TWar

Adams barely started in his first season, goals per game Broja is below Adams, Ings every season, and Obafemi.

I paid attention to it, I even responded. The idea that Broja is being nullified because he is our biggest threat is nonsense, he is not our biggest threat in terms of goals or assists. Yeah players have learned to play against him, because he is one dimensional and they have figured him out.

I am discussing Broja on a thread called Armando Broja, what's the issue with this? If you don't want to see discussions of Broja don't come to the thread named after him.

As an individual he has scored 6 goals in 28 games, and 2 in four months. Simple as that. I don't know what is causing confusion.

I don't understand the second sentence at all. Broja is our biggest issue right now. The player who should be our primary goal scorer on 6 goals for the season is relegation level. 2 goals from 4 months is worst starting forward in the league level. Many players in our side have struggled, Bednarek has been a big issue too as has Salisu, but none are underperforming like Broja is.

As an individual player he is a 6 goals in 28 games striker ie. relegation level. Your defence, if I'm not wrong, is "he is young". My point is, him being young doesn't change his quality. It changes his promise, somewhat, but we don't care about his promise as he isn't our player. His quality right now isn't good enough. I think we'd be fine in europe, incidentally, we'd just give youngsters a game against the weaklings in the group stages and then try and focus on the knock outs when we inevitably hit mid table mediocrity in the second half of the season.

Yeah I think so. A club isn't just as good as their best players, there will always be a mix of Salahs and Hendersons, Sakas and Xhakas, Ronaldos and Maguires. The players I mentioned are definitely in the bottom half of players at their respective clubs but they all have teammates who are worse. JWP would start ahead of all of them imo and would improve all those top 6 sides, which makes him top 6 quality for me.

I'm not saying there is an easy option, all our strikers have been pretty poor. When I say "we need strikers who can score", I say this with the fact we have 5 games left and then a nice long transfer window. That's why I think we need to forget about Broja, write him and Armstrong off as poor signings for the purpose of replacing Ings (neither has got anywhere near his total last season) and try again in the window. Armstrong can stay as a bench option we can hopefully develop and we can use our new budget with new owners to pick up a striker who is good rather than one who is just good for a 20 year old. But lets stop pretending that Broja isn't a massive part of why we haven't kicked on when he has scored the same amount of league goals in 2022 as Bednarek.

I'm not switching the argument. As an individual player he hasn't been good enough for a premier league side. There isn't a single team in the league who doesn't have a player who has outscored him. He isn't good enough, 6 league goals isn't good enough, 2 since boxing day isn't good enough, 0 league assists all season isn't good enough. Saying "it's pretty good for a young lad" is like saying "it's pretty good for a lad with ginger hair", his age means nothing to us. There is no rule saying we need to play a 20 year old forward, we don't gain anything from his development, and we won't earn extra points from having a younger average age. All he is to us is a 6 goal striker for a team that otherwise could be pushing top half or europe. We are two points off 9th and 13 points off europe. One more win would have us top half, three wins and a draw would have us in europe. You have to think if we had a 10-15 goal forward rather than a 6 goal forward that would be very acheivable.

He obviously isn't KdB quality, but if you compare him to the likes of Henderson at Liverpool, Xhaka at Arsenal, Hojbjerg at spurs, Fred at united, etc. then he creates a tonne more, has more progressive passes, and contributes more ball progression than all of them. These are who he'd be competing with as they play his position more than KdB and Mount for example. Also KdB is probably the second best player in the league, maybe third behind VvD, he obviously isn't anywhere near that.

The issue is people keep pointing out he's young as if this means anything to us. He isn't our player, we have him here for one season most likely. Why should we care if he is young? If he comes good then Chelsea make a profit. We need players who can score goals and win for us now or players we can develop for our own benefit. He is neither. He is clearly not good enough now for our ambitions, with 6 goals and 2 since boxing day, and playing him into form does nothing for us except doing a massive favour for Chelsea. Not good enough, shouldn't be starting for a premier league side on his current level and as to the question of whether he will get good or not in coming years, who cares? It is unlikely to be with us anyway. Watford were dropping the likes of Dennis in recent weeks who has scored more goals and they are a relegation side. Shouldn't be anywhere near our starting 11 with his current output, I don't care if he is 16 or 60, we need strikers who can score.

