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On 05/11/2019 at 11:33, Lythamowl said:

 

very true mate....for me it was our first out and out 'proper' striker since hirsty and in true wednesday fashion fizzled out into a pile of poo.....:rolleyes:

Could never understand signing him, at the time his form was dismal and he couldn't get into an average Middlesbrough team, a panic buy made by the inept recruitment team and encouraged by many on here. 

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7 minutes ago, A12owl said:

Not sure which is best for a low confidence player.....

Start a game and be subbed mid second half if not scored

Or

Come on as sub mid second half and be expected to score to win or save a game.

 

Unfortunately I regret to say I think its too late for Rhodes to succeed here . 

A run of games in the u23s would help his match fitness and scoring a few goals would boost his confidence .

Is it going to happen? I doubt it .

Oh what could have been with an original Jordan Rhodes.

 

I too think that he should have been given a run of games in the U23s, not least because that side often lacks any sort of experience. Him scoring regularly at that level, may not have made him any better fit for us, but it might have influenced another club to take a punt in January He really needs to drop down a level, where more sides still line up in a 4-4-2, and where he will more likely rediscover some sort of goalscoring form. Will he fancy that though, and can any side at that level afford their contribution towards his wages? If we are prepared to subsidise his wages, and by that I mean paying the bulk of his salary, then a return to his first club, Ipswich, could be a good move He and his family obviously like the area, it’s where he grew up, and his goals could help them clinch promotion. A promoted Ipswich might then be a contender to sign him full time

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Guest wilyfox
54 minutes ago, gurujuan said:

I too think that he should have been given a run of games in the U23s, not least because that side often lacks any sort of experience. Him scoring regularly at that level, may not have made him any better fit for us, but it might have influenced another club to take a punt in January He really needs to drop down a level, where more sides still line up in a 4-4-2, and where he will more likely rediscover some sort of goalscoring form. Will he fancy that though, and can any side at that level afford their contribution towards his wages? If we are prepared to subsidise his wages, and by that I mean paying the bulk of his salary, then a return to his first club, Ipswich, could be a good move He and his family obviously like the area, it’s where he grew up, and his goals could help them clinch promotion. A promoted Ipswich might then be a contender to sign him full time

 

Use him as bait to sign Jackson off them. 

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I sometimes wonder how Rhodes himself thinks or feels? 

Imagine :-

A proven, relatively prolific scorer of goals at this level.

He hits (as incidentally happens to most players) a run of poor form.

He is sold to a club, in this case Middlesbrough, who do not play to his style of football  

His run of poor form continues and so-

Midddlesbrough sell him.

 

Which is the best/worst option for him as a footballer?

He chooses Wednesday, a team not particularly reknowned for playing to centre forwards for a long time.

His run of poor form continues.

He is not given the game-time or the ball supply he needs.

 

In my honest opinion, the big mistake was by Rhodes actually agreeing to move to a club who's fans are not particularly a forgiving lot in the first place.

 

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46 minutes ago, Buxtongent said:

I sometimes wonder how Rhodes himself thinks or feels? 

Imagine :-

A proven, relatively prolific scorer of goals at this level.

He hits (as incidentally happens to most players) a run of poor form.

He is sold to a club, in this case Middlesbrough, who do not play to his style of football  

His run of poor form continues and so-

Midddlesbrough sell him.

 

Which is the best/worst option for him as a footballer?

He chooses Wednesday, a team not particularly reknowned for playing to centre forwards for a long time.

His run of poor form continues.

He is not given the game-time or the ball supply he needs.

 

In my honest opinion, the big mistake was by Rhodes actually agreeing to move to a club who's fans are not particularly a forgiving lot in the first place.

 

Last paragraph sums it up really. 

One player really wanted to work out. Nagging thing is that their is a bloody good goalscorer in there.

Would like to see him start a game, problem is he will probably get 10 minutes before the groans start from the fans. 

Would be great to let him play and maybe try supporting him for a game. Not as if our usual strikers are being prolific really.

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23 minutes ago, Harrysgame said:

Last paragraph sums it up really. 

One player really wanted to work out. Nagging thing is that their is a bloody good goalscorer in there.

Would like to see him start a game, problem is he will probably get 10 minutes before the groans start from the fans. 

Would be great to let him play and maybe try supporting him for a game. Not as if our usual strikers are being prolific really.


He’s scored a total of 20 league goals since February 2016.

 

That’s nearly 4 years and in that time he’s played for 3 clubs and worked under 6 different managers.

