Someone To Blame?

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Nonsense from start to finish there.

Yes Crouch is limited but half of VdV's goals last year came from Crouch assists in one way or another.

All of our strikers are limited but at least with Crouch there's a chance that he can link up with the midfielders. Defoe and Pav wouldn't know link up play if it poked them up the chuff.

I hope we replace all four because none of them are good enough for where we want to be. But Crouch is easily our best option of the four at the moment.

Crouch had 7 assists last year, just 3 more than Pav with 4. However Pav scored at a goal every 156 minutes, one of the best strike rates in the league and a better return than Crouch managed even if you combine his assists with his goals. Meanwhile VdV got 8 assists and 13 goals. However his productivity per a minute on the pitch (in terms of goals and assists at least) at one every 106 minutes is only a smigeon better than Pav's 111. On goals by themselves Pav's is far superior.

Peter Crouch by comparison is nowhere.

This myth that Crouch was the great provider for VdV was just that, a myth.

Not saying that Pav isn't an annoying, lazy, often wasteful fucker, but he's still head, shoulders, waist and knees above Peter "can't-shoot-can't-head-can't-control" Crouch.

That's even without taking into account how poorly Peter's mere presence encourages the team to play.

About all you can say in Peter's favour is he's good in Europe and for defending the point of the six yard box at corners. He's also quite useful in a wall.

http://www.spurscommunity.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=76516

I think the shambles he is talking about is the fact we have had a real chance to establish ourselves in the top 4 and would have probably been in CL again this season if only we had managed to get a decent striker in last Summer/January

Here we are now in August and still no sign of one.

Smug is good but only if you are really looking at the really BIG picture

What did we earn from CL last season, £40m

Sort of worth pay the extra wages to be there again, No?

I think we tried to get in a striker, both last summer and in January. By Harry's own admission he turned down the chance to sign Suarez in January. We do have a budget however and that cannot be based on a single year's qualification for the CL. Indeed that revenue should be more properly spread over five years. Done otherwise and you risk doing a Leeds Utd.

Stoof, bigger picture? If we don't get a striker in now (a good 3 windows at least after we probably should have), then we're pretty much fucked for the CL spots unless by some miracle some of them manage to hit any kind of form. The failure of the last 2 windows cost us CL, another failure will see us risk losing our best players and ultimately the longer term future of the club.

When has Harry ever had a problem with signing players during his career on far more limited budgets than ours? Our fannying about in the transfer market was happening long before he was around and DL is a constant. Are we going to be running about in January again like some fucking desperados? The time is now and this is bigger picture, especially with Liverpool and Citeh strengthening, unless you want a swift return to the dark days of the 90's and yes, I was there.

Big picture is, get someone in now to convert the chances or watch the nucleus of a very talented squad disintegrate IMO.

We have to try hard to get a striker in and I for one will be very disappointed if we don't. It's not all over in those circumstances though. We are capable of playing much better than we did for large parts of last season, it's consistency that we're missing, if we can find that and one of current strikers finds his scoring boots then we can easily challenge this year imo, even with no summer additions.

On your Harry point, I'm afraid we're suffering from his squandering of £40m plus cash over the previous windows, on ageing or inconsistent players on high wages. Keane was a waste of money (and he was at the time too, he did not save us from relegation as some revisionists would have you believe), Crouch should never have been bought. Defoe was sold to Portsmouth for a reason, why did we get him back?

You're quite correct Harry's never had a problem spending cash on players, however he bankrupted Portsmouth (or at least his chairman let him), he relegated Southampton and apart from the FA Cup has never won an effing thing in over three decades of management.

At the tail end of our 3rd window looking for this elusive striker, if no one's at fault then why hasn't someone been identified and signed at least a year later? Defoe's package was supposedly closer to £19m not counting debts and clauses etc. owed by Pompey. Vucinic just went for €15m, we're not talking Lionel Kaka Roonaldinho here, someone better than what we have. You'd think after so long knowing what we needed we'd have had a decent list of ATTAINABLE targets by now and should have already made noises to bringing someone in, anyone to freshen up the competition IMO.



Yes the market's tough, and it will get tougher as the richer clubs spend, and it's only a matter of time before the gap gets bigger and they start throwing their wedge towards our players, who will want CL football and massive wages which due to our failure, we won't be able to offer them.

I'm not talking Yakubu, but if a few respected people are to be believed, Rossi would have been here and all last season if it wasn't for DL. There's middle ground out there and it's someone's fucking fault that they haven't been identified and the wheels put in motion.

As for this "Top top" club business, we were last season and we're going to falter if we don't act now, back down to the realms of mediocrity. This window is crucial and someone is to blame...time is running out and yes, it's grating on me, I feel with good reason.

Vucinic wanted to go to Juventus, a far bigger club than we. By all accounts we agreed a fee with Roma but the player didn't want to come.

On the Rossi thing the account you refer to is clearly fabricated. Anyone with a grain of sense can see that. Can you see it?

We're a wealthy club, but relative to those already incumbent at the top-table we're not. We can neither promise glory, nor massive wages, we're not famous, glamorous or successful. This makes it hard to attract top players and yet we've managed to sign the likes of VdV, Bale and Modric. It's not impossible, but we should accept that it's hard and that relative to our peers, the Everton's, Newcastle's, Leeds Utd's and Villa's of this world we've done and continue to do fucking well. We're already punching far above our weight and that primarily is down to Levy's astute stewardship.

Here is a quick list of players that I think are better/more suitable than what we have;

Zomora
Odemwingie (sp?)
Cole
Doyle
Gyan

Zamora was injured last summer and only played 760 mins last year in total, that's 8.4 matches. I'd be more than happy if we signed him this year however.

Cole has injury and attitude problems. He scored 5 goals and 2 assists in 2115 minutes of play last season, that's a goal or an assist every 302 minutes worse than Crouch's already poor record.

Doyle scored five goals (two of which were pens) and 4 assists last season in 2188 mins, a poor return.

Gyan only got 3 assists, but did contribute 10 goals, his minutes per goal however was much worse than Pavs, as were his mins per an assist and combined he was nowhere near.

Have always found it odd that people blame Crouch when it's the other player's that should be blamed for long ball to him.

Just because Crouch is tall doesn't mean the ball should be played to him at head height.

Crouch can't run the channels, he can't take the ball with back to goal and turn around, he can't in fact do anything except be quite tall very well at all. Being quite tall does at least mean he manages to glance the odd header which if a clever player can guess where it's going to go can very occasionally be taken advantage of.