That feeling when you're reminded that you're surrounded by a few entitled PL forum numpties, when deciding to criticise the player that just salvaged a point for you amongst other vital goals scored in a season. Remarkable. Short memories. Would have taken a point against a team fighting to stay up.
At least we kept our symmetry of points, goals scored and goals conceded (50/50/50) being exactly the same
7th is in our hands. Javi has comprehensively outthought Nuno twice this season & we have no reason to fear he has got more stupid in the last fortnight. For me, the person who comes out worst from tonight is Deeney. This season’s attacking set up is built around him. Poor not to be available for selection.
I think Grays goal is papering over some serious cracks. He contributes nothing to the game . His hold up play is worse than terrible . He’s missed 4 open goals in 3 games and scored one half chance . If his all round game was good then I could live with that , but he is truly awful...with the very , very occasional moment of quality . Gray is ok , playing next to a striker who does his holdup work, but on his own he degenerates us to a team with 10 men.
I don't agree with that. It's Gray's job to score goals. He's a striker. Just because he scores a late goal shouldn't detract from the good chances he missed. He should have been walking off the pitch with the match ball tonight. He missed a sitter after just two minutes, after a lovely cross from Janmaat found him totally unmarked. All he could do was stab it straight at the keeper, then head over an open goal from the rebound. All our forward attacks were falling down when it came to him. He is often dreadful in the build up. In the second half it looked like he missed a couple of other easy chances, although I was at the other end of the pitch, so I'll have to see them again to see how easy they were. He does work hard, finds good scoring positions, but is constantly let down by his heavy touch and clumsy feet in front of goal. I cheer when he scores and groan when he misses. You can praise and criticise at the same time. It is allowed. He is basically a decent Championship player, or Premier League squad player. He's not technically good enough to play for a good Premier League team. We're not that just yet, but we are certainly heading in that direction. He's not really the type of player who will go on that journey with us. It's not to say I do not like him. I like his fight and desire, but his ability is sadly lacking on far too many occasions during a match.
He is one of those players that's looks poor missing chances, but scores when you least expect him to i.e. Tonight and Burnley away, let's not forget he made our third at Wembley!
Exactly , his work rate and his running off he ball is exceptional , but you can’t be a striker in one of the top leagues of the world without the basic technique that Gray lacks .
If he scored every game you could forgive that , but he doesn’t and so at least 50% games he is worse than having no striker at all .
Genuinely cannot think of a striker in Premier League history with less technical ability than Gray. It's beyond painful to watch. He is so, so uncomfortable with the basics and looks so awkward.
What would do with Deeney out through a self-inflicted suspension then? I'd rather have Gray getting into positions, missing some chances and scoring some, than Success who never even looks like scoring. In the last nine games, Gray has three goals and three assists. Despite his obvious limitations, he's far more effective than Success.
I am not a great Gray fan, but if he scored in every game he wouldn't be playing for us, he does however have the second highest goals per minutes scrored ratio, (after Del Boy) so he deserves some credit!
Gray seems to be crap when he is given time to think about things. The cross on 2 minutes today was easy to see coming and he predictably fluffed it. He seems to do better when he has to react with no time to think.
It gets better. Taking D Tel FF points (a pretty telling measure over a season), AG has very similar points per start to Aguero. Jesus & Son are better. And, calculating by eye, all other Prem forwards are worse. Moneyball Pozzo strikes again.
Unless I’m mistaken , you have to actually be on the pitch to score a goal ? Maybe the rules have change recently , apologies if so .
We seem to be conceding a few silly goals where we're allowing players to charge us down. Palace in the cup where Mapps allowed Batshuayi to get too close, he blocked the clearance and scored from it. Foster did the same against Arsenal, allowing Aubameyang to close him down and scored directly from the block, and the same tonight. I think we're holding on to the ball for too long before clearing or making a pass. Tonight there was a lot of last ditch stuff going on, where we were avoiding bad situations by the skin of our teeth. Last ditch tackles that were coming off, but could easily have gone the other way because we were allowing opponents to get too close. I don't know if that's a change in policy, but I think you can only really play that style well if you have excellent technical players all over the pitch. If you don't, then you will make a lot of mistakes and this is what I'm seeing currently.