 

And you’re blaming the fans for that?

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33 minutes ago, A12owl said:

The more realistic detail should include how many minutes he has  played. 


Since February 2016 in the league he’s had 55 starts and come on as a sub 62 times. 
 

So he’s 20 goals in his last 117 appearances in the league. You can work out the minutes if you want go through 117 games.

 

And is that a more realistic detail or the fact that 6 consecutive managers haven’t really trusted him to start games regularly?

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We need to cut our losses and just let him leave on a free if anyone is remotely interested in taking him on. For some reason he seems devoid of all confidence and looks a waste of a shirt when he plays. Something has happened to him either mentally or physically to make him lose most of the ability that made him deadly in the Championship. Maybe it's confidence or another issue but we have a highly paid striker on our books who needs to be moved on sooner rather than later.

 

All the suggestions of getting him firing again are wishful thinking as he was hardly prolific in a Norwich side that won promotion.

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On 06/11/2019 at 08:35, Mr. Tom said:

 

Actually the more I think about it, the more Wednesday it gets.

 

2017-18: Stuggling to cobble a functional back three together week in week out, while eight attackers (at least four on massive wages) vye for 1-2 starting places. Nuhiu finishes top scorer on 11. Total season goal difference of -1. Finish 15th.

 

2019-20: Stingiest defence in the league, club captain CB at serious risk of losing his place, barely anybody in the side who can reliably work a goalkeeper from the edge of the box. Currently 7th, goal difference of +7, despite having scored three less than Luton who are in and out of the drop zone every other week.

 

Maddest, most confusing team ever.

 

:duntmatter:lol

 

 

 

Amazing ain't it Mr Tom, how different mangers (and now, more and more chairmen) can come and go and add players for specific reasons, apparent only to them at the time, sometimes without building on, or improving the squad a great deal. Having players that can consistently put the ball in the net 20 times or more a season seems to be a thing of the past for us. I love Nuhiu for the spirit he brings to the team, the not inconsiderable amount of skill he shows on the wings, when he goes into a ruck of two or three defenders, comes out with the ball, while they all look at each other and then delivers the kind of ball that he would love to be on the receiving end of. Maybe that is just it, we don't have enough players in the team at the moment, with sufficient quality and workmate, to carry a striker, whose only job is to put the ball in the net.

 

Nuhiu scored 11 goals in half a season when he was being picked to start nearly every game, like Fletcher is right now, so you would expect that throughout a full season he could score 22 or more, given the same playing time, maybe more, considering that we are now creating more chances throughout the game. I have pointed out several times, like other posters on here, that Fletcher at his peak only ever scored 13 a season, so we should not expect too many goals from him, again despite all his hard work off the ball. Fernando still gets cult status despite doing next to nothing for us for two years or more, yet in his first season he was electric and scored more goals for us in a season than he had ever scored before with 15 goals and 6 assists. The next season he scored 12 with 5 assists, but since then, in the next two seasons he has only scored 11 goals and even more disturbingly only had one assist! Sam Winall is the last striker to score 20 goals or more a season and that was 23 goals with 8 assists for Barnsley, when he played 46 games that season. The knack then for any manager would appear to be to play your chosen striker for as many games as it takes to see their confidence grow and then watch the goals flood in. We have not had the strength in our convictions to do that (or a favourable enough return of goals) and have constantly messed around with our strikers so that we have never had a player get into the kind of goal scoring form that you need to have a high scoring goalscorer. As soon as Fletcher started looking like getting goals regularly he came up against defenders who were better prepared to cater for him and the fact that he is played mainly on his own. Short of playing Sam Winall and/or Jordan Rhodes EVERY game for 14 games or more, the way Fletcher has been played recently, we will never know whether Winnall or Rhodes are still capable of scoring circa 20 goals a season. 

 

Of the two strikers that we have played with any regularity in league games this season Fletcher has started 14 (of 15) games, scored 5 and assisted 1, Nuhiu has started 3 games scored 1 and assisted 1, which suggests that Nuhiu is worth a try, if only for the number of pro-rata assists and goals we would get by him having 4.5 x more starts and discounting the effect of having a consistent run of 14 games, which has been shown to boost confidence and goal ratios in goalscorers going back donkey's years. This is not rocket science it is common sense, but the increasing impatience of some of our negatively over vocal fans over the last few years seems to have had a very negative effect on our once prolific goalscorers. They need to be given a chance like Fletcher has had recently, whereby they play for 14 games out of 15 even if the net goal effect of having them in the team is only 6 goals (goals + assists). Knowing how things go at Hillsborough for players like Winall, Rhodes and Nuhiu, irrespective of how many goals they score, there will still be a disproportionate number of fans who would rather boo them to failure rather than cheer them to success and unfortunately those noisy idiots are the ones that catch the ear of the manager.

