I would have said no but then his goal at the weekend reminded me what he is capable of. He looks like a proper striker, a safe bet. Technically he is capable, this wouldn't be like signing Britt who couldn't trap a bag of sand. His goal on Sunday reminded me a bit of Harry Kane. I think he'll go on to big things.
At the current moment I see him a bit like Ivan Toney when he went to Brentford. Nobody was saying they had overpaid for him. It was a really obvious transfer and that he would come good and do the business. How much would they get for him now?
We can't afford to spend big money and he be a mega flop but can we afford not to buy him and he become the next Harry Kane? We've seen the difference a top quality sorry can make to a championship team. We had Mitrovic and Solanke at the top 2 last season and they were a huge part of why those teams got promoted.
If we always play it safe we're more likely to stay in the championship.
He's fantastic but you wouldn't spend more than £8m on him?He’s fantastic but I wouldn’t be spending more than £8m on him and that’s probably half of what Coventry would want unfortunately.
I’ll never understand this idea that we NEED to spend a fortune on proven strikers at this level. Look at the teams who’ve gone up lately, that don’t have parachute money or Premier League strikers from being relegated, none of them did this.
Forest had Lewis Grabban(12), cost them £6m.
Brentford had Toney(33) and Mbuemo(8) neither proven at this level.
Leeds had Bamford(16) for £7m and West Brom had Charlie Austin(10) and Hal Robson Kanu(9) for £4m and free.
The season before Norwich had Pukki(29) on a free, Sheff Utd had Sharp(23) and McGoldrick(15) for next to nothing and Villa had Abraham(25) on loan.
Some of these players are proven at this level but most aren’t and none of them cost a fortune, all these clubs were in a similar position as us in that they hadn’t been in the Premier League the previous season.
Spending £15m on Gyokeres is reckless and highly unnecessary, you don’t even need 20+ goals from a striker although it would help, we just need a solid group who can contribute. As Wilder says the 5 strikers need 40 goals between them, that’s only 8 each.
If we signed Gyokeres then you’d have to imagine our strikers would be Gyokeres, Forss, Watmore, Muniz and Coburn? If we went the other route it could be Larsen, Hoppe, Forss, Muniz and Watmore? Or maybe even swap Watmore for another Premier League loan. Speculation of course but the 2nd group looks stronger and has a higher chance of a good resale value. We still need 2 midfielders and an LCB, signing Gyokeres for silly money limits our ability to strengthen the squad.
There aren’t many players I’d spend more than £8m on at our level that we could attract. It has nothing to do with Gyokeres, it’s what I think we should be limiting our spend to on a single player. If Messi was available for £50m and would come to us I wouldn’t think the club should do it either.He's fantastic but you wouldn't spend more than £8m on him?
Lunatic.
I haven’t just made a list of the success stories, I’ve literally listed every club that’s got promoted in the last 4 seasons that wasn’t in the Premier League the previous year. It’s proof that you don’t need to spend big, in fact no club that has got promotion in the last 4 years from the same position as us has spent big on a striker.There is a lot of confirmation bias in these stats though. In fairness it's impossible to guarantee anything but the premise here is that you can get promoted by not spending big on a single striker. You can point to all the successes but in that group you have to include all of the failures. We had how many different strikers last season that were low cost. How did they all do? It is very easy to spot the big scorers that were cheap and say "we should do that". The chances of getting a striker that has never been good before and turning him into a top goalscorer is fairly low. You get a few a season manage it. Chances are you sign someone that has scored 5 goals per season at this level and they continue to do so or you sign someone who has done it at a lower level who might fail to step up or you sign someone that can't get in a PL team and you realise they never will.
Signing proven players is more reliable, admittedly it hasn't been for us in the past but I'd have more confidence in our recruitment team these days than I have in the past.
If someone had offered us Gyokeres as a straight swap for Tav/Spence would we have taken it? Almost definitely. If that is the case then what is the difference between spending that cash value instead?
I wouldn't say sign at any cost. There is obviously an upper limit and it isn't for me to decide. I just think Gyokeres is the sort of player that we will look at in January when we're too far off the league leaders to be aiming for the autos and he's already got Cov 12-15 goals and we are lamenting the fact we played it safe with a £3-6m player who has scored 6 goals instead.
And if Cov want £20m, you'd want the club to pay that?£15m would get the best striker in this league.
Not only is he an excellent striker, he is an excellent footballer.
He is young, an international and will play PL football.
A promotion season with Boro would increase his value to over £25m, or stop us having to shell out that for a striker good enough in the PL.
£15m would cost Boro £3m in amortisation this season on a 5 year contract. They have just got a £22.5m pure profit boost this season from the sale of Spence and Tavernier.
This is not all eggs in one basket by a long way.
Gibson gambled significantly to get us up in 2015-16. We had no assets to sell back then and he had to finance the recruitment.
He doesn't have to this time, Spence and Tavernier have.
Give Wilder the tools to go up this season, not just indulge Scott's fantasies and ego.
You have picked the success stories by just picking the promoted teams. All the teams that didn't get promoted those seasons had strikers that they had bought on a budget that didn't work out necessarily.I haven’t just made a list of the success stories, I’ve literally listed every club that’s got promoted in the last 4 seasons that wasn’t in the Premier League the previous year. It’s proof that you don’t need to spend big, in fact no club that has got promotion in the last 4 years from the same position as us has spent big on a striker.
I’m still waiting for someone to point me to the proof that this has ever worked and I’ve been waiting for days now. When has a club in our position spent £15m on a striker and got promotion? The closest you will probably find are Andre Gray to Burnley for £10m and Jordan Rhodes to us for £10m.
Exactly.I would have said no but then his goal at the weekend reminded me what he is capable of. He looks like a proper striker, a safe bet. Technically he is capable, this wouldn't be like signing Britt who couldn't trap a bag of sand. His goal on Sunday reminded me a bit of Harry Kane. I think he'll go on to big things.
At the current moment I see him a bit like Ivan Toney when he went to Brentford. Nobody was saying they had overpaid for him. It was a really obvious transfer and that he would come good and do the business. How much would they get for him now?
We can't afford to spend big money and he be a mega flop but can we afford not to buy him and he become the next Harry Kane? We've seen the difference a top quality sorry can make to a championship team. We had Mitrovic and Solanke at the top 2 last season and they were a huge part of why those teams got promoted.
If we always play it safe we're more likely to stay in the championship.
We’ve not had someone who does that sort of thing consistently since Bamford left.
You have picked the success stories by just picking the promoted teams. All the teams that didn't get promoted those seasons had strikers that they had bought on a budget that didn't work out necessarily.
As for teams that had spent big money on strikers that worked then last season Fulham and Bournemouth had Mitrovic (£22m) and Solanke (£19m).
It's not about spending big though. It's about buying proven, players that have already scored goals in this league. Leeds with Bamford didn't cost £15m but he was a player that had previously scored a lot at this level, same for Grabban, Sharp, Abraham etc. So the question is really "Is buying proven goalscorers a more reliable indicator of future success than buying unproven?" If the answer is yes then you ask how we can buy proven. If the best option is Gyokeres then the price becomes less relevant. There is obviously an upper limit on what is reasonable but if he's our only option then we're obviously going to have to pay a premium. Are there other proven goalscorers we can buy for less? If so, then go for them but people tend not to want to sell their proven goalscorers or they've already left to go play in the PL.