Without his goals we would be bottom half. So I would take some occasional miscontrols in games for the goals.
I've never liked him from the start because he's been bad from the start and hasn't improved whatsoever. Just because I saw what I see in him early doesn't mean my opinion has "little merit". What makes your opinion and judgement more important or valid than mine exactly? There is no arguing the fact that he is a very, very poor technical footballer. Debating that would be delusional. He's has his use as an impact sub and is good for the odd goal, but he is embarrassing from a technical perspective at this level.
We have had some poor non or low scoring forwards over the years, Dixon, Morelee, Butler, Quinn and in more recent times Gejo, Graveline, Jurado, the difference with Gray is he does actually score some goals!
Not sure what all the fuss is about, we played pretty well tonight. This was way better than anything under QSF, Mazzarri & Silva's darkest days - at least you weren't bored sh*tless and we always looked like we had a goal in us, whether it comes or not is a different story but there was a clear plan and clear periods of dominance in the game. The grimmest thing about the previous regimes was the complete lack of that and any form of tactical identity. Etienne Capoue is an animal. Craig Cathcart must've had flu or something, the clearance off Long wasn't even the worse thing he did. I thought Masina was actually quietly decent. Andre Gray is the funniest footballer of all time, he's so terrible yet scores regularly, over a 38 game season he'd probably score 15 goals but he is a terrible footballer there's no denying that. What annoys me most, is his lack of intelligence, he'll stand marked between two defenders and then that causes the team to look elsewhere, he needs to run the channels more! And I know it's not his game but how on earth does he manage to lose sight of the ball in the air every time!? It's like he looks up at a hoof to him and then walks AWAY from it. His judgment of where it's going to land is awful. At one point today he fell over and did the splits which was hilarious, good laugh watching him attempt to play football but if he keeps on scoring vital goals then who cares? Deliveroo pretty good again. I actually think his attitude has improved a little bit to be fair, annoying me less so than he used to. Although the decision to not chase Sims from his own awful corner was really poor and I think he'll get a bollocking for that. Did look like he was going to create some magic out of nothing though. Pereyra's miss looked awful in real time, should've scored. He's one that is starting to annoy me, magical on his day but just not often enough. Scared of challenges which is fair enough considering his record but so frustrating to watch. Went on a couple of magical runs but then did too much or lost the ball. Needs a more dangerous end product/final ball so he can start racking up some assists which is primarily his job. Something not right, maybe too early to say mind / heart elsewhere but it's sad to say he's replaceable really. We'll beat Chelsea, I don't know about Wolves though.
Ron Saunders introduced the Z Cars theme because it brought us luck. Look what happens when we get rid of it.
As a brief aside, it's interesting that we copped a bit of a battering in the first half and came on strong in the second half, normally it's the other way around
I agree with that assessment re Gray, but I'm genuinely not sure if you're trolling given the last sentence. Let's be real here, if Gray was as hardworking as he is, but more clinical and with more technical ability, he'd be playing in the Champions League and not for us. Doesn't help that last night he didn't have his pal Deeney to help him, Deeney has made so many Watford strikers look a million dollars
Haha Ali Dia I'll give you, but Henderson had a better first touch and ball striking technique than Gray, even though he wasn't fit for the level for other reasons.
“In seven moments that’s how long it took them to score” Trust us to be the ones against whom the record fastest goal was scored Jesus
****. Was Jurado a forward? Really? I thought his job was to stand at the back collect the ball, neatly turn 90 degrees and pass it all without moving. Forward you say?!? He wasn’t a centre forward. He wasn’t a winger as that requires running with the ball not receiving the ball at the back, turning 90 degrees and passing sideways. Wingback maybe but that’s a stretch in terms of forward player particularly for how he played. I don’t recall ever seeing him in the opposition half, he preferred to stay in about a 5 yard square self imposed “Jurado prison” just to the side and nowhere near the dangerous opposition half, of he ever moved from this I suspect QSF had some sort of chip implanted in him that gave him an electric shock If I had to give him a positional name it would be something like safe side back turner At the time Gravelaine was an outrageous talent for us. 2 in 7 ain’t awful for a team and country youre not used to. Could have done with him at Soton last night at his peak, remember his brace in 1999
