[Salopbaggie]

I've been particularly watching Rondon's movement since he came back into the side, because I thought I'd got him all wrong when the Chinese offered £30m.......but I was right and they were wrong! I'd take £5m for him now!

He reminds me of when our Sunday side had a few injuries, and one player's mate who came to watch volunteered to help us out. He was a 2nd Row Rugby player and we played him upfront. To his credit he ran around and put himself about, but made the wrong runs for balls out of defence, and balls to his feet would bounce off his shins. He naturally got his head to balls into the box, but his direction obviously lacked any experienced aim. We gave him MoM for his efforts although he had never played before and it showed.

He's had his chance, and he's just nowhere near Premier standard. (He's not alone).

Rondon has had more than enough time. Can't fault his effort but he is nowhere near prolific enough. We need goals and we need them sooner rather than later.
Problem we've got now is that Jan is not a good time to be looking for good strikers. Perhaps a sneaky bid for that young lad Leeds have up front....

I am still not convinced you can judge a striker purely on if they are scoring goals, if a painter has not got any paint, they can't paint your wall, that does not mean they are not a good painter.

If we look at our stats and compare them with Man City;

Man City: Passes: 731.47 average per game: Accuracy 89%: 113 shots on target: 46 goals - WBA: Passes: 330.63 per game: Accuracy 73%: 45 shots on target: 12 goals

Aguero has a goal to game rate of .705, Rondon .1875, on the surface a "no brainer", however if you faction in the pass rate, made by the team, City made 221.23% more passes than we did and if you multiply the differential in pass rate (221.23%) to the goals scored by the two main strikers Aguero still comes in at .705, but Rondon's rate comes up to .415

There are of course many factors not included in this down and dirty calculation, such as the success/accuracy rate of those passes which we also lose out on and would make Rondon's figures look even better, especially when you look at where the vast majority of those passes took place, for us the vast majority were in our own half, where Man City the vast majority were in the second 2/3rds of the pitch.

I am not really trying to prove anything by this, just pointing out if Rondon has not got the ball within 20 yards of the opposition goal, he is unlikely to score.