That all you're taking from my post? Says a lot in itself tbh.
I don't know the places he gets shots away from suggest he actually is kind of ok at those things even if it doesn't seem that way. When I say the hard stuff I essentially mean shooting the ball frequently and shooting it from good areas a good percentage of the time you do shoot. I mean the great strikers are the ones shooting a lot. It isn't that they're all super accurate, although they often are, as much as they just shoot and shoot and shoot. And Kean to my eye at least shows some of that ability.
He does have flashes in a game where I see what all the fuss was about. But you are absolutely right, I never feel like he's going to score, going to lay it off to someone else to score and he never holds the ball up, ever. I like that he bets on himself but he never seems to have any sort of a plan and almost always just loses the ball and we end up under pressure again.
If not giving up on every young player at the first signs of struggles is being a contrarian so be it.
That's the thing, he really isn't. When people say sign James I can at least see the wisdom of that because he could when healthy be an actually game changing player. Allan feels to me more like someone who could be Gareth Barry. I liked Gareth Barry but we weren't making a push to Europe on the back of Gareth Barry.
The criticism when we signed him was that he just gets the ball and runs with it until he shoots and while there is something useful in that it does need to be harnessed.
That's it in a nutshell for me, he's definitely got loads of talent, in the sense that he'd be the kid who stood out at schoolboy level when he was skinning everyone everytime he got the ball, but he just doesn't seem to have any understanding of how to harness his raw ability into being an effective player. I've said before, I certainly wouldn't write him off as a player because he's young, but it's getting to the stage where you think he might be a write off for us, because i'm not sure sitting on the bench for another year is something either the club or the player and his agent will be happy with, and it will take a massive turnaround from where he is for him to become a first choice player in the next couple of months.
The only things you've got wrong are the age and the number of players he backs up. Kean is the 19 year old back up to two of our better players. Saying he isn't playing because he isn't rated over looks that there is a very good reason he doesn't play.
None of the players that Brands paid a transfer fee for will be sold this summer unless a crazy offer comes in that will help our FFP position.
Anthony Gordon has had to cope with the same players as Kean but has shown workrate and an appetite for the game.
The problem is he might start those 3 games and do nothing just like DCL has done nothing for the last 6. I want to see him play but we have been so atrocious with the ball that I can't see it going well and then you all will come in here shouting "see, see, we knew he was crap" like he can just use the force or something to get the ball to himself within 25 yards of goal. It's a bad spot. But that's also why we shouldn't give up.
