Championship Strikers

[snootyfenooty]

There’s a limited amount of time you can coach players during the season and you can either spend your time working on passing moves, transitions from defence to attack etc or you can practice corners and just hope your players can figure the passing bit out themselves and don’t take the easy option of leathering up to the big lad up front that you’ve signed because he scores five from corners every season.

Jonny Wilkinson used to practice by himself for an hour before training and an hour afterwards. He became the best kicker in the game and it didn't affect the rest of his game. He also became England's highest point scorer in the process. It might be a big ask to expect one of our players to show such dedication and fit this around his daily 3 hour training session, especially on the pittance they are earning.

 

[BushBlade]

Jonny Wilkinson used to practice by himself for an hour before training and an hour afterwards. He became the best kicker in the game and it didn't affect the rest of his game. He also became England's highest point scorer in the process. It might be a big ask to expect one of our players to show such dedication and fit this around his daily 3 hour training session, especially on the pittance they are earning.

We put the ball in the right areas plenty of times, how many times did JOC, for example, head it over the bar?

Are you actually claiming Wilder and Knill aren’t capable of analysing our strengths and weaknesses and adapting training to suit?

 

[NotFallowfieldBlade]

Really rate that martyn waghorn , built like a brick shit house and scored 16 with 13 assiste last season in a pretty bad ipswich team, reckon hes gettable for a couple of mill , and hed deffo improve under the messiah.

Reckon thats the type of player we should be after

 

[Ricky]

We're in for Tammy Abraham.

ITK

 

[Cerberus Blade]

Something Wilder said in an interview the other week really intrigued me. He said that the club hadn't just looked at needing more goals, but had used match stats to identify what 'type of goals' we hadn't scored enough of, and that they would then look to sign a striker(s) to increase our goal output in that specific way.

I don’t mind what type of goals we score, I like em all (except own goals). The goals I like best though are “winning goals”.

 

[Cerberus Blade]

Really rate that martyn waghorn , built like a brick shit house and scored 16 with 13 assiste last season in a pretty bad ipswich team, reckon hes gettable for a couple of mill , and hed deffo improve under the messiah.

Reckon thats the type of player we should be after

Too old. Too expensive.

 

[Cerberus Blade]

We're in for Tammy Abraham.

ITK

Who’s she?

 

[snootyfenooty]

We put the ball in the right areas plenty of times, how many times did JOC, for example, head it over the bar?

Are you actually claiming Wilder and Knill aren’t capable of analysing our strengths and weaknesses and adapting training to suit?

It would appear that way to me, we were the lowest scorers in the Championship last year from set plays so it smacks of complacency to me that no improvements were apparent as the season progressed. JOC didn't get his head to many, five or six maybe, as the majority of the corners were cleared before they reached the near post. The ones he did connect with were floaters I could have put in which you're never going to get sufficient purchase on to worry the goalkeeper. Pretty pathetic if you ask me.

Where have you been by the way?

 

[BushBlade]

It would appear that way to me, we were the lowest scorers in the Championship last year from set plays so it smacks of complacency to me that no improvements were apparent as the season progressed. JOC didn't get his head to many, five or six maybe, as the majority of the corners were cleared before they reached the near post. The ones he did connect with were floaters I could have put in which you're never going to get sufficient purchase on to worry the goalkeeper. Pretty pathetic if you ask me.

Where have you been by the way?

I haven’t been anywhere. Just haven’t felt like posting as the end of the season was a bit of an anti climax and I had nothing to add to the tittle-tattle about McCabe and the Prince (tbf neither had most of the posters but it didn’t stop them )

 

[Pinchy]

You might want to look at Harrisblade 's post directly above yours. That was two of them. In one match.

A pinchybladeyboy mythbuster if you like.

Yes, I was there. I was also there for the vast majority of games where in we didn’t score from Woodward’s corners.

You could show a video of Lee Evans scoring two cracking volleys in one game. It wouldn’t demonstrate that we should strike the ball without bouncing more often.

The fact is, goals aren’t scored from corners very often; by any team.

 

[grafikhaus]

So, Matej Vydra (who took Derby's penaties) is on his way (to either Leeds or Galatasaray) for around £10m so Derby can 'balance the books'.
Lewis Grabban is on loan at Villa from Bournemouth but almost certainly won't be at Villa next season (financial reasons).
Bobby Reid (who took Bristol's penalties) is in 'advanced negotiations' with West Brom for a rumoured £7m.

Which leaves Leon - for my money our player of the season last year and massively underrated. He'll need help this season, but they're the kind of clubs and fees we're up against.

 

[sheffielder]

The solution to that is staring him in the face. Teach someone to take a corner kick.

Bare with me but I don't agree that is the issue with former kicks, It's how we set up for them. We need players to attack the front post more. Our routines are just shit

 

[Darthblade]

Bare with me but I don't agree that is the issue with former kicks, It's how we set up for them. We need players to attack the front post more. Our routines are just shit

And our corner deliveries hit the "front man" (defender) with alarming regularity ……..

UTB & FTP

 

[Dkc]

Amazing how crap our corners have been when you consider the inventiveness of our free kicks - although there aren't as many inventive options with corners

 

[Broomhall Blade]

He’s right though. Far too much fuss is made about corners. If any team depended on goals from that source they’d be relegated.

