The Return of the Wolf!

[Suffolk Canary]

St Eteinne's club president says their entire transfer budget is less than the £6m buy out for Van Wolfwinkels loan deal, so they're not going to try bringing him back in the summer.

I'd love to see him get a second chance under a manager which could actually get more out of him than Hughton did.  There's no doubt he has more 'natural quality' than Jerome or Grabban, but the big question is whether he has the strength and determination to play up front on his own, which AN seems to prefer to set out his teams. 

 

[The Great Mass Debater]

Bridges may well have been burned, but as a fan Id give him another chance in a different system, built around his strengths.

Suspect this is to try and drive his price down though

 

[Canaryboy]

Have you seen the goals that Jerome has been scoring this season? Seems to have plenty of natural quality, the bloke's a class act. 

Yes I know that Van Wolfswinkel is supposedly a top class "poacher", whilst Jerome is a very different type of player - one who uses grit and determination and chases lost causes - but possibly a little disrespectful to continue to perpetuate this myth that our biggest flop last season, one who didn't fancy trying to make up for his failure, is actually our best player? Whilst our other strikers score the goals which have given us a chance of repairing the damage which Van Wolfswinkel and his ilk contributed to last season? 

Personally I'd only really consider taking a risk on Van Wolfswinkel next season if we were to lose Hooper, our only poacher, and failed to bring in a suitable replacement. I'd consider it a risk to go into the season with him taking up one of our striker spots, at the expense of any of the three strikers who have shown themselves more prolific in front of goal, and I'd consider it a risk to have a player in the squad who is prone to sulking and dropping his head when things don't go his way.

Also, Alex Neil has made it clear that he likes strikers who work hard for 90 minutes, close down defenders and chase every ball. Seldom did we see that level of commitment from Van Wolfswinkel last season, which is why his hair was never a mess. 

Sorry but just not a fan! 

 

[Canaryboy]

Bridges may well have been burned, but as a fan Id give him another chance in a different system, built around his strengths.

Building our system around Van Wolfswinkel? I just get the feeling that Norwich fans can't accept the fact that the player who we thought was a £20m player and a future Van Persie is in fact completely unsuitable for the hustle and bustle of the Premier League and was therefore massive a waste of money.

What has he done in Ligue 1, a vastly inferior league, to suggest that he deserves another chance in the best league in the world (if we get there?). He's not even in the top 20 goalscorers in a league which made Joey Barton look like Javier Mascherano. Despite playing for one of the top teams!

 

[Suffolk Canary]

Also, Alex Neil has made it clear that he likes strikers who work hard for 90 minutes, close down defenders and chase every ball. Seldom did we see that level of commitment from Van Wolfswinkel last season, which is why his hair was never a mess. 

I think that's a bit harsh.  The guy was having the worst season of his life, and (imo) showed more than enough desire and work rate. On so many occasions he was forced to chase the ball near the corner flag chasing hopeless long balls, and then took stick for not being in the box. 

Secondly, this is the same Gary Hooper who was below the pecking order to Johan Elmander towards the end of the season. I know Hooper has been absolute quality this season. But we need to remember we're in the Championship.  The same goes for Jerome, who was never rated any higher than average in the premiership (2 goals in 28 games for Palace, last time he played in the Prem). Just look at David Nugent or Vardy for Leicester - both scored goals for fun in the 2nd tier, but haven't made any impact this season. 

...Or perhaps this is all just my huge man-crush for RVW from the time still lingering in my subconscious... :lol:

 

[Canaryboy]

Jerome's strike rate in the Premier League is also misleading though. For example, his wikipedia entry will show that he scored just 7 goals in 50 PL games for Stoke.

Delve into those stats and you'll find that he started just 15 Premier League games for Stoke. Suddenly 7 goals in 15(35) looks a lot more impressive at that level. Especially when you consider that under Pulis they'd defend a 1-0 lead at home or a 0-0 away from home, and only try and chase a game in the last 15 to 20 if that doesn't go to plan.

He weren't great for Palace, admittedly, but he's reached double figures in the league above in a struggling Birmingham team and that's all you can really expect from a striker in that league unless your a top 6 side. 

 

[Canaryboy]

I think that's a bit harsh.  The guy was having the worst season of his life, and (imo) showed more than enough desire and work rate. 

He probably was having a nightmare season and there probably is a bit more about him than we got to see, but lets put this another way.....

If Van Wolfswinkel didn't exist, and we were promoted this season, would you be blown away if our only signing in the striking department was a player who'd scored 5 goals in 24 games in the French league and was nowhere to be found on that leagues list of top 20 goalscorers, or would you be hoping that we'd be a bit more ambitious with our £100m windfall? 

