Where's our Bojan?

[stillwater]

Cambiasso?

[Suffolk exile]

Maybe a combo of Mahrez and Kram? Stranger things have happened!

[ScouseFox]

equatorial guinea

[Clever Fox]

Our saviour Borek Dockal.

 

24 assists last season, 9 so far this season as well as 8 goals. 

Sounds like what we need. Who is he. Who does he play for. how much and is he available.

[Guest Bilo]

Bojan was invisible at the Britannia. We knew losing Mahrez was going to be tough, and I can see us getting back on track when he comes back.

[SpacedX]

I'm not quite sure you've got the idea of the thread. Hammond is hardly a game changer is he?!

 

For what it's worth I think Mahrez is our player like that. I think he's the first player at Leicester in a long time where when he gets the ball a lot of the crowd expect something good to happen and get excited.

Hard to articulate - although many have tried how utterly SHITE Villa were last Saturday - excluding Alan Hutton - together with their lacklustre support. A superior side to City and it would have been a rout. Riyad Mahrez who would have torn them apart and I feel that the same applies against Stoke. I agree, there is a huge wave of excitement, anticipation and expectation every time Riyad runs at a defence. I'm hoping that Algeria lose tomorrow against South Africa although I do want him to perform well out there.  We clearly miss him - away playing for his country as opposed to having the luxury of taking a 'well deserved' mid season break in Jamaica. (Pointedly, I can see little difference between Mahrez and Sterling other than about £70 grand a week and when Riyad similarly insists on tap dancing on the edge of the box there's usually a shot on target at the end of it before he falls over). Imagine at this point in the season, sending one of our supposed key players on a mid season holiday!!?? City should similarly despatch Jamie Vardy to Butlins Skegness as a reward for his one Premiership goal so far this season...and if by chance he audaciously manages two in the next campaign then we should definitely up the stakes to a Centre Parc. 

 

Back to the O.P. - remember how Cambiasso instantly turned the game last September at the Britannia? Both Playmaker and commanding in a holding MF role. Anyway, I've alway's maintained that Hughes has an eye for a buy and he was purportedly coveting Bojan long ago for Man City. As shrewd purchase as this has been for Stoke and obvious quality aside...Imagine if Hughes had succeeded in luring Xherdan Shaqiri to the potteries!!!

[Bamba's Babes]

 

Made for the No.10/free role.

[Mark]

 

Made for the No.10/free role.

 

We had enough chances to try him there last season after promotion was achieved but it never happened, even GTF was preferred. 

[broughtonblue]

So Stoke have Bojan who can make a difference in a poor/average team and most of the other established teams have someone like that .... Even West Brom currently have Berahino but who have we got with that extra level of class that can REALLY change a game? Mahrez has shown flashes of it but not consistently enough yet but if we keep him he may turn into that player but whilst we have an hard working (mostly) bunch of players we have certainly been light in real quality. Esteban of a few years ago maybe but not regularly enough now.

You use the word 'established ' so they can attract these players

We are not established so can't yet!

[Bamba's Babes]

We had enough chances to try him there last season after promotion was achieved but it never happened, even GTF was preferred. 

 

Yep!

[Captain...]

Bojan did one thing of note yesterday the rest of the time he was fairly average. I thought Moses caused us more problems.

We have players that can score spectacular goals and win games/points, Schlupp, Mahrez, Knocky, Kramaric? Even Nugent and Vardy have done it once each this season.

What we lack is the experience and ability to control games for long periods and carve out and convert basic chances.

We don't need a flair player we need to play better from front to back, cut out the sloppy basic mistakes on and off the ball, not panic in possession, not be scared of the ball and not be scared to try and play football. No more aimless hoofing to Ulloa or chipping bad balls for Vardy to run on to.

[Dan]

Bojan is a 'freak' signing. His career stalled spectacularly after his departure from Barcelona, when Stoke bought him in the summer there wasn't much of a queue for his signature because he'd so spectacularly underperformed for so long. Barca wanted rid because despite selling him for $12m they'd had to buy him back for $13m, and were unable to offload him to Ajax. Stoke, it would now appear, have signed an absolute bargain.

 

I was saying in the summer I wasn't convinced he'd be all that as a signing simply because he seemed to be going further and further downhill. A bit of a Ravel Morrison like player (without the cuntishness) but unlike most cases, it's actually worked out very well for him.

 

He'll be doing better than Stoke in a couple of years I'm sure.

[RokoNZ]

Hi there. I'm new here but saw this post and thought I would just say, 4 goals in 16 prem outings does not deserve a title to a post. Seriously, as a Croatia supporter who

knows his European football as well as his English football let me just say that Bojan has struggled massively to adjust to the premiership, and is only just doing so now. Yes, he produced a piece of magic, but he had 5 metres of space and 5 seconds to pull it off. Should never have happened, just poor marking really. If Andrej has 4 goals from 16 games come the end of the season than I will eat my hat, but I think with good service I would be massively disappointed if he hasn't got double that. So 25 minute cameos aside, after no football for close to a month, I think let's see if City have their Bojan after 4 months, the length of time Bojan has already been in the league

 

Cheers

[Richard]

Bojan has been pretty average at best all season.

