskey were to be inexplicably sold this january then Hugo Rodallega would be an interesting target imo as he still has his best years in front of him.

Agreed, he is potentially an exciting prospect however he seems to be very inconsistent.....

I don't think that really proves anything as it includes all sorts of players who rarely play and it therefore skews the figures.

I don't agree......but then I wouldn't! :winkold:

I think it's important at a time when our strikeforce as a whole is coming under fire that we contrast and compare with each other strikeforce in the league, in order to do so you need to include each one that has scored, irregardless of whether they've played 20 minutes or 20 matches, IMO.

I see what you're getting at but taking the dirty heathen bastards for example, if you discount O'Connor and his one goal, it bumps their figure to 2.25.

True, but then why exclude him? He's scored a goal and is a part of their strikeforce?

Blandy, it seems your issues are with modern football in general.........sorry to jump in uninvited but doesn't seem as though the General can influence the factors that concern you ultimately?

^^^^^^^

Tell me about it........

I don't think that really proves anything as it includes all sorts of players who rarely play and it therefore skews the figures.

I don't agree......but then I wouldn't! :winkold:

I think it's important at a time when our strikeforce as a whole is coming under fire that we contrast and compare with each other strikeforce in the league, in order to do so you need to include each one that has scored, irregardless of whether they've played 20 minutes or 20 matches, IMO.

I voted no but I'd rather have voted no, not yet as I think Randy would fund it but I don't think we can attract the really top guys until we make inroads to the "Top 4"

I know, I could have put all kinds of options in the poll but I wanted something a bit more 'black and white', if you know what I mean.

I appreciate that we all hope a little further down the line that we could afford and attract the right player but I'm looking for opinions simply on whether we can do it right now.

There have been a few posts lately slagging off our current striking options, whilst I appreciate that neither Emile nor John have scored enough times this season I wondered how we compared to the rest of the league, the stats below are fairly interesting and in my opinion only slightly up for debate (i.e. some stats can be made to look either positive or negative dependent on interpretation).

I appreciate for example that had RvP not gotten injured for Arsenal that their goals per striker will probably have been a lot higher, the stats are inclusive only of Premier League goals and include only strikers, there are one or two debateable inclusions, namely Dirk Kuyt who seems to play right side of midfield now but he is ultimately still (I think) a striker.

What is interesting for me is the level of spending required in order to catch up to those above us, people have been complaining about our need for a new striker lately, someone to really take us on to the next level, given the stats below we'd be looking at an outlay of probably close to £20M.

Could we afford and attract such a player, IMO no.

Arsenal – 7 + 4 + 1 = 12 --- avg 4 per striker

Aston Villa – 8 + 4 + 2 = 14 --- avg 4.66666 per striker

Birmingham – 4 + 2 + 2 + 1 + 1 = 10 --- avg 2 per striker

Blackburn – 3 + 1 + 1 = 5 --- avg 1.66666 per striker

Bolton W – 6 + 3 + 2 = 11 --- avg 3.66666 per striker

Burnley – 5 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 11 --- avg 2.75 per striker

Chelsea – 14 + 5 = 19 --- avg 9.5 per striker

Everton – 10 + 1 + 1 = 12 --- avg 4 per striker

Fulham – 6 + 2 + 1 = 9 --- avg 3 per striker

Hull City – 3 + 2 + 1 + 1 = 7 --- avg 1.75 per striker

Liverpool – 12 + 5 + 4 = 21 --- avg 7 per striker

Manchester City – 9 + 6 + 6 + 2 = 23 --- avg 5.75 per striker

Manchester United – 14 + 6 + 2 = 22 --- avg 7.33333333 per striker

Portsmouth – 4 + 3 = 7 --- avg 3.5 per striker

Stoke City – 3 + 2 + 1 + 1 = 7 --- avg 1.75 per striker

Sunderland – 13 + 6 = 19 --- avg 9.5 per striker

Tottenham - 14 + 6 + 4 = 24 --- avg 8 per striker

West Ham – 7 + 5 + 3 + 3 + 1 = 19 --- avg 3.8 per striker

Wigan Ath – 7 + 1 = 8 --- avg 2 per striker

Wolves W – 5 + 2 + 1 + 1 = 9 --- avg 2.25 per striker

Arsenal – Robin Van Persie, Eduardo & Nicklas Bendtner

Aston Villa – Gabby Agbonlahor, John Carew & Emile Heskey

Birmingham – Cameron Jerome, Christian Benitez, James McFadden, Kevin Phillips & Garry O’Connor