Personally I think we should take a leaf out of Lambert's book (if we go up) and nab a few star players from teams who don't win promotion.

Rhodes, Deeney, Wilson, Assombalonga, would be candidates in the striking department. 

 

[KeiranShikari]

Jerome also spent a lot of time out of position during his time under Pulis.

AN has said that he doesn't see Hooper as a poacher btw.

 

[Suffolk Canary]

.

If Van Wolfswinkel didn't exist, and we were promoted this season, would you be blown away if our only signing in the striking department was a player who'd scored 5 goals in 24 games in the French league and was nowhere to be found on that leagues list of top 20 goalscorers, or would you be hoping that we'd be a bit more ambitious with our £100m windfall? 

But actually.........   dammit,  I can't really argue against that.   I officially wave the white flag in defeat

 

[GJP]

Suffolk - with regard to your OP I think there has to be some doubt about whether he has got more "natural quality".

 

[Dubai Mark]

Just, NO, please NO!

 

[Din]

My first choice when it comes to Ricky would be that we sold him and got a slice of the money we paid for him back. However I wouldn't be completely against giving him another opportunity. Especially if we didn't go up. 

I have a fair bit of sympathy for him for a number of reasons. Firstly the system we played under Hughton just didn't suit him at all and he rarely got a clear sight of goal because of that. He's not a target man, but under Hughton we played as if he was, and it was near impossible for him to play as well as he possibly could, and to score goals on a regular basis. Also the first 4/5 games of his Norwich career he was actually very impressive. Scored on his debut of course and in general played well over the first few games. But he then got injured, and was ruled out for about 3 months, and didn't look the same when he came back. He also seems like a genuinly nice guy who really wanted to do well for this club, and for this club to do well. However it just didn't work out for him. 

That all said though, the fact is he wasn't good enough. He showed flashes of what he could do, but on the whole he often performed very poorly, and on the rare occasion he did get a goal-scoring opportunity he would waste it. So he is by no means blame-free. 

 

[The Great Mass Debater]

Lets examine the facts though. Firstly, the signing of RvW was seen as a major coup for the club. You dont have to search hard for comments of disbelief from around the world that we had managed to sign this guy. Now I know we were allowed to sign him - ie noone else actually decided to buy him, but still, it was the common perception that RvW was a great player we'd done incredibly well to get. That must have been based on something more than just Youtube clips.

Secondly, having smashed our transfer record for a player many thought would be a superstar and a class above anything we had, we then did something bizarre. If we truly had a world class player, surrounded by championship players - it would make sense to build the team around him. Ask the question - why was this guy prolific? how did he score goals? and then try to replicate what had been a very successful formula.

And that for me is why Hughton was a poor manager. He had this supposedly world class player as his disposal, but didnt have a clue what to do with him. I would accept RvW as a flop and write him off if we had got him doing what he was doing at Sporting, if we had played him the same way, if we'd bought that/those players required to give him the ammunition - and he'd still failed.

But Hughton tried to turn him into a lone striker, or a defensive forward - which was never his strength.

If you bought Peter Crouch and then told him to play on the shoulder of the last defender and to run onto through balls, would you conclude he was rubbish when he didnt do it very well? Would you tell Michael Owen to try to win the ball in the air and nod it on for other players? Would you play Huckerby as a target man?

I just find it baffling that we never tried to play to RvWs strengths.

I think more importantly that RvW was not a very well thought out signing. We thought we had an opportunity to sign someone special and our eyes were bigger than our stomach. We never appreciated that RvW was probably the wrong type of player for a team going to play in the way we were.

We needed to sign a player that played in the Grant Holt role. That for me was Hughtons biggest failing. He never appreciated how key the Holt-style forward was to a team like ours. Hughton didnt seem to understand strikers, and probably thought it was as simple as buying someone with a good record and then shoving them in there - and I include Hooper in that.

I dont think we should have bought both of them - pick one and then use the remaining money to buy the support required to get them firing.

Only one of them was supposed to be on the pitch at the same time it would seem, they werent bought to play together - so essentially you have, at all times, either your biggest, or your second biggest purchase warming the bench and not contributing to the team. 

Just think how things might have been different if we'd picked just one of them and splurged the savings on the Quagliarella player we seemingly needed, or a Diego Capel

 

[GJP]

RVW isn't a class above the rest of the players. Never was.