It’s a football fans’ myth. One of many.

I'm sure i read somewhere that we are the only country that get giddy when we get a corner.
Other countries just don't get as excited as we do when they get a corner.
I think it was some foreign player or manager that said it.

 

[Bladezz]

View attachment 40388
So, Matej Vydra (who took Derby's penaties) is on his way (to either Leeds or Galatasaray) for around £10m so Derby can 'balance the books'.
Lewis Grabban is on loan at Villa from Bournemouth but almost certainly won't be at Villa next season (financial reasons).
Bobby Reid (who took Bristol's penalties) is in 'advanced negotiations' with West Brom for a rumoured £7m.

Which leaves Leon - for my money our player of the season last year and massively underrated. He'll need help this season, but they're the kind of clubs and fees we're up against.

Good points made but we aren’t trying to buy one of the top performers from last season. The players even below Clarke will be 8m etc.

We need someone who has potential, who’s done it before recently / different option etc. I don’t think our main issue last season was the strikers (yes we need to improve there etc) but was goals from midfield / full backs / set plays.

Looking forward to this next season to really cement ourselves as a top 10 team.

 

[Bladezz]

Amazing how crap our corners have been when you consider the inventiveness of our free kicks - although there aren't as many inventive options with corners

We also don’t have many players 6ft 2+

 

[Beans]

Didn’t Vydra and Grabban both take penalties as well last season?
Don’t think Leon took any, which would make him joint top scorer for goals in open play.

Yep - Vydra, Grabban and Reid all took pens.

Vydra scored six, Grabban four, Reid three - take away pens and Leon was the top-scorer in the Championship.

 

[snootyfenooty]

View attachment 40388
So, Matej Vydra (who took Derby's penaties) is on his way (to either Leeds or Galatasaray) for around £10m so Derby can 'balance the books'.
Lewis Grabban is on loan at Villa from Bournemouth but almost certainly won't be at Villa next season (financial reasons).
Bobby Reid (who took Bristol's penalties) is in 'advanced negotiations' with West Brom for a rumoured £7m.

Which leaves Leon - for my money our player of the season last year and massively underrated. He'll need help this season, but they're the kind of clubs and fees we're up against.

Leon will do OK next season, as will Billy. We still need someone to step in when these two are misfiring. At their age it's ridiculous to expect them to turn it on every game and there will be periods when they are, well, lets say it as it is, shite. We need another decent striker to rotate with them and Brooks in there too to mix and match. What we need to avoid though is bringing in the dreaded "squad player", we've had enough of those recently. A bit of quality please CW instead of 2 or 3 so-so's.

 

[8lade]

Not enough info in the BBC 'stats', there were times when our strikers weren't getting shots away.

 

[sheffielder]

And our corner deliveries hit the "front man" (defender) with alarming regularity ……..

UTB & FTP

Then run across him!

 

[Keen Blade]

Oh those muscles in Woody's thighs !
The simple fact is that the players who take our corners don't have the strength to hit a dead ball as hard or the skill to aim it as accurately as Woody.
And he had a variety of deliveries , two examples shown in the clip.
Straight like an arrow at headable height.
Or hard over the first defenders & bending down into the 6 yard box.
Inswingers , outswingers , straight to John Tudor on the edge of the box , there were many.
Our corners either hit the first defenders or loop so slowly over they cause no trouble to defenders.

 

[snootyfenooty]

Oh those muscles in Woody's thighs !
The simple fact is that the players who take our corners don't have the strength to hit a dead ball as hard or the skill to aim it as accurately as Woody.
And he had a variety of deliveries , two examples shown in the clip.
Straight like an arrow at headable height.
Or hard over the first defenders & bending down into the 6 yard box.
Inswingers , outswingers , straight to John Tudor on the edge of the box , there were many.
Our corners either hit the first defenders or loop so slowly over they cause no trouble to defenders.

TC could take a mean one too. Those who say corners are fruitless are talking nonsense. In Woody's day I'd say 10+ goals per season would be no exaggeration.

 

[blade789]

You obviously never saw Alan Woodward play.

No mate but if you looked into corners taken v chances created / goals scored it will be less than 2%. Your only remembering the conversions.

 

[blade789]

TC could take a mean one too. Those who say corners are fruitless are talking nonsense. In Woody's day I'd say 10+ goals per season would be no exaggeration.

Read the book mate, stats don't lie. Corners are a waste of time. You will create more chances from short corners.

 

[snootyfenooty]

Read the book mate, stats don't lie. Corners are a waste of time. You will create more chances from short corners.

No need to, I just go on what I've seen with my own eyes.

 

[blade789]

No need to, I just go on what I've seen with my own eyes.

Exactly......

 

[Nick Jansky]

TC could take a mean one too. Those who say corners are fruitless are talking nonsense. In Woody's day I'd say 10+ goals per season would be no exaggeration.

In those days the quality of defending corners was much poorer than today.

 

[snootyfenooty]

In those days the quality of defending corners was much poorer than today.

You could also turn that one around and say the quality of the corners is much poorer today. I can't say I've seen anyone emulating Woody in recent years - at any level.

 

[northsomersetblade]

We're in for Tammy Abraham.

ITK

Unproven at this level. It's a no from me