Newcastle shouldn’t go anywhere near Roque Santa Cruz.
Posted on August 23rd, 2010 | 305 Comments |
People will no doubt disagree with me over this, but I just don’t see the point in bringing him to Tyneside, even if it would only be on a loan basis.
It is my belief that the wages we end up paying for the player could be put to better use elsewhere in the team. We showed yesterday that we have a big striker who can play up front pretty well, then we have Nile Ranger, Shola Ameobi and Leon Best who are of a similar stature. If we are to get another attacker I would like to see any wages spent on a smaller striker in the Peter Lovenkrands mould, or perhaps a more ceative player such as Ben Arfa.
Still that is just my opinion, but the stats seem to back me up. I have no idea where this notion came from where some people suggest he would be a great signing. He wouldn’t, he would eat up wages and we would see very little return for that wage. I think people are just going off the name, and the fact that he scored a few goals for Blackburn Rovers just over three years ago.
The stats suggest that Roque Santa Cruz only has a marginally better scoring record than Shola Ameobi has. I’m not making that up, have a look for yourself. They are both not very prolific, both just about the same age, both have had injury problems, in fact they are even exaclty the same height!
Anyway, lets look at Santa Cruz’s goal record. It takes him just over three games to score a goal on average, and apart from that one season at Blackburn where he scored 23 goals, and one season whilst he was still a kid in South America where he scored 18 goals, he has failed to hit double figures in any other season. Prolific!
Then there are his injury problems. What good would this less than prolific player do for us whilst sat on the treatment table? If we are going to splash a bit of money from the little that we have then shouldn’t we try and spend it on a player who will actually play for us and not just keep the physio occupied? Let’s face it, he is busy enough at the moment.
Then you have to look at where he would fit in the team. Any suggestions? Would we play with two big men up front? Surely Andy Carroll can’t be dropped, so why pay oiut the wages on a player who will only actually be a back-up or be very very similar to what we have already?
I ususally like getting linked with new players, new names. It stops people frothing over something somebody says on Twitter, or on the ‘blog comments or whatever. I don’t like this link though, not one bit. We could do with someone mobile, not another big lump to play up front.
That is what I think anyway!
NUFCBlog Author: toonsy
toonsy has written 643 articles on this blog.
Who needs Santa when we have Carroll!