 

Thick skinned managers like Brian Clough, who realised that he knew more about how to play football than 100 or so gobby fans and stuck to his guns, are hard to come by these days. I might send GM some earplugs if he decides to ever give JR a run of a dozen games or more in the starting line up. 

 

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7 minutes ago, Ante's Bubbly said:

 

Amazing ain't it Mr Tom, how different mangers (and now, more and more chairmen) can come and go and add players for specific reasons, apparent only to them at the time, sometimes without building on, or improving the squad a great deal. Having players that can consistently put the ball in the net 20 times or more a season seems to be a thing of the past for us. I love Nuhiu for the spirit he brings to the team, the not inconsiderable amount of skill he shows on the wings, when he goes into a ruck of two or three defenders, comes out with the ball, while they all look at each other and then delivers the kind of ball that he would love to be on the receiving end of. Maybe that is just it, we don't have enough players in the team at the moment, with sufficient quality and workmate, to carry a striker, whose only job is to put the ball in the net.

 

Nuhiu scored 11 goals in half a season when he was being picked to start nearly every game, like Fletcher is right now, so you would expect that throughout a full season he could score 22 or more, given the same playing time, maybe more, considering that we are now creating more chances throughout the game. I have pointed out several times, like other posters on here, that Fletcher at his peak only ever scored 13 a season, so we should not expect too many goals from him, again despite all his hard work off the ball. Fernando still gets cult status despite doing next to nothing for us for two years or more, yet in his first season he was electric and scored more goals for us in a season than he had ever scored before with 15 goals and 6 assists. The next season he scored 12 with 5 assists, but since then, in the next two seasons he has only scored 11 goals and even more disturbingly only had one assist! Sam Winall is the last striker to score 20 goals or more a season and that was 23 goals with 8 assists for Barnsley, when he played 46 games that season. The knack then for any manager would appear to be to play your chosen striker for as many games as it takes to see their confidence grow and then watch the goals flood in. We have not had the strength in our convictions to do that (or a favourable enough return of goals) and have constantly messed around with our strikers so that we have never had a player get into the kind of goal scoring form that you need to have a high scoring goalscorer. As soon as Fletcher started looking like getting goals regularly he came up against defenders who were better prepared to cater for him and the fact that he is played mainly on his own. Short of playing Sam Winall and/or Jordan Rhodes EVERY game for 14 games or more, the way Fletcher has been played recently, we will never know whether Winnall or Rhodes are still capable of scoring circa 20 goals a season. 

 

Of the two strikers that we have played with any regularity in league games this season Fletcher has started 14 (of 15) games, scored 5 and assisted 1, Nuhiu has started 3 games scored 1 and assisted 1, which suggests that Nuhiu is worth a try, if only for the number of pro-rata assists and goals we would get by him having 4.5 x more starts and discounting the effect of having a consistent run of 14 games, which has been shown to boost confidence and goal ratios in goalscorers going back donkey's years. This is not rocket science it is common sense, but the increasing impatience of some of our negatively over vocal fans over the last few years seems to have had a very negative effect on our once prolific goalscorers. They need to be given a chance like Fletcher has had recently, whereby they play for 14 games out of 15 even if the net goal effect of having them in the team is only 6 goals (goals + assists). Knowing how things go at Hillsborough for players like Winall, Rhodes and Nuhiu, irrespective of how many goals they score, there will still be a disproportionate number of fans who would rather boo them to failure rather than cheer them to success and unfortunately those noisy idiots are the ones that catch the ear of the manager.

 

Thick skinned managers like Brian Clough, who realised that he knew more about how to play football than 100 or so gobby fans and stuck to his guns, are hard to come by these days. I might send GM some earplugs if he decides to ever give JR a run of a dozen games or more in the starting line up. 

 

The thing is, I can be critical of Fletcher’s goal returns, especially in this system, but you can’t deny that he brings other skills that help the side function as a unit. Nuhiu also does that, but neither Winnall nor Rhodes can lead the line in that way. Their skill set is very poor, and in an improving championship, that lets them down badly

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Guest LondonOwl313
5 hours ago, nilsson said:


Since February 2016 in the league he’s had 55 starts and come on as a sub 62 times. 
 

