No end product

[tm4tj]

We have some neat and tidy players but I am concerned about the lack of an end product.

Nick Ross has been winning MotM awards as if they were going out of fashion, yet for me all too often he flatters to deceive. He did reasonably well again yesterday, but once more never looked like scoring. I know I know, but Cerny fumbled the shot, it was hit pretty limply adjacent to him, similar to his next attempt, and the third is not worth discussing.

Rooney is not a natural scorer. Yes he can score, but he does not score with applomb, usually shoot on site stuff, hit or miss, no finesse about him around the box. Lack of goals recently has seen him and us struggle.

Eric has lost the plot. Out of touch I'm afraid and a shadow of the player he promised to be.

Dani is one of the success stories I believe. He can spot a run and pick a pass and has the ability to drift forward effortlessly.

Foran looks to be running on empty, whats wrong with him.

Jonny coming back is the one shining light, but if the rest of the guys round about him keep playing like this then there is trouble brewing.

Should we be happy at this lack of quality, or do we shut up and put up with it?

[+Gringo]

There's a clich? that 'one player doesn't make a team' but I feel in our case it could be a fact that it does. We haven't won a league match since Johnny Hayes got injured and we struggled to beat a third division side in the cup without him. We definitely need pacey striker with an eye for goal or even another 'in form' Wyness, Bingham, Richie or Stewart. For me Foran hasn't hit the net often enough and Rooney seems dependant on service rather than him creating things for himself in the box.

[caley100]

A lot of searching questions mannie, not a lot of answers available though - the return of the wee spud might just give us the spark we need to get back on winning ways!

One thing that we mentioned yesterday was that we are not getting any wee ' breaks ' or bits of luck, i certainly would like us to be a bit cuter around the box, other teams seem to get away with dives and fouling off the ball.

As for players, i agree with you that we lack quality in depth, and thats the managers remit to rectify, will we see any new players in Jan?

I dont think Nick will turn into a regular goalscorer - untill he gets a bit of meat on those spindly legs he's never going to beat a keeper from outside the box, and i hope Butch does'nt think about using Shane as a replacement for Rooney.

So.. bring on the Dons, we've got Johnny back.

Edited January 23, 2011 by caley100

[AJS]

Would agree with Manny on pritty much everything he says.

The problem is Hayes is the only creative player we have in the middle of the park. Foran is a striker playing left wing, though strangely it works at times. Duncan and Cox are defensive midfielders as is Duff. While they can do simple stuff most times when it comes to craft and vision for carving out attacks they struggle. Especially when we are up against it.

Sanchez so far has impressed me but he is a striker.

I think we are in need of new players, that is what i want and it is what i think will make a difference. An attacking centre mid, another forward of some sort, some new defenders are needed but i think we have just about enough there just now.

From what i could see yesterday, Rooney's mind just was anywhere but the game. He has had long enough to make up his mind and it is about time he let us know what his intentions are as i don't think this is helping the squad either

[Scarlet Pimple]

[old caley girl]

Agree with what has been said above. However I feel there is a real lack of confidence in front of goal lately and if we could just get past this and start banging in a few again I think things would improve.

[SanMiguel]

Eric has lost the plot. Out of touch I'm afraid and a shadow of the player he promised to be.

A tad harh. Were you at Ibrox? He was arguably our best player that night. Inconsistant maybe but not lost the plot.

[old caley girl]

Eric seems to play better away from home and this is back to the confidence thing imo. A lot of folk were getting on his back on saturday in the north stand. (esp that guy at the back of section e behind me that seems to find no good in any of our players! even shouted at Ryan Esson for failing to save the penalty!)This wont help his home performance at all.

[BIGTAMS]

Eric is all right as a sub-end off.

[Bombabim]

no idea where he is in the recovery process but is gillet gonna fit back in when he comes back??

shinnie has done really well and doesn't deserve to be dropped. gillet was pretty good going forward from what i remember. could he make a good left wing? help out with some direct attacking and creativity?

[dead_ball_specialist]

When the penalty kicks dry up, so do Rooneys goals.

[TheKnowledge]

Eric has lost the plot. Out of touch I'm afraid and a shadow of the player he promised to be.

A tad harh. Were you at Ibrox? He was arguably our best player that night. Inconsistant maybe but not lost the plot.

Whats harh?

[TheKnowledge]

Eric seems to play better away from home and this is back to the confidence thing imo. A lot of folk were getting on his back on saturday in the north stand. (esp that guy at the back of section e behind me that seems to find no good in any of our players! even shouted at Ryan Esson for failing to save the penalty!)This wont help his home performance at all.

There are some beauties at the dump. There are to many guys at our home games with small bits and unsuccessful home lives.

[TopSix]

I thought Eric played superbly at Ibrox. We could have easily taken something from that game had it not been for MacGregor. TCS playing area is too big. The manager has worked wonders with a tiny budget and small squad (in comparison to other SPL clubs).

[CaleyD]

Interesting that you make the point about budgets......the SPL has the largest gap between the average wage of the best paid team and the average wage of the worst paid team in any single league in the world.

The EPL has a ratio of something like 7 to 1 across a 20 team spread - The SPL has a ratio of around 31.5 to 1 across a 12 team spread. Basically in the EPL, for every ?1 earned by the lowest paying team, the highest paying team are getting ?7, in the SPL it's ?1 at the low end and ?31 at the high end.

The next largest gap in wages in a single league is Serie A which is about 15.5 to 1......so the SPL are a longggg way out of touch with the rest of the sporting world. Hardly surprising then that we have a duopoly, but it is quite amazing that we come anywhere close to being able to compete with teams who's budgets are 10, 20, 30 times more than ours.

[TopSix]

Quite incredible stats Don, but sadly not really surprising. Consider where we were when we were coming up through the leagues under Pele and the blue huns had gazza, laudrup and Flo on their books. I wonder what the ratio would have been then... (TV money aside). Just shows the incredible job the gaffer is doing.

Edited January 25, 2011 by Top Six Next Year