David Nugent

[MackworthRamIsGod]

Why o why is this man not getting more game time?

Is Jerome any better than he is?

When Nugent and Vydra play together good things tend to happen.

Mr Rowett please start playing Nugent again.

[EnigmaRam]

Gary needs to decide on his first choice striker and stick with it. Keeping changing strikers really isn't helping. I'd opt for nuge myself as we are lacking in options thanks to a rubbish transfer window

[Cam the Ram]

When Jerome starts, half the time I find myself thinking Nugent would have done better against this defence, but then when Nugent starts, I end up thinking the exact same about Jerome. In reality, sadly neither are really good enough to be a striker who will fire a Championship team to promotion

[Van der MoodHoover]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought that nugent was looking shot when he last played and folks on here were speculating his legs had gone.

Perhaps we're seeing the implications of building a side of 30-somethings. They don't have the staying power in this tough division. 

[EnigmaRam]

Lewis walker and Luke thomas need to be on that bench to remind these old uns how to be fearless.

[RoyMac5]

10 minutes ago, EnigmaRam said:

Lewis walker and Luke thomas need to be on that bench to remind these old uns how to be fearless.

Why waste money on Jerome to put these two on the bench instead? But I do like the look of Walker.

[Steve How Hard?]

At present neither are better than the Wardrobe. Give him a pay rise and try and get him back off his loan spell. 

[Ram8]

Of course neither (Jerome or Nugent) are better than Chris Martin; they are both currently League One standard at best, whereas Martin, if played regularly and fed the ball (to his feet) would provide exactly what the team needs at present, opportunities for midfielders and wingers running onto the ball, plus some goals as a bonus too .. the unfortunate fact that we are somewhat short on those players (Hughes, Bryson, Elsnick) is also the manager’s fault ..

How has the chairman allowed him to squander our best assets, and instead recruit ‘past their best’ players such as Cameron Jerome, laughably supposed to bring “pace and power” according to Rowett !! 

I wonder just how many of the Chris Martin doubters have ‘seen the light’ since his banishment into the wilderness, and Jerome and Nugent’s hapless, hopeless displays; and Rowett’s ‘fiddling whilst Rome burns’ ? 

[RedSox]

On 3/3/2018 at 20:28, HantsRam said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought that nugent was looking shot when he last played and folks on here were speculating his legs had gone.

Perhaps we're seeing the implications of building a side of 30-somethings. They don't have the staying power in this tough division. 

Think that was what one of the Sky pundits suggested would happen.  Time to prove them wrong, lads! COYR.

[Spanish]

1 hour ago, Ram8 said:

Of course neither (Jerome or Nugent) are better than Chris Martin; they are both currently League One standard at best, whereas Martin, if played regularly and fed the ball (to his feet) would provide exactly what the team needs at present, opportunities for midfielders and wingers running onto the ball, plus some goals as a bonus too .. the unfortunate fact that we are somewhat short on those players (Hughes, Bryson, Elsnick) is also the manager’s fault ..

How has the chairman allowed him to squander our best assets, and instead recruit ‘past their best’ players such as Cameron Jerome, laughably supposed to bring “pace and power” according to Rowett !! 

I wonder just how many of the Chris Martin doubters have ‘seen the light’ since his banishment into the wilderness, and Jerome and Nugent’s hapless, hopeless displays; and Rowett’s ‘fiddling whilst Rome burns’ ? 

if we'd still got CM I don't believe he would look any better than CAM or Nuge do today.  All 3 of them have seen far better days.  Wished we'd just been brave/decisive and sold CM in the summer and at least we'd have some money and wouldn't have wasted the first half of the year deciding whether we could change our style of play to suit his skills.  In the same way we should have offloaded GT.

[RoyMac5]

6 minutes ago, Spanish said:

if we'd still got CM I don't believe he would look any better than CAM or Nuge do today.  All 3 of them have seen far better days.

Based on what, on hardly being played? It used to be said that strikers needed a run of games to get some form, but now it's used in reverse to suggest they're past it! Nothing in the little we've seen of Chris Martin this season or preseason showed he was past it.

[Spanish]

3 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

Based on what, on hardly being played? It used to be said that strikers needed a run of games to get some form, but now it's used in reverse to suggest they're past it! Nothing in the little we've seen of Chris Martin this season or preseason showed he was past it.

