Ricky Van Wolfswinkel - Predicted to be a flop!

[lake district canary 4,531]

[quote user="Its Character Forming"][quote user="The Great Mass Debater"]

I think the majority of fans still feel that there is a great striker lurking somewhere within RvW but this season has been hugely damaging for his reputation. I still maintain that if you buy a prize orchid then give it to a 5 year old who doesnt water it, you dont conclude that there is something wrong with the species of plant. RvW has been badly misused this season. The question is, was he the kind of player we should have been buying. It seems that if you need a Grant Holt, you buy a Grant Holt, or you change the system so it needs an RvW. What you dont do is put a RvW in a team that needs a Grant Holt and expect things to all work out. There was always a feeling that Hughton never really had a plan on how we were supposed to score and kind of hoped that if he threw enough money at the problem, the stikers could just sort out scoring themselves

[/quote]

This is spot on and the most annoying thing is that Hughton spent a club record sum on him.  When will we next be able to spend £8.5m on on one player ?    Clearly having spent that money on him, plus another £5m on another poacher-type striker in Hooper, it was crazy that Hughton didn''t rebuild the team to service poacher-type strikers, but he didn''t.  As you say, he kept on playing as if we had Holt up front, why on earth didn''t we spend a few million on a quality player in the Holt mould instead ?   Makes me really angry now....[/quote]

The problem has been the same since Hughton arrived - the midfield not providing enough. 

The only time when RVW might have scored was that WBA away match where Fer showed the quality we needed - but Hooper was the man on the pitch in possession.   But Fer has had a mixed season - and he will look better in a better team imo.   The midfield and wide players haven''t been good enough as a unit.  As a result chances have been few and far between - and when the chances did start coming, the forwards had lost some confidence.   Injuries didn''t help this season, but whatever, the quality hasn''t been there often enough.   I still think that with renewed impetus of a new season, whichever division it is, RVW - and Hooper -  will score goals - but they need service.

[ron obvious 1,502]

As usual it''s a combination of factors. Hughton didn''t get the creative classy players he wanted to "feed the wolf", & the one he did sign (Fer) just didn''t seem to gel with RvW. Our existing players seem to be on a different planet to him.

I don''t think EB getting injured helped either - nor did the infamous toegate, which also hindered any burgeoning understanding.

Having said all that I''m not convinced he would ever have really cracked it; he looks like a poor man''s Torres to me. Any decent PL striker has to be strong, physically & mentally, & I''ve seen no signs of either attribute in him.

[It's Character Forming 1,160]

Yes, the more I think about it, the more I agree that Hughton has bought Hooper, RVW and indeed Elmander because they look like quality strikers (Elmander plays for Sweden etc etc) and you can just stick them up front and goals will magically result.

 

I guess the difficulty is that the Holt type role, one-up front battling against Prem CBs, is not a great deal of fun to play - even Holt had enough after a season of playing for Hughton and wanted to move.

[Yellow Wal 314]

The Great Mass Debater wrote the following post at 06/05/2014 3:47 PM:

Should he have picked one of either Hooper or RvW and then spent the remainder on a Holt type player or a Quagliarella type player? Why spend the bulk of our transfer budget on two players unlikely to be on the pitch at the same time. Its almost like Hughton said, ''Hmmm, my system really keeps the goals from going in, but we cant score any ourselves. Hmmm, 14m - job done, we''ll always have a good striker up fron now whicheve one plays, theyll get me plenty of goals, almost by default leaving me to focus on the defence.;

All season we''ve lamented the lack of a number 10 in the Quagliarella mould to link up the midfield and the attack. But looking back on the way we''ve played this season, I dont think that would have solved the problem. A Quagliarella is probably what you need if you''re planning to be on an equal footing as your opposition or dominating possession, or even planning to counter attack with pace. Hughtons teams were always set up to defend deep with lots of positional discipline and no creative freedom. In this kind of set up you need a bully up front to win you fouls, hold the ball up, gain terriory and provid an outlet so your team can get up the pitch. This is the player we have missed all season, not a Quagliarella type.

Not replacing Holt like-for-like having decided to move him on is probably Hughtons biggest mistake, and maybe reveals that perhaps he didnt really ''get'' strikers

But not even a Holt type player would have been the answer in the system that Hughton played.

All of our attacking intent has been about two inverted wingers who come inside and shoot when they can. Snodgrass has benefited by this picking up goals. Redmond benefited in August against Southampton but since then his shooting has been very wayward,

Not only has this attacking system denied the strikers much room in the penalty area, because opposing full backs were dragged in there as well as centre backs, it also denied Fer or any other midfielder the chance of playing any constructive through balls because there was no space to make the passes. They were always running in to traffic.

Add to this the moment the wide players came inside and tried to put a cross in that it would always be with the ''wrong'' foot and as such aimed at the heart of the opposition defence and the large centre backs that RvW and Hooper were up against.

The strikers we have would love balls put in behind the defence to exploit the space created by such moves, sadly they have had too few of those balls this season.

I am not surprised Grant Holt wanted out. His goal tally halved under Hughton.

I have no problem with Snodgrass as a player but I have a problem with the way he has played, or more especially been asked to play, this season. I feel that his play from the right wing will help very few forwards. He slows the game down, shows a preference for his left foot, delivers lazy crosses to the most difficult areas for forwards to benefit from and, because of the way the team was set up, has become greedy in as far as trying to score rather than trying to provide.

The man can play football. Gordon Strachan has seen this and has played him centrally and he has been rewarded for his efforts for Scotland. But for Norwich he has been a big part of a system that has not, will not and does not work.

Ask RvW, Hooper and Fer.