If you had someone who was real dynamite then the other players would recognise that. Hughton's style doesn't favour strikers but after a season of football it was clear that while RVW might not have performed to his best there was never enough about him for him to be great.

 

[Gaffer]

The guy was a flop but still considered it beneath his level to help us fight our way back into the Premier League. Yet he's managed only 5 goals in 24 appearances in a league that doesn't even come close to the level of the Premier League. Like victims of a Nigerian advance fee fraud scam, a lot of Norwich fans just can't accept that we wasted our money and want us to dig ourselves deeper and deeper into the hole. Why? Because he tapped in a bunch of goals in a couple of substandard leagues with unbelievably poor goalkeepers? We need to just accept that Sporting Lisbon pulled one on us, take the loss and move him on as quickly as possible. Maybe we'll get a couple of million for him. He's certainly worth less than Jerome, Grabban or Hooper.

 

[SussexYellow]

I just find it baffling that we never tried to play to RvWs strengths.

I think more importantly that RvW was not a very well thought out signing. We thought we had an opportunity to sign someone special and our eyes were bigger than our stomach. We never appreciated that RvW was probably the wrong type of player for a team going to play in the way we were.

We needed to sign a player that played in the Grant Holt role. That for me was Hughtons biggest failing. He never appreciated how key the Holt-style forward was to a team like ours. Hughton didnt seem to understand strikers, and probably thought it was as simple as buying someone with a good record and then shoving them in there - and I include Hooper in that.

I am not sure what RvW's strengths are. Certainly not a clinical striker. Even in Hughton's team set up he had enough chances to get a couple more goals than he did.

But I agree with your other points above. The buying of strikers that simply could not fit into Hughton's preferred style of play is actually beyond belief.

Yes we needed a Grant Holt type striker who could play in the lone role and still get in the face of defenders. Given Hughton's preferred style we would have had more chance of success had we have gone for Glenn Murray instead of RvW. But I doubt that would have been received well at the time!

 

[splutcho]

Regarding that gif, about 3 of our players did that yesterday. Means nothing, they all make mistakes. You just pick out his.

 

[The Great Mass Debater]

The guy was a flop but still considered it beneath his level to help us fight our way back into the Premier League. Yet he's managed only 5 goals in 24 appearances in a league that doesn't even come close to the level of the Premier League. Like victims of a Nigerian advance fee fraud scam, a lot of Norwich fans just can't accept that we wasted our money and want us to dig ourselves deeper and deeper into the hole. Why? Because he tapped in a bunch of goals in a couple of substandard leagues with unbelievably poor goalkeepers? We need to just accept that Sporting Lisbon pulled one on us, take the loss and move him on as quickly as possible. Maybe we'll get a couple of million for him. He's certainly worth less than Jerome, Grabban or Hooper.

Not really, most of his tweets pre-season were about making amends and repaying the faith that had been shown to him and giving something back to the fans. It was us who shipped him out rather than him throwing his toys out of the pram. We jettisoned him - cant blame him for that. He still made positive tweets about the team after he'd left as well, only once he'd settled in at St Etienne did he focus on them. Dont htink you can question his character.

Think the gif is a bit harsh as well - he clearly thought he had a team-mate there, perhaps he saw a steward (in yellow) in his peripheral vision or thought Whittaker would be there from training or something, who knows. Yes it looks bad but everyone makes mistakes. On another day he could have had a hat-trick in that game.

We clearly havent seen the best of him, Im sure everyone would agree on that. Id be willing to give him another chance. We've seen so little of him, I still need convincing he's sh*te!

 

[GJP]

Yeah he said nice things about the club on Twitter or whatever but that doesn't mean he didn't want out.

Just can't see how he'd get in the team ahead of Jerome or Grabban.

 

[Salopian]

We never saw him at his best, and once his confidence was very low....  It could have been different if he had scored a few early on, and he certainly got himself into good positions.

The situation is probably a mixture of two things:

He had exceeded himself in the seasons before we bought him, with achievements which he could not repeat, and our scouts and manager were deceived.

We never learned how to use him, and our manager may have been at fault. He took up good positions, but had poor service

.

Unless we can find an alternative club for him, we might just as well have him back for a season or so. There seems little likelihood of recouping anything like the sum we laid out. The only decision is how we would react if an offer of, say, £2m was received. How much would we save in salary if we sold him immediately plus any transfer income, compared with how much we value a possible contribution from him on the pitch next season.

When he leaves his loan club, I doubt if his confidence will have improved much since going there, given that he has not scored many goals and was latterly on the bench or even outside the match-day squad.