Blackburn – Jason Roberts, Franco Di Santo & Benni McCarthy

Bolton W – Ivan Klasnic, Kevin Davies & Johann Elmander

Burnley – Steven Fletcher, David Nugent, Robbie Blake & Kevin McDonald

Chelsea – Didier Drogba & Nicolas Anelka

Everton – Louis Saha, Yakubu & James Vaughan

Fulham – Bobby Zamora, Erik Nevland & Diomansy Kamara

Hull City – Geovanni, Jan Vennegor of Hesselink, Craig Fagan & Kamel Ghilas

Liverpool – Fernando Torres, Dirk Kuyt & David Ngog

Manchester City – Carlos Tevez, Craig Bellamy, Emmanuel Adebayor & Roque Santa Cruz

Manchester United – Wayne Rooney, Dimitar Berbatov & Michael Owen

Portsmouth – Aruna Dindane & Frederic Piquionne

Stoke City – James Beattie, Dave Kitson, Ricardo Fuller & Tuncay Sanli

Sunderland – Darren Bent & Kenwynne Jones

Tottenham – Jermain Defoe, Robbie Keane & Peter Crouch

West Ham – Carlton Cole, Alessandro Diamanti, Guillermo Franco, Junior Stanislas & Luis Jiminez

Wigan Ath – Hugo Rodellega & Scott Sinclair

Wolves W – Kevin Doyle, Nenad Miljas, Sylvain Ebanks-Blake & Stefan Maierhoffer

As you can see, the only clubs to have a better goals per striker ratio than us are Chelsea, Liverpool, Man United and Man City, Tottenham and Sunderland.

Chelsea:

Drogba - £20M?

Anelka - £14M?

Liverpool:

Torres - £25M?

Kuyt - £12M?

Ngog - £1.5M?

Man Utd:

Rooney - £30M?

Berbatov - £30M?

Owen - Free

Man City:

Tevez - £25M/£30M?

Bellamy - £12M?

Adebayor - £20M?

Santa Cruz - £15M?

Spurs:

Defoe - £15M?

Keane - bought back from Liverplop, perhaps £12/£13M?

Crouch £9M?

Sunderland:

Bent - £15M?

Jones - £6M?

Personally for me the jury's still out on Bent, Jones I don't rate but you have to admire them still I guess, end of the season I'd be keen to see if Sunderland still remain there.

Thoughts?

our coach is leaving at 3 which was risky imo anyway, gonna be a right struggle now

You are joking aren't you?

Brum to Blackburn under normal conditions shouldn't take anything longer than between 2.5 and 3 hours, the route there is all along the M6 and eventually the M65, the stadium is one mile from the motorway junction so it really should NOT pose a massive problem.

If you cannot make it to Blackburn upon leaving at 3pm I will eat my own pants, the dirty ones in the washing basket too.....

Seems no away fan is going to be able to get there! Pelting down in Selly Oak

I'm hoping I should be okay leaving from Stoke, sounds like I might be the only one there out of 5,300 which should be funny.....

This game is NOT going ahead. No chance I'm afraid. Been on so many forums reading peoples quotes who are in the area and its just chaos. **** it!

Thanks a lot for your optimism and insightful thoughts, I'll choose to await an official update thanks.

I work in recruitment and have just spoken to one of our contractors who lives in Blackburn.

He's not made it into work this morning but says he sees no reason why it won't go ahead tonight as they've forecasted a bit of sunshine for the afternoon and no more heavy amounts of snow, this is liable to change but I am remaining optimistic

so long as we know either way by 5pm I'm happy......

