Brian are you REALLY a pillock?

[Smoking Kills Dancing Doe]

Didn't BM and NH have a falling out cause someone was telling everyone that Uncle Don says we need a striker? Kinda makes u look a bit of a tit.

Cnut of a Chairman? Lolcats.

[Snowball]

Yes but Long has had a career long drought. (bit of a fishing expedition here - stands back and waits for an avalanche of stats that 'prove' Long to be the best forward Reading have ever had

Rubbish. Long had a very good goals to minutes ratio before this season, comparable to Doyle

[Wycombe Royal]

Virtually every striker gets a barren spell.

Yes they do and none has ever said anything different. But unfortuntely for Shane he has them frequently, broken up by short scoring bursts.

We need a consistent striker and not one who only scores consistently for two months of the season. I would like to see this striker play ALONGSIDE Long as he provides so many other attributes to the team.

[Snowball]

Virtually every striker gets a barren spell.

Yes they do and none has ever said anything different. But unfortuntely for Shane he has them frequently, broken up by short scoring bursts.

Seriously, what do you call a drought, or dry spell?

900 minutes without a goal? What?

As most strikers in our league don't get double figures in a 46-game season, 4-5 x 90 minute games would be run-of-the-mill

[Snowball]

DROUGHTS?

These are the numbers of minutes played in games not scoring for the whole of Shane Long's RFC career.

I doubt that any of these, except maybe the Rodgers era, are at all unusual for a striker

I've not counted minutes in games where he did score

His worst-ever spell was last season under Rodgers where he could barely get a game and played
673 minutes (about 570 under Rodgers in 5 months) before scoring at Liverpool for McDermott

2005-06 - longest number of minutes 365 = 4.0 games without scoring.
2006-07 - longest number of minutes 388 = 4.3 games without scoring.
2007-08 - longest number of minutes 380 = 4.3 games without scoring.
2008-09 - longest number of minutes 513 = 5.7 games without scoring.
2009-10 - longest number of minutes 673 = 7.5 games without scoring.
2010-11 - longest number of minutes 585 = 6.5 games without scoring.



Below is the actual data. One thing that IMO acts against Long is that he has played so many sub appearances of just a few minutes, so he's "always around" and "playing" but really, barely getting a kick, as here for example

14 Portsmouth Scored 1
07 Newcastle Scored 1
03 Fulham
06 Arsenal
06 Man City
06 Middlesbro
06 Birmingham
07 Sunderland
06 West Ham
06 Spurs
07 Portsmouth

74 total minutes in 11 games = 11 appearances but not even ONE Doyle appearance which was always 85-90 minutes

[Warfield North Stand]

Well said Gordon Cummings,I have been saying that for months. My brother( not a Reading fan), was sitting next to me at Preston away while they were doing said shooting pratice. He was nearly in tears of laughter. Long did not put it into the net once. He was woeful. You should of seen his face when I said he was our "main striker"!!

[winchester_royal]

Seriously....another one of these threads?

[brendywendy]

Wayne Rooney has scored zero goals in open play this season

He has had three penalties though. He only managed to score two.

Man United will sell him in January and England will dump him.



Kevin Doyle has scored just one league goal this season. Wolves will send him out on loan to Wallsall

agreed- all worse than long

[brendywendy]

Kebe shines in spells, but it is mostly speed rather than pure skill, very much like Gilkes in his prime.

dont make me come over there and spank youy young man.

kebe is god and is worth a billion of gilkes

[Gordons Cumming]

Well said Gordon Cummings,I have been saying that for months. My brother( not a Reading fan), was sitting next to me at Preston away while they were doing said shooting pratice. He was nearly in tears of laughter. Long did not put it into the net once. He was woeful. You should of seen his face when I said he was our "main striker"!!

What Long needs is a big guy alongside him to hold up the ball. Hunt or Church are too similar.

Someone like Grant Holt........

[Snowball]

Grant Holt would be good. He could share digs with Ian Harte

[Snowball]

Seriously....another one of these threads?

Winch, you or others have argued that long has long-barren-spells.