Agreed. Djenepo can beat a man but has no end product. That's been his problem since day 1 and has never been solved. His dribbling numbers are still good, arguably better than when he joined, but he just can't pass or shoot so he needs to be binned. Ralph has benched him for good reason for more reliable players. Livramento ran past people a lot when he first joined which was really helpful but occassionally we'd lose the ball and we'd be a bit stuck. Now he runs past people less but when he does it is less risky.

Here is a list of premier league leaders in chances created I would suggest the read of "isn't creative at all" is wide of the mark.

Interesting topic. Agree with a lot of this although maybe slightly more positive: Top 6 quality: JWP, KWP Top half quality: Livramento, Romeu, Stu Top 6 on their day but inconsistent: Romeu, Salisu Top half on their day but inconsistent: Che, Forster Lower Midtable players who have the occassional top half game: Redmond, Elyounoussi, Valery Unproven players who could potentially benefit from a run in the side: Tella, Adam Armstrong, Small, Diallo, Smallbone Relegation fighting level: Bednarek, Lyanco, Stephens, Djenepo, Long, Macca Championship level no hopers Walcott, Cabellero Conclusion Decent squad to finish 10th-14th but big gaps in incredibly important positions. Lacking quality at striker, CB, and GK which are amongst the most important positions to be strong at. With the current squad Ralph is performing slightly above par, but the quality of this squad is basically down to Ralph as I remember how good the likes of JWP were pre-Ralph.

Essential: Striker CB 10 Highly desired GK CM Would be good if left over budget Another 10 Another CB Perfect (and impossible tbh) window would be players like Taiwo Awoniyi, Caleta-Car, De Frutos, Sangare, and Henderson. Cheaper options would be something like Joel Piroe, Anjorin, Worrall (if Forest don't come up), Matt Grimes, Johnstone, and previously unknown youth players from bigger sides. Be cool to see us have a look somewhere in between these two.

He had a good month or two, and it just happened to be early on. Lots of people have said he is "proven" to be good because of it, but before us he was bang average in the dutch league and he's been bang average in this league for a good while. Maybe the good spell was the exception and his long spell of mediocrity is the norm.

You can't go round saying "Ralph has been average" after predicting our finish as 20th. When DMan stops doing it, I'll stop pointing out the obvious contradiction.

I'm criticising Broja in a game where Broja was bad, I don't care what DMan says, that should be fine. Any posts since then have been responses to others.

I have already admitted I overrated AA, would be interesting to see some of the "he's worth £60m", "he's better than Lukaku", "he is CL quality", "best young player since Gascoigne" peoples view now he has been so average for so long.

Then clearly he hasn't done the bare minimum and has outperformed your expectations considerably

Ralph has done the bare minimum yet you thought we were going to finish 20th? That doesn't make sense...

Since when are we not allowed to criticise one of our players after a loss when they did fuck all? If it seems like I do it a lot maybe he does fuck all a lot.

Yeah, he's dipped like crazy since then. Now I think £15m is too much.

At this stage he's not Tella, he's not Redmond. We have multiple players I'm convinced if they had started almost every game since boxing day would come away with more than two goals. Hell Long has the same number of goals as him in the league since mid Jan.

Turkish, DMan, Sarisbury saint. Two of which said he's a great player, miles above us, who is just dipping in form because he is so far above us that he doesn't want to try. As for the rest of posters, yeah people seem to be in a consensus that he is in bad form but I swear only like 1 or 2 posters even mention him in these post loss discussions. As if having a striker that has scored 2 goals since Boxing day isn't holding us back. I have no idea why, people weren't like it for Ings, Pelle, Mane, etc. Are we just being nice because he's young, because being young doesn't win us points. Adam Armstrong failed to score in one match against City and people were lining up to call him shit. Broja doesn't manage against Watford, Newcastle, Villa, Burnley, and many other mediocre teams in the last month or two and people don't say shit, whats going on?