He can't have shown much on the training pitch though?  You clearly feel that if we had played him all season and played to his strengths we would be in a better position than we are.  I think we would be worse off, we will never know, just hunches at the end of the day

[Leicester Ram]

After a promising start to the season, he now sits at 6 goals in 27 appearances. 4 of those have come in two games, Bolton in August and Millwall in December. His other goals were against Forest and Norwich. He has two assists.

Norwich away was on the 28th October, so in the past 4 months, he’s scored 2 goals but only scored in one game.

Those are just the facts but it’s obvious he’s had a big drop off, you can just see when he plays. Not getting into positions to score often enough, doesn’t test CB’s physically anymore and missed the two goal scoring opportunities he got into last time he started.

Right now, Jerome is the better option because he at least can get on the end of a cross and give CB’s a harder time.

I think Rowett had plans to incorporate Martin into the team more but didn’t have the players to do it, built a style around our immobile midfield where we just play the ball into space that requires quicker strikers and had initial success with it. Can’t deny it worked for a while, I was happy for Martin to leave because we were scoring well but it’s become obvious that Nugent and Jerome aren’t up to it.

Regardless of what league we’re in, we need two new younger strikers in the summer. 

[RoyMac5]

1 hour ago, Spanish said:

He can't have shown much on the training pitch though?  You clearly feel that if we had played him all season and played to his strengths we would be in a better position than we are. 

I didn't say that. But I don't think we'd have been worse off and we'd be in a better place squadwise going forward.

[Parsnip]

I was lead to believe that Zanzala was the answer to our striking prayers. Somebody definitely posted on here that this was his breakthrough season. Didn't realise they meant breaking through to Accrington Stanley's bench. I feel cheated.

But yeah I'd drop Jerome and have him as an impact sub.

[lrm14]

1 hour ago, Spanish said:

He can't have shown much on the training pitch though?  You clearly feel that if we had played him all season and played to his strengths we would be in a better position than we are.  I think we would be worse off, we will never know, just hunches at the end of the day

Wouldn't surprise me if he was by miles our best striker on the training pitch, he's just doesn't run non-stop and that's what Rowett clearly values the most in his strikers. Nuge ran constantly for the first part of the season and his age is really showing now, he looked absolutely dead after about 55 minutes against Leeds. We were told by Norwich fans Jerome is a hard worker and he showed it against Fulham, we were also warned that he couldn't control a football which was sadly also on show. It is a bit worrying that our manager seems to value the ability to run over anything else for our strikers. Initially it worked because their work rate opened up space for Vydra, which explains why he's scored so much and the others haven't. The trouble is now Vydra gets doubled up every game and our strikers don't have the technical ability to play out of it.

I'm not sure if I agree with the idea that had Martin played all along we would be in a better spot, we got the second with Nugent leading the line so I think you're right in that we'd be worse off. I just think we should have had the foresight to think that Nuge can't play a full season at this pace. Trading Martin for Jerome was a pretty big mistake considering he changed games on his own from the bench (Norwich and Cardiff spring to mind). Admittedly the injury to Winnall has obviously thrown a big spanner in the works, but I feel like we had a 'plan B' which we've now given to Reading.

[Rev]

37 minutes ago, Parsnip said:

I was lead to believe that Zanzala was the answer to our striking prayers. Somebody definitely posted on here that this was his breakthrough season. Didn't realise they meant breaking through to Accrington Stanley's bench. I feel cheated.

But yeah I'd drop Jerome and have him as an impact sub.

I wonder if that same someone has followed Martin to a Reading forum?

[JoeDerby]

Still think we made a massive mistake not going all out for Benik Afobe, everything that Rowett likes in a striker + more, twice the player of Nugent and Jerome. Young, exciting, scores goals.. he was the perfect fit!

 

Now he's on the bench for Wolves. 

 

He was 100% what we needed!!!!!

[europia]

On 3/3/2018 at 20:28, Cam the Ram said:

When Jerome starts, half the time I find myself thinking Nugent would have done better against this defence, but then when Nugent starts, I end up thinking the exact same about Jerome. In reality, sadly neither are really good enough to be a striker who will fire a Championship team to promotion

I was wondering about this issue, but you have summarised the situation perfectly in my view.  

[kash_a_ram_a_ding_dong]

8 hours ago, reveldevil said:

I wonder if that same someone has followed Martin to a Reading forum?

Oh god,has anyone checked?....poor buggers