So he’s 20 goals in his last 117 appearances in the league. You can work out the minutes if you want go through 117 games.

 

And is that a more realistic detail or the fact that 6 consecutive managers haven’t really trusted him to start games regularly?

20 from 55 starts isn’t that bad.. don’t know how many minutes he’s made as a sub but for us it always seemed like he’d come on for 15 minutes and see little of the ball and it was a waste of time 

 

As for not being picked, Middlesbrough were in the Prem at the time playing 1 up front, which he can’t play well, so that explains that. Then he came here, and let’s be honest he wasn’t really needed. We’d just signed Winnall who was a similar player but with a lower profile.. and we had Hooper and FF playing in the second striker role, who both had a lot more to their game, so was hard for him to get a good run.  

 

Then 2017/18, the whole team was rubbish under Jos and again he didn’t get a look in second half of the season. Fletcher was injured too and he would be his natural strike partner.

 

Then at Norwich he played second fiddle to Pukki, who’s still scoring in the Prem, and this season he’s barely had a kick.

 

There may still be goals in him somewhere but I doubt we’ll play 4-4-2 long enough and give him a run to find out. There’s no point bringing him on on his own for 20 mins as he won’t get many goals that way 

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8 hours ago, nilsson said:


He’s scored a total of 20 league goals since February 2016.

 

That’s nearly 4 years and in that time he’s played for 3 clubs and worked under 6 different managers.

 

And you’re blaming the fans for that?

Where did I say it's the fans fault?

Just think it's worth another shot, as we're not exactly prolific. A section of our fan base can be somewhat unforgiving and quick to criticise.

So who else other than Fletcher is going to score some goals?

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For those referencing the cameos from the bench or the lack of a run in the team (ie. continuing the list of excuses that is unprecedented in our history for it's desperation and bias), when we first signed him he played in all 18 of our remaining games that season, starting all but 4. He 'rewarded' us with 3 goals. And that's as good as his strike rate has been at any point in his three seasons here. Doesn't the very lack of minutes under all those different conditions in the last 4 years speak for itself?

 

Tactics change, managers come and go and the squad is forever shuffled, but nothing has made any difference. Not only has he not scored, but he hasn't even looked like he might. How can you you justify faith in someone who has shown almost nothing? It isn't just goals (that can hopelessly skew opinions both for and against) - there's far more to a forward's role than that. He doesn't offer any of the attributes you want from the position. And SEVEN other strikers, with a variety of styles and talents have easily outscored him with exactly the same circumstances.

 

Until he proves otherwise in training or with the reserve teams, there is simply no justification for considering him for the squad at the moment unless there is an injury crisis. It's bemusing that anyone could even think about suggesting otherwise.

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5 hours ago, DJMortimer said:

For those referencing the cameos from the bench or the lack of a run in the team (ie. continuing the list of excuses that is unprecedented in our history for it's desperation and bias), when we first signed him he played in all 18 of our remaining games that season, starting all but 4. He 'rewarded' us with 3 goals. And that's as good as his strike rate has been at any point in his three seasons here. Doesn't the very lack of minutes under all those different conditions in the last 4 years speak for itself?

 

Tactics change, managers come and go and the squad is forever shuffled, but nothing has made any difference. Not only has he not scored, but he hasn't even looked like he might. How can you you justify faith in someone who has shown almost nothing? It isn't just goals (that can hopelessly skew opinions both for and against) - there's far more to a forward's role than that. He doesn't offer any of the attributes you want from the position. And SEVEN other strikers, with a variety of styles and talents have easily outscored him with exactly the same circumstances.

 

Until he proves otherwise in training or with the reserve teams, there is simply no justification for considering him for the squad at the moment unless there is an injury crisis. It's bemusing that anyone could even think about suggesting otherwise.

This is from a poster I've often disagreed with. 

I can't find fault with a single word of this.

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1 hour ago, metaframe said:

I think more than anything he lost what pace he had. 
 

I don’t think I’ve seen a professional footballer look* as slow when running as Rhodes. 
 

* not just raw speed but the relative speed to size and role

Mick Quinn was about 5 yards slower.

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Guest LittleG
2 hours ago, metaframe said:

I think more than anything he lost what pace he had. 
 

I don’t think I’ve seen a professional footballer look* as slow when running as Rhodes. 
 

* not just raw speed but the relative speed to size and role

Let's be honest the lack of pace is a problem for all our strikers, can't just level this criticism at Rhodes. The quickest forward we have is probably Fletch, that says it all.

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