2020/21 Dominic Calvert-Lewin

Status
Not open for further replies.
I did tell you what my standard was and it was not whatever a £60m player is. I said we're trying to break into the top 6. With that standard in mind, he's going to get criticism if he, for example, goes the entire post-lockdown period without scoring last season. That's obviously not going to cut it. How many strikers in the PL managed that, with anything remotely close to his minutes? It was exceptionally bad.

Personally I'm not interested in "signs" and neither are the club or anyone else in the top half of the premier league. We can't look back at the end of another failure season and say "Ah well, he only cost £1.5m", or "he only cost £60k". We've spent hundreds of millions, have a top 6 wage bill and haven't been in europe for years. We needed results last season, never mind next season. Anyone who doesn't meet the required standards obviously will come in for criticism.
We’re trying to break top 6, agreed.

He didn’t play well post lockdown and there’s legitimate areas for criticism, agreed. If you think that’s indicative of how he’ll play this season and his ceiling, then fair enough and see why you’d be concerned.

Legitimate criticism of poor performances can’t be deflected by “he cost 1.5 million”, agreed.

Spending hundreds of millions and having a top 6 wage bill though, what’s that to do with DCL? We haven’t spent hundreds of millions on him or until his new contract been spending big on his wages. Senior players like Rooney, Tosun, Niasse have been flops and haven’t been good enough for where we want to get to and weren’t ever going to be.

We aren’t City or Chelsea, we’re not coming from mid pack and getting top 6 by signing ready made top 6 players in every position, nice though that would be. We’re having to do it a bit more like Spurs, developing talent to top 6 level and mixing them with good senior pros.

So you might not be interested in young players showing signs of improving or developing into top 6 players but the club sure as hell are.
 
He needs to change the way he plays. Run behind the back of defenders instead of constantly leaning on the defender with back facing goals. We have good passer in the team now and he needs to be smarter than a target man.
 



Status
Not open for further replies.
Top