Huddersfield Town V Boro 3-2 ( Johnson, Assombalonga))

[Changing Times 3,005]

4 minutes ago, Duvel said:

You said himself he should have scored, I'm sure we are agreeing aren't we? Or are we fighting i don't know 🤷‍♂️

I'm saying it's not as easy at it looks.  I honestly thought his other chance before that was easier than that one but he's a professional footballer so you'd expect him to be able to find a way to bundle it in ideally.

[AnglianRed 1,296]

13 hours ago, Changing Times said:

When a ball is hammered in and it's slightly bobbling, it isn't easy to control where it goes when you get contact on it.  Some of you must play football at a decent standard so you would already know this.  If you don't believe me, go in your garden and get someone to smash balls across to you while you try and slide in and see how often you get the ball to go where you want it to.  It looks easy because it's right in front of the goal obviously, but when you're stretching and the ball is coming in at pace, it is never quite that easy.  That's not me defending Assombalonga, cos he should have scored at least once in the first half either way in my opinion.  As for the penalty, he should have had one before that.  He got shoved by a defender in the area, then when he shoved the defender back, the ref blew for a freekick to them, which is ridiculous.  Akpom will be in against Swansea I expect as Warnock seems to be rotating them.

Hmm...maybe I should've used some emojis to make it obvious I was exaggerating. Still your explanation was interesting. 👍 Even so, you'd expect a professional footballer to put those kind of chances away, more often than not.

Don't they practice this kind of stuff in training? And as for pushing & shoving, Britt is a big unit - I wouldn't have thought it was that easy to knock him off the ball (although the way he often goes down like Bambi on ice suggests otherwise).

 

[Borodane 1,474]

Seen the highlights. Terrible misses and terrible defending. Stuff like that loses games. Swansea is very important now.

[Redcar Rioja 568]

I think by now we all know that we thought we had bought Britt, the mythical legend who scored goals for fun at this level. The realty is that we bought a "goalscorer" that nobody else was willing to match the asking price for and over time we have found out why. What compounds the issue is that having identified his strengths and weaknesses a succession of Managers have managed to set up Boro teams to play to those weaknesses.

When I have conversations with fans of other clubs I'm often surprised when I raise a topic on a Player of theirs that I rate to find some negativity from them. Its the same with us, we have players that other fans rate but they don't watch them as intimately, week in, week out over several seasons as we do. Usually we have an opinion of a competitors player based on a few headline performances, great saves or defending condensed into two minute snippets on a Saturday night or heaven forbid, the goals they scored against us.

Jordan Hugill is a beast of a Striker who will get you goals at this level except when he came here instead of being a beast he was sat on his backside doing a one man impression of the Gap Bands "oops upside your head". Kris Boyd, Scott McDonald, Jordan Rhodes etc. etc. there is a very long historical list. It works equally in reverse of course, Liverpool paid over two million for Brad Jones, its just that it seems to work against us more than for us.

 

[Robin Johnson 96]

I cannot believe some are still trying to defend Britt! Must be to save face. As a player, he has gone backwards. 2 goals in 2 games can easily be misconstrued. His first, everyone’s granny could have bscored that. The penalty? Good penalty. This fails to cover up his deficiencies. The guy should be working on his game - maybe he is. Frankly, if this is the case it isn’t working. He is one of the weakest links we have.

[Changing Times 3,005]

2 hours ago, Redcar Rioja said:

I think by now we all know that we thought we had bought Britt, the mythical legend who scored goals for fun at this level. The realty is that we bought a "goalscorer" that nobody else was willing to match the asking price for and over time we have found out why. What compounds the issue is that having identified his strengths and weaknesses a succession of Managers have managed to set up Boro teams to play to those weaknesses.

When I have conversations with fans of other clubs I'm often surprised when I raise a topic on a Player of theirs that I rate to find some negativity from them. Its the same with us, we have players that other fans rate but they don't watch them as intimately, week in, week out over several seasons as we do. Usually we have an opinion of a competitors player based on a few headline performances, great saves or defending condensed into two minute snippets on a Saturday night or heaven forbid, the goals they scored against us.

Jordan Hugill is a beast of a Striker who will get you goals at this level except when he came here instead of being a beast he was sat on his backside doing a one man impression of the Gap Bands "oops upside your head". Kris Boyd, Scott McDonald, Jordan Rhodes etc. etc. there is a very long historical list. It works equally in reverse of course, Liverpool paid over two million for Brad Jones, its just that it seems to work against us more than for us.

 

Assombalonga wasn't a mythical striker who scored goals for fun at this level though.  He scored 15 goals and then 14 goals before he joined us.  He then scored 15 goals and 14 goals for us.  We got exactly what we paid for, it's just that we paid far too much for him in the first place.  I'm not sure what it is about this that people don't get, unless they convinced themselves he was a 20+ striker somehow?

Hugill is a beast of a striker.  The best season Hugill has had at this level was last season when he scored 13 goals.  He's only ever hit double figures twice at this level.  When they played in the same team, Hugill got 6 goals, Assombalonga got 14, albeit Assombalonga played more minutes, but he didn't play double the minutes.  Ah, but Hugill is the better all round player.  Hugill has 7 assists in his career at this level, Assombalonga has 6.  Hugill is a beast, Assombalonga is rubbish 🤷‍♂️

I think the bigger problem we have is the expectations that we place on some of these players.  The likes of Boyd and McDonald were players who had done ok at a relatively weak level of competition only.  Rhodes did well at this level but in a different set up to the one he joined when he came here, and we made no attempt to replicate that - that's one reason why an owner shouldn't decide to buy players.

I'd say that we have three strikers who appear to be much of a muchness.  I doubt any of them would hit 20 a season at this level, they'd all top out at around 15 I reckon.  All you can do, as you mention, is attempt to play to their strengths as much as possible, or accept that if you don't then you will get inconsistent performances.  15 goals a season from a striker is fine, unless you spent £15m on that striker, in which case that's your own fault for not understanding what you are purchasing.

[Changing Times 3,005]

1 hour ago, Robin Johnson said:

I cannot believe some are still trying to defend Britt! Must be to save face. As a player, he has gone backwards. 2 goals in 2 games can easily be misconstrued. His first, everyone’s granny could have bscored that. The penalty? Good penalty. This fails to cover up his deficiencies. The guy should be working on his game - maybe he is. Frankly, if this is the case it isn’t working. He is one of the weakest links we have.

You were missed after the Derby game, it's good to see you back.

Two goals in two games now, the lad is on fire 💪

[Robin Johnson 96]

Surprising as it may seem I do have a life outside of this forum!Read late on Saturday posts, in fairness others had succinctly put the deficiencies in his game. 

He gets his game for one reason - we hardly have an alternative. Nice situation - for him

[Changing Times 3,005]

42 minutes ago, Robin Johnson said:

Surprising as it may seem I do have a life outside of this forum!Read late on Saturday posts, in fairness others had succinctly put the deficiencies in his game. 

He gets his game for one reason - we hardly have an alternative. Nice situation - for him

How did you think he played against Derby?

[SmogDane 1,300]

Like a giraffe's tits