by Victor Meldrew »
30 Sep 2010 18:48
Snowball Well, if a guy gets 18 goals in 60 appearances at a lower level
we have a reasonable bet that he can get, say, half that amount
one level higher = 9 in 60
But if he plays half the total number of games, then 9/10 is a very tall order indeed!
Although I prefer an orthodox hard-tackling full-back with a bit of pace who might score one or two goaks per season the Harte position is a strange one.
I presume that nearly all of his goals at Carlisle were from set-pieces-I got as far as finding out that 6 of his goals were from penalties last season out of 16 in all but got a bit fed up researching so it is likely that he scored most of the 10 from free-kicks.
In my view there shouldn't be much difference in completion rates at this level and it would depend upon how many opportunities he gets with both free-kicks and penalties.
I have detected in the past few games that Shane Long et al are doing their best to get free-kicks around the penalty area.
In some ways I hope that we are not going back to the Trevor Morley days of diving for free-kicks and penalties as our main attacking strategy.
It is impossible to show whether Harte's defensive contribution led to Carlisle conceding more than the 16 goals he actually scored so we don't really know what his net contribution was.
We also don't know in these post-Gylfi days if anybody else could become a set-piece and penalty specialist.
As long as we don't step away from using wing-play as our main way of attacking I'll be happy but if it becomes all about free-kicks I don't think that is in any sense building a team and a strategy for the future.