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Gingerpele

Hooper?

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Anyone have any idea why Hooper has lost his scoring ability?
From how I remember it, after his flukey goal against Fulham he then had another decent chance, pretty certain it was a one on one which he then missed. And he''s been pretty poor in front of goal since then.
We''ve scored only five goals in our ten games since that Fulham game. Think he''s started nine of them, eight maybe. And he''s had some very good chances, three one on ones spring immediately to mind. And a few other chances/half chances. How can one missed one on one effect a strikers confidence so much? Because to me thats the only explanation for his poor finishing since then.
We desperately need him or RVW to score against Stoke, preferably a couple. Or one each. I still think we''ll stay up, just about anyway but if one of our strikers doesn''t chip in with a few goals in the next few games it''s going to be very very nerve wracking.

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I have long been aware of the fact that Hooper who was on fire has suddenly become anonymous, almost.

I was also horrified by the stat that our strikers have scored something like 6 goals, and he got 5 of them. I can''t understand why the strikers in question can''t get their heads together and just sort it out. Chance after chance wasted (or not even forthcoming) and we can''t afford that with vital must-win games coming up. The only way we will stay up is if the strikers hit some form. We can''t rely on Snodgrass, who seems to be the only player we have who can put the ball in the net.

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I think you''ll find Hooper hasn''t lost his ability to score, it''s the shambles of a Midfield we''ve took in that can''t read Hoopers or RVW''s game.

I''ve seen Hooper & RVW run in to so many decent areas only to get ignored by our gutless, no idea waste of space midfielders, who think passing to our wingers on every given chance is going open up space and TBH with Redmond on the ball that''s a non-starter straight away.

We''ve also got a keeper in Ruddy who I honestly believe is useless and not worthy of an England shirt, Bradley Johnson not worthy of a norwich shirt, Leroy fer would prefer to put his feet up, Martin quite clueless at times, Bassong ''we''ll retire please you''re hopeless.

Howson good player on his day.

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White Stuff, i used to believe that, but did you see the West Ham game? Hooper had a hatful of chances and took none of them before West Ham stole the game from us.

As for your criticism of Ruddy, I find it laughable! You have taken the criticism way too far. Isn''t he on 11 odd clean sheets this season or something? The saves he pulled off versus Newcastle, Spurs and Man City helped us to some valuable points.

All our players have on and off days, like I said before, I understand sometimes the criticism Bassong sometimes gets but we''d badly miss him if he left. Some games even the best strikers in the world can''t get by him, hardly hopeless.

Martin clueless at times in the premiership, i''ll take that considering he cost us like 5k. I do agree we could do with a step up from him eventually though if we''re to grow in stature.

Johnson I agreed with until a few games where he played well recently, but he''s not helped himself with another poor display versus Villa but again, for someone we got for free, he''s been a great buy and can fill in anywhere in centre mid. When all our players are fit, he''ll not be in the side.

Fer had looked better after a recent rest and it''s another big blow for us him being injured. I only hope he will be back in a week at most.

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Strikers seem more subject to confidence and self-belief than other team members, and form can improve and deteriorate very quickly, depending on circumstance and current performance.

This is true of both RvW and Hooper. You would hope that, with two good,experienced strikers, if one is off form the other will come good. For some reason this isn''t happening. Against Premiership goalkeepers and defenders margins are very small.

There is no easy solution. We have to keep hoping that non-strikers can make up the difference to some extent, as they have been doing recently, and that the strikers begin to recover and transfer to the pitch what they clearly show in training, according to colleagues.

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It surely is no coincidence that strikers who have regularly scored in the past can no longer score at a decent rate. The same goes for our midfield. How many goals have they contributed this season? A drop in form affects players at different times but all of our players seem to be suffering. This is, I am afraid, down to the tactics we employ. Why are we not scoring .......... inverted wingers does not help!

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Because we have an ineffective Management coaching set up it was inevitable that eventually the build up of criticising players would begin.

Wait until these coaches are kicked out, see what the replacements do, then take a look at our players.

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Having Redmond as a supplier of chances does not help , that lad wastes more good positions around the box with crap crosses or poor shots than anybody i can remember .

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If we had someone say RVP up front he wouldn''t be scoring much more. Our strikers don''t miss that many chances because we don''t create that many chances and that''s been the problem all season. Just lately we have been creating a few more chances than normal but Hooper has got a great understanding with Hoolahan so the more Wes plays with Hooper the better as he will start scoring regularly again if given the service.

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[quote user="White stuff"]I think you''ll find Hooper hasn''t lost his ability to score, it''s the shambles of a Midfield we''ve took in that can''t read Hoopers or RVW''s game. [/quote]
I agree to an extent.
But Hooper has missed about half a dozen very good chances in his recent goal drought.
West Ham for example, had a great chance pretty much one on one (defender was close to him, but Hooper had him beaten) and he hit it at the GK near post, rather than across goal. I saw a lot of complaining about a one on one he made the wrong decision about against Villa. He missed one against Fulham, Man.U and then either Everton or Palace. Has had a few other half chances he''s done nothing with. Stopped shooting from range. Oh and against Man.C he has a fabulous chance to get the winner.
He''s had chances. Not loads and loads, but he''s had some very decent chances to score goals in the last nine games. And he''s failed too.
So have other players, not just him. But we have actually created quite a few very decent chances in recent games.

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Why do we never get them tap ins or rebounds with an open net or many penalties? That''s what these guys need to start them off.