[Manwell Pablo]

Hi there. I'm new here but saw this post and thought I would just say, 4 goals in 16 prem outings does not deserve a title to a post. Seriously, as a Croatia supporter who

knows his European football as well as his English football let me just say that Bojan has struggled massively to adjust to the premiership, and is only just doing so now. Yes, he produced a piece of magic, but he had 5 metres of space and 5 seconds to pull it off. Should never have happened, just poor marking really. If Andrej has 4 goals from 16 games come the end of the season than I will eat my hat, but I think with good service I would be massively disappointed if he hasn't got double that. So 25 minute cameos aside, after no football for close to a month, I think let's see if City have their Bojan after 4 months, the length of time Bojan has already been in the league

 

Cheers

 

Regarding Bojan you are certainly correct, I highlighted him as an example of a potential tidy bit of business in the summer but name a thread after him is rather silly, although bearing in mind he only cost £3M and is still very young it is hard to call Stoke's investment in him bad business. 

 

However I feel your faith in your countryman is rather misplaced I hope he can adjust and play a part, but to suggest he can score at a rate of one in two, in this league, playing for us, is rather ludicrous. No offence but the Prva HNL is a million miles away from the Premier League in terms of standard and he's playing for a team rooted to the bottom of the league.

[RokoNZ]

I hear you Manwell. What I would say to that  Kramaric call is that I, and I think most Croatian supporters, believe he is a bit out of the ordinary. Yes, he will need to adapt to the pace of the league, but it's also possible that if 3 chances fall to him in the box he might put all 3 away. To be able to finish I don't think you need to have 3 months of adapting, you need to have great service and the ability to find space and create chances for yourself when the opportunities arrive. Bojan is not an out and out striker like Kramaric. You might say it's a crap league, but every decent Croatian started in that league. But some guys, like Modric, Suker, Boban and Boksic, are just clearly head and shoulders above others in the league. I would like to think Kramaric is one of those players. Time will tell. But so far he has stepped up from club level and scored in the Europa league, and in his only 2 starts for Croatia he has scored in both games, and those were also a step up from where he was. I'm not saying he's Costa material, but some guys make the adjustment to new leagues look easy.

The only thing I would add is that where as Suker was only left footed, Krama is adept with either foot, and that is what makes it such a challenge to close him down in the box.

If you look at someone like Mario Mandzukic in the Croat league, he was a 20 goal a season score at the best team in the league, so he had all the service to score at will. The same with Eduardo before he went to Arsenal. But Mandzukic is not on the same level as Andrej in terms of being a goal scorer, and that's common knowledge in Croatia

 

But hey, you might be spot on and he might really struggle to adapt. But maybe you're also over estimating how great a step up this league is. If he comes up against fellow Croat Dejan Lovren he might bag a hatful against Liverpool

 

You can't judge him off the 25 minute run yesterday at all. The season ended mid December in Croatia. He needs to start and get into a flow in a game

 

Ok, enough blabbering. But I will just say that if he fails then a lot of hope for the Croatian national team also fails, because he's the guy I'm expecting to take us to a semi final of a major tournament one day. He's the great hope for us

[Hollism]

I agree that some will be overestimating the gap between the PL and the Croatian league.

Chelsea, Man City, etc are obviously better than almost every team Kram has ever played against, but we've all noticed how crap Burnley, Sunderland, QPR, Villa, Hull and Palace are.

We need to do better than 3 of those teams. The teams at the top that put the PL in such high regard aren't the ones we're interested in finishing above.

[StokeFan]

As a Stoke fan, I hope you don't mind me commenting on this thread because there seems to be a little bit of misinformation, or at least, people confusing Bojan's role with your new signings.

 

Firstly, as a season ticket holder, I saw Bojan in the first game of the season against Aston Villa, specifically, I saw him get clattered in the first minute and disappear for 89 of them. He also looked anonymous against you lads. Here's the thing, he was a weak player, but he's put on a lot of weight since then, almost a stone in fact and looks a lot better because of it. Stronger, more physical, able to take the kicking that he gets every week.

 

Secondly, those comparing his goal record with other strikers are a bit confused. We're not adopting him as a striker, we're using him as a number 10, a false number 10 so to speak. If you watch a heat diagram of his movement, very little of it is in the box. He's everywhere outside the box, and he seems to have settled into that role better than playing up front as an out and out striker. Also, I don't know what his current assist record is, but if there was a stat for "goals involving thus player", I imagine his would be huge. Since he's come to form, he has been at the heart of everything. The game against West Brom was a perfect example of that where everything came through him and the 2 goals we scored were both set up by him in some form, even if he didn't get an actual assist for either.

 

I think some of the comments on FT about Stoke are pretty harsh to be fair. We've worked hard to stay in the league and as such we have perhaps been able to attract a better player. We're not a pub team, and with all respect, I appreciate you wanted to beat us at home, but you beat us away in a fairly similar fashion... actually, with all respect, probably a more one sided game because we dominated did we not?

