FA Cup - Bolton 2-2 Sunderland

before we think about selling Sordell, he needs a decent run in the team, how will we ever know if he's good enough? His record at Watford suggests he can score at this level and a few goals will cure his homesickness.

Agreed

Bernard Dennis Park wrote:Kevin Davies didn't do anything wrong yesterday. Let's give him shit though for a rumour someone has heard.

Laughable isn't it..

He has 5 good games then a bad one and everyone jumps back on to the its all SKDs fault bandwagon. How about every single other game he hasn't featured in where our attack has looked appalling. Not forgetting that one of our two goals yesterday was entirely Sunderlands fault and the other goal we scored was a header built from a corner, nothing at all to do with good build up play.. But of course because it wasn't SKD who scored it that hasn't been mentioned.


Sordell was unfit and knacker by the time he game off, and N'gog was replaced by our top goal scorer, I see nothing wrong with this substitution. Im glad Sordell scored but it was nothing special and doesn't automatically make him our best striker.

This is like when N'gog scored two and everyone was saying we wouldn't need a new striker because he would become a prolific goalscorer.. come on.

We still don't have enough striker options yet, hopefully Craig Davies will change that.

To be honest the main thing this game has shown me is that we still need to improve our defense. Yeah Sunderland are in the prem but there are quite a few teams down here that could beat them.

He only came on as a late sub so I don't see the problem.

Nothing wrong with SKD. Give the guy a break. He's coming to the end of his career, and we should be thanking him for what he's done, not slating him because he's not liveing up to our , sometimes unreal, expectations. I agree that he should now seriously consider retirement, but he doesn't deserve to be hounded out.

the trouble with SKD is that none of our other forwards have performed better when given a game - thats not his fault!
I'm sure DF didn't envisage playing him practically every game from the start but he is still our most effective forward.
With Craig Davies signing it may mean SKD will spend more time on the bench and can be called on if needed.

I think he's now more suited to a midfield holding role, but thats not going to happen

i've often thought he could be converted into a centre half, but then witnessed some of his sliding tackles and then thought maybe not!

ha ! Good point ! I would console myself with the thought that he didn't have so far to run, and wouldn't need to make desperate tackles, as he's already on the spot. (yeah, ok)

I think SKD would make a pretty solid centre half.

Dion Dublin converted to centre half from striker at Villa, so there's precedent.

Lt. Boon wrote:Dion Dublin converted to centre half from striker at Villa, so there's precedent.

So did Alan Gowling but he was a crap defender.

I never heard of Craig Davies till the other day ....does anybody know if he is any good?

26 years old and nobody from the Prem sniffing around? not usually a good sign. Either way we need to see him play before unloading any of the current strikers IMO.

The team for the most part lacks any real pace. Half a yard to beat a defender to the ball ...tripped in the box while passing a donkey....full backs able to run past the winger to support and then get back in position. Stuff like this does not appear in any stats but in the course of a season it usually pays off.

terenceanne wrote:I never heard of Craig Davies till the other day ....does anybody know if he is any good?

26 years old and nobody from the Prem sniffing around? not usually a good sign. Either way we need to see him play before unloading any of the current strikers IMO.

The team for the most part lacks any real pace. Half a yard to beat a defender to the ball ...tripped in the box while passing a donkey....full backs able to run past the winger to support and then get back in position. Stuff like this does not appear in any stats but in the course of a season it usually pays off.

Hes mean't to be good, scored against us after coming on as a sub (after injury) and I remember the commentator saying that he would score when he was brought on so obviously rated there.

Scored more than any of our players in a team like Barnsley, he can't be bad really, £300,000 seems like a steal.




We shouldn't offload any of our players unless we get a really good price, we need the numbers

There are Craig's goals on youtube if you want to give that any weight. Majority are with shots...curling efforts etc .... we better not be planning to hoof it to this lad....he wants it on the ground.

Lofty_Love wrote:

We shouldn't offload any of our players unless we get a really good price, we need the numbers

Did your mother never tell you it's quality not quantity that counts?

Been my motto for years !

Natasha Whittam wrote:

Lofty_Love wrote:

We shouldn't offload any of our players unless we get a really good price, we need the numbers

Did your mother never tell you it's quality not quantity that counts?

I didn't say we don't need new players, but why would we sell any when we don't have enough now? What kind of money would we get?

Knight - He is shite, hopefully replace him, but we still need him on the bench. Wouldn't get any money for him anyway.

Mears - He is shite, hopefully replace him, but with the constantly injured Riley then we still need him as a backup. Wouldn't get any money for him anyway.

Pratley - Started improving.

Sordell - Would make a huge loss, still hasn't shown us what he can do, and still needed for backup.

Kevin Davies - People who want to sell him must be mad. Especially considering we would get about 100,000 and he wouldn't want to leave anyway.



We would be stupid to sell players like Eagles or Chungy for anything that wasn't a really high price.


We already need like 3-4 players in this transfer window, if we started selling we will need 6-8, that wouldn't be good.


We can offload players in the summer when we have all summer to replace them, not half way through the season.

I can't imagine anybody wanting to buy SKD ..... my concern is that his wages could be applied to a new player for longer term benefit. Usually I'm on the side of keeping as many as we can afford until new players prove themselves at least. Is there a sensible reason to go into next season with a 37 year old striker? It's like when OC played Elmander in the last game of the season before he pissed off instead of giving others a chance.

To my knowledge SKDs contract end in the summer.

SKDs wages for the next 5 months wouldn't not be the difference in Gartside allowing Freedman to sign a young prospect on > £5,000 a week.

This idea of giving other a chance I don't understand. In my mind you play your best team, for the day, not the team that will be best in 2-3 years.

To take your Elmander example, he was clearly thought to be our best option by Coyle, regardless of weather you think he was Coyle did. If we had won that last game wouldn't we have been about 4-5 places better off? i.e. 3-4 million extra.

If youngsters are good enough they will get their chance, but they shouldn't be forced ahead of better, more experienced players just because they are young. Half the reason we got relegated and Villa are looking so bad now is because we relied too heavily on young players.