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Was talking to my Grandad and he was making the point how ironic it was Bassong scored an own goal from a similar position to the balls played in to RVW and Tettey in recent games we''ve failed to score from.
I think there are quite a few factors as to why we aren''t scoring. In no real order;
Luck (no own goals, lucky deflections, lucky penalties since Fulham Hooper goal and West Ham Hooper penalty)
Poor finishing (see point on Hooper one on ones earlier in thread, and Tettey/RVW misses)
Slow build up play.
Lack of confidence.
No goals from Bassong or Turner. Or Martin for that matter. (Following on from this point, no real tactic from set pieces, last season we had the Bassong sneaking in from back post, or Johnson flick on near post)

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I''m not big on stats lbut I see a lot of posters are, I would however like to see stats for the number of chances he got in the SPL and the number he converted, compared to chances and convertion rate playing for us. It may be as simple as he was playing for a dominant team in Celtic, had loads of chances and scored a few of them. Chances are harder to come by in the EPL, so less opportunities and coupled with that a drop in confidence due to lack of goals which makes it even harder to score.

Can''t remember which game it was but I remember he had a cracking chance and hit it near side when he should have gone far post, basic stuff for a striker.

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That was probably the West Ham game Vanwick.
But as I said, for me it goes back to the Fulham game on boxing day. He got the lucky deflection to score. Then missed a one on one to put us two up (possibly two one up, not 100% sure on that). And since then the chances he has had, even very good one on one chances he''s fluffed.
We really need him, or Ricky or even Hoolahan to put a run of goals together.

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Players who are yet to score:

Ruddy

Bunn

Martin

Turner

Bassong

Olsson

Garrido

Murphy

Bennett

Elmander

Becchio

And some significant others with only one i.e. Bennett R, Hoolahan, Whittaker.

There are good reasons why some have not scored e.g. Ruddy and Bunn. But the goal threat from our defenders is woeful last season they yeilded about 10.

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Whoever we have up front under Hughton we have struggled to score.

Of his 66 league games at the helm we''ve scored over a goal in only THIRTEEN of them!!!

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He''s got a good finish and links up well. But he never seems to be in the right place when the ball is played in. Whether that''s down to a lack of positional sense or poor quality from our midfielders I don''t know. Imo he''s still the best striker we''ve had playing for us in the Premiership, I reckon he''d have had no trouble equaling Holts record in Lamberts team. But I also think 5 million was about the right price for him, which is peanuts in this league really. He should be good for 8-12 goals a season which is great for a team in our position.

If RVW had performed as expected this year and looked a (valued at) £15 ish million striker this season could have been so much different. We''ve been utterly pathetic in some games but if we''d had an in form striker during Cardiff/Man City/Newcastle etc we could be sitting mid table easy

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But RVW isn''t a £15 million striker! Let''s be fair, if you don''t splash 8 figure sums out on strikers then you really are taking a gamble. For every Benteke and Michu there''s a Helenius, Cornelius, Van Wolfswinkel, Mitroglou, Anichebe... They look low on confidence, sure. But perhaps it''s more an issue of the Premier League being both too fast and physical for them to do what they want. The pressure is certainly on them to put every chance away, especially with the relatively few chances they get here. Maybe they just don''t have the mental fortitude to deal with that? I don''t know. But I have to say, on Hooper, with the exception of a couple of nice runs in behind the defence he has looked poor in the last two games. In all honesty I think we have probably expected too much from the pair of them.

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[quote user="Gingerpele"][quote user="White stuff"]I think you''ll find Hooper hasn''t lost his ability to score, it''s the shambles of a Midfield we''ve took in that can''t read Hoopers or RVW''s game. [/quote]
I agree to an extent.
But Hooper has missed about half a dozen very good chances in his recent goal drought.
West Ham for example, had a great chance pretty much one on one (defender was close to him, but Hooper had him beaten) and he hit it at the GK near post, rather than across goal. I saw a lot of complaining about a one on one he made the wrong decision about against Villa. He missed one against Fulham, Man.U and then either Everton or Palace. Has had a few other half chances he''s done nothing with. Stopped shooting from range. Oh and against Man.C he has a fabulous chance to get the winner.
He''s had chances. Not loads and loads, but he''s had some very decent chances to score goals in the last nine games. And he''s failed too.
So have other players, not just him. But we have actually created quite a few very decent chances in recent games.
[/quote]The strikers do also need to learn to work with the players providing the ball and learn to "read" their game as well. In the Tottenham home game recently when Russel Martin had the ball on the half way line RVW made a run behind the centre back on the edge of the box meaning there were two Tottenham players and 30 yards between Martin and himself. Unfortunately as much as I''m sure that RVW''s run was very clever it''s slightly unrealistic to expect our ex-Peterborough reserve to be able to pick that pass out in the box from the half way line whether he read the run or not. The sensible option may have been to have dropped back and received the ball to feet.Overall it seems to be a general inability for the team as a whole to create good attacking moves and opportunities and the three ex-defender management team is the likely culprits for this rather than the fault of Holt, Kamara, Becchio, Morrison, Martin, Vaughan, Kane, Hooper, Wolfswinkel and Elmander all mysteriously losing form the day they pull on a Norwich shirt or in Holt''s case that Hughton became manager.

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There''s a lot being made of Hoopers meagre 5 goals. So how does that compare with the top scorers from the club''s around us? Hull, Stoke, Swansea, Palace, WBA? I can think of Bony who''s obviously done better but is he the exception or the norm amongst these clubs?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hooper is about where I expected him to be. Clearly a decent striker, but I thought he was only ever going to be a 5-10 goal a season striker in the prem, either a back up to a quality striker, or one of three or four players who get a similar amount. If he was going to get you any more than that, he would have been in the prem a lot sooner.

So he''s keeping his end of the bargain as such, unfortunately nobody else is playing along!

As an aside, he has got an impressive scoring record at all the clubs he''s been at (albeit a lower standard than now); but I seem to remember that he had a storming start to last season with Celtic and then went off the boil towards the end. Anyone know if that''s a recurring theme?

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