 

As for you, picking up a playmaker is hard... or at least picking up one who actually can take control of a game is. 

 

Finally, I haven't read anyone on the Oatcake suggest Bojan is better than David Silva ... If that's the case, they're complete muppets.

[Manwell Pablo]

I hear you Manwell. What I would say to that  Kramaric call is that I, and I think most Croatian supporters, believe he is a bit out of the ordinary. Yes, he will need to adapt to the pace of the league, but it's also possible that if 3 chances fall to him in the box he might put all 3 away. To be able to finish I don't think you need to have 3 months of adapting, you need to have great service and the ability to find space and create chances for yourself when the opportunities arrive. Bojan is not an out and out striker like Kramaric. You might say it's a crap league, but every decent Croatian started in that league. But some guys, like Modric, Suker, Boban and Boksic, are just clearly head and shoulders above others in the league. I would like to think Kramaric is one of those players. Time will tell. But so far he has stepped up from club level and scored in the Europa league, and in his only 2 starts for Croatia he has scored in both games, and those were also a step up from where he was. I'm not saying he's Costa material, but some guys make the adjustment to new leagues look easy.

The only thing I would add is that where as Suker was only left footed, Krama is adept with either foot, and that is what makes it such a challenge to close him down in the box.

If you look at someone like Mario Mandzukic in the Croat league, he was a 20 goal a season score at the best team in the league, so he had all the service to score at will. The same with Eduardo before he went to Arsenal. But Mandzukic is not on the same level as Andrej in terms of being a goal scorer, and that's common knowledge in Croatia

 

But hey, you might be spot on and he might really struggle to adapt. But maybe you're also over estimating how great a step up this league is. If he comes up against fellow Croat Dejan Lovren he might bag a hatful against Liverpool

 

You can't judge him off the 25 minute run yesterday at all. The season ended mid December in Croatia. He needs to start and get into a flow in a game

 

Ok, enough blabbering. But I will just say that if he fails then a lot of hope for the Croatian national team also fails, because he's the guy I'm expecting to take us to a semi final of a major tournament one day. He's the great hope for us

 

That's all fair enough and hope he can do well for us, but a strike rate of one in two or better is only achieved by a hand full of players every season, he might do alright for us but I think banging in the goals, at that rate, is beyond optimism, looking at our run of fixtures we could be waiting for some time for his first goal. Not only does he have to adapt and be good enough which the jury is still out on, he has to put up with the limited service we're going to provide him in some games.

[Babylon]

I think some of the comments on FT about Stoke are pretty harsh to be fair. We've worked hard to stay in the league and as such we have perhaps been able to attract a better player. We're not a pub team, and with all respect, I appreciate you wanted to beat us at home, but you beat us away in a fairly similar fashion... actually, with all respect, probably a more one sided game because we dominated did we not?

Don't worry we have lots of fans with "delusions of grandeur" in the words of our managers. I don't think we've got over blowing our chance of establishment in the top flight by appointing Peter Taylor.

[Silverdaz]

 

Made for the No.10/free role.

Just no

[Suffolk exile]

Don't worry we have lots of fans with "delusions of grandeur" in the words of our managers. I don't think we've got over blowing our chance of establishment in the top flight by appointing Peter Taylor.

 

I have to say that I agree with the Taylor appointment. With hindsight, it was a watershed decision which dictated the following decade of the club........

[StokeFan]

Don't worry we have lots of fans with "delusions of grandeur" in the words of our managers. I don't think we've got over blowing our chance of establishment in the top flight by appointing Peter Taylor.

I was talking to someone about Peter Taylor the other day... but I ended by saying the worst Premiership manager I could remember was Dave Bassett. How he couldn't get that Leicester team to pick up a win for so long is baffling. You'd just been in Europe hadn't you ? Izzet etc?

 

For what it's worth, you've had some bad luck, like the Liverpool game which was just shambolic refereeing. it's those kind of games that can really haunt a team like yourselves. Points are everything. You've also dropped points where it mattered.

 

What you could do with, I guess, is a sort of talisman. I had a quick look on premierleague.com (this does tie into my point btw), but at this time in our first season, we were 16th. 2 points above the relegation zone, having played a game more than most the teams around there. We certainly were not safe. Tony Pulis went out and signed James Beattie from Sheffield United and he went on to score 7 goals in 12 games and we stayed up. He was the catalyst to that seasons survival. Of course, he never quite had the same effect in the next season (Typical Beattie, put loads of weight on over summer, looked dreadfully unfit etc) but once you've stayed up, you can build and he is very well thought of among Stoke fans because of his contribution, even if it was for only half a season.

[Babylon]

I was talking to someone about Peter Taylor the other day... but I ended by saying the worst Premiership manager I could remember was Dave Bassett. How he couldn't get that Leicester team to pick up a win for so long is baffling. You'd just been in Europe hadn't you ? Izzet etc?

Basset was after Taylor, it was he who ripped the heart out of the club and signed a load of duffers... everyone after him has been picking up the pieces I'm afraid.