All I've done is posted the actual facts, and shown the truth. His "barren spells"
are not that unusual. When you consider that the worst spell of his own career
is the equivalent of 7.5 games, that's not at all bad.

I'm pretty sure Doyle has gone longer than that more than once.


The problem on this list is people get a subjective feeling, post it as fact and it becomes "law".

It's a fact that overall, Long scores 1 in 3 even when we include this tough spell.

It's a fact that he gets over 50% of shots on target etc etc



Another example of "impression" becoming fact is "How crap Church is in front of goal". Like many others, that's what I would say. "If only Church could learn to finish he'd be a great player. He misses LOADS OF simple chances."

WRONG!

But I was CERTAIN that was the case. Probably because he DID miss a couple of sitters and they stuck in my mind. Church and Long are currently on target 50% of the time (counting hitting the woodwork as MISSING the target) and that's pretty much the league average altho' a few do noticeably better.

[Gordons Cumming]

It's a fact that he gets over 50% of shots on target etc etc



.

Then my advice to Shane is to try and place the ball either side of the goalie.

HTH

[Snowball]

In the glorious 2005-06 season Kevin Doyle had the following runs without goals

6-5-5-5-5 and he was almost always playing full games

He has had MUCH much worse though. Remember he has mostly started these games and played 90 minutes

21 games without scoring
11 games without scoring
08 games without scoring (plus two internationals without scoring = 10)

and

7
7
7
6
6
6
5
5
5
5
5
5
4
4
4

[Snowball]

So Doyle has three times matched Long's exceptional bad run, and three times exceeded it, once by 300%

[Gordons Cumming]

Why are we always comparing Long with Doyle?

A little tiresome.........

[No Hoops]

Why are we always comparing Long with Doyle?

A little tiresome.........

I thought they were twins.........................aren't they?

[BR2]

It's snowball who keeps comparing Long to Doyle,nobody else.
FWIW Doyle plays for a team second from bottom in the Premier League.
Long plays in a team that until last weekend has been in the top half of the Championship all season.
Conclusion:-
Long has better players around him (and probably creating more chances as there are normally many more the lower you get in the league pyramid) at Championship level than Doyle has at Premier League level.
A pointless comparison.

Regarding Brett Pitman he didn't start in some of those early games so again (as with Rooney pointed out by Wycombe)the comparison is pointless.
We are where we are in the Championship partly because our lack of creativity in midfield (outweighed by having two of the best wide players at this level)but mainly because none of our strikers are very good and the one who gets picked for every game is no better than the others.

A major misjudgement by the club (manager and chairman)in choosing to go with just 3 strikers who are much of a muchness-a gamble that hasn't worked and needs to be rectified (as most people said on here in August and again last month with the loan window closing)or else we might well get caught up in a relegation battle.

[winchester_royal]

Seriously....another one of these threads?

Winch, you or others have argued that long has long-barren-spells.

All I've done is posted the actual facts, and shown the truth. His "barren spells"
are not that unusual. When you consider that the worst spell of his own career
is the equivalent of 7.5 games, that's not at all bad.

I'm pretty sure Doyle has gone longer than that more than once.


The problem on this list is people get a subjective feeling, post it as fact and it becomes "law".

It's a fact that overall, Long scores 1 in 3 even when we include this tough spell.

It's a fact that he gets over 50% of shots on target etc etc



Another example of "impression" becoming fact is "How crap Church is in front of goal". Like many others, that's what I would say. "If only Church could learn to finish he'd be a great player. He misses LOADS OF simple chances."

WRONG!

But I was CERTAIN that was the case. Probably because he DID miss a couple of sitters and they stuck in my mind. Church and Long are currently on target 50% of the time (counting hitting the woodwork as MISSING the target) and that's pretty much the league average altho' a few do noticeably better.

Calm down Snowy...I wasn't having a pop at you. I was just bemoaning the fact that 2ww felt that yet another thread about Shane Long was needed.

[Snowball]

No Probs WR


I still maintain that a lot of known "facts" about church, long, hunt are plain wrong when the objective facts are checked