General Krulak here:

1. I believe that most fans understand that Randy and the Board are acutely aware of ticket prices for football in the UK. I also believe that most fans know that we have the lowest ticket prices, overall , in the Premiership. At the same time, I think that most fans understand that revenue from tickets plays a significant role in the operation of the Club. I just posted (see above) an answer to a question re. "free tickets"...much of what I posted holds true for recent comments. Simply put, if we want to have a special team..a competitive team..revenue is required. Our budget is made at the beginning of the year...based upon assumed season ticket sales, individual game sales, etc. etc. We also assume as certain level of success in cup competition...and resultant revenue from those games. NOW, we ALWAYS try to be fair to the fans and to recognize the economic impact on families and individuals when we set prices...and we have, on occasion, altered prices by lowering them to recognize the hardship and to encourage fans to come to the games. My sense is that we will be fair for the upcoming games. We always have been. At the same time, we need to realize that the fans who are requesting a break on the ticket prices are some of the same fans who complain that we didn't buy enough players and enough quality during the transfer windows. We cannot be all things to all people. Sooooo, at the end of the day, we will do the best we can...as we always have. UTV!!

Bang on.

Since yourself and Randy (et al) arrived it's been like a new awakening for me.

Before you came in I had never held a ST, I also struggled to attend too many games as being a student (at the time) didn't mix well with trying to be tickets of £30+ as standard.

Now since the return of the North Stand into home territory I firstly was able to attend multiple matches in quick succession, I particularly and fondly recall the Chelsea game in which Zat made his debut, I paid I think it was £13 for my ticket having paid around the same for the Fulham game the week before.

Then last year I was able to afford a ST, all thanks to Randy and the North Stand, I honestly cannot thank you enough, though, in my attempts to thank you I will quietly and happily pay any amount you charge for the tickets against Brighton as I know the decision will have been made in the greatest of faiths.

Not even a question for me. Guzan

General Krulak here:

1. Cash Machines: As many know, we have been looking into this for a few months. I wish it were as simple as just putting one up but, as you all know, the machine needs to be "sponsored" by someone...a bank, etc. Getting someone to put one on Villa Park to be used, maybe, once a week is not the easiest thing to do. We are still working on it.

2. I absolutely will be coming over for some games. To date my Doctor has not let me fly but I think he is about ready to relent...or I will choke him like a chicken!!

Put him in the 'hurt locker' big chief

The U.S. Army didn't find Saddam Hussein hiding in the bunker, James Milner found him. After becoming bored on holiday in Dubai, James decided to go for a brisk jog, after an hour he found himself in Iraq and decided to help the war effort.....

Wow there are a lot of optimistic fans on here!!

He'll take the United job once Ferguson moves upstairs, Fergie will almost certainly have a major say in who takes over the reins and he seems to be a huge fan of O Neills what with the plethora of positive comments he's made about us since Martin took over.

I think much the same as with his own appointment at the time, Ferguson would be eager for United to not go down the route of bringing in a big name but rather someone a little more grounded.

I hope I'm wrong but I've been fairly sure of this one for a while now......

Never been before, never really had the funds nor the access before to be honest, father was too much of a frickin skinflint to shell out for cup final tickets......nor the petrol to get to London!

God I hope we get there.....

Sit back tactics and conceding late goals Feb to May last season. We just stopped playing. Stoke from 2-0 to 2-2, disaster ... that never seemed to stop.

Ridiculous.

I agree that there were times when we could be accused of sitting back but the Stoke game isn't one of them.

We were 2-0 up and absolutely cruising, it was one of the most one-sided matches I've ever seen at VP, Stoke were never in it. Gabby had a great chance to make it 3 but missed, Stoke then scored from a set-piece(?) and a 25 yard half volley, in the space of 3 minutes, how you or anyone else can call that a mistake by MoN is beyond me and illustrates to me that you cannot have played the game yourself, sometimes shit like that just happens and there isn't a lot you can do about it.

MON's biggest mistake is taking the booing at the wigan game to heart. He should have realised that anybody who booed that day was a complete and utter moron and the true supporters of this club were in the quiet majority. The 'modern' football fan who wants success and wants it now, without seeing the bigger picture is an idiot.

I wonder what percentage of this forum's members this accounts for?