Quote Originally Posted by Rjk View Post
if you look at non-penalty goals + assists per 90 minutes last season, our best player by some distance for that measure was Harry Wilson with 0.58.

Second was Sheyi Ojo with 0.46.

third was Kieffer Moore with 0.45.

then there's a huge gap to the next player - Joe Ralls on 0.21, and Will Walks on 0.2.

that is a massive hole in the team offensively that we are having to fill. Giles we are all hoping will be good, and then we are looking at Tomlin or youngsters stepping up, or perhaps Murphy realising his potential.
it isn't impossible that we will replace these goals and assists but a betting man would probably guess we will have less of a goal threat this season
I would cautiously suggest that Ojo figures above are an example of where stats can be misleading. My memory suggests he was very hot for a few games (10 or less) but very average in short bursts or missing completely for rest. Now that might be what was going on around him more than anything but I understand he started well and faded at Rangers too.

Regarding Ojo, we'll miss him when he was hot, miss him as a depth piece when he was average and not miss him when he was cold or missing.

Over 46 games I expect Giles will be able to replace Ojo and moreso so Wilson will be the big miss in an attacking sense because think it's unlikely Giles does that well. But Ojo did allow some attention away from Wilson on reputation alone and not sure we have that now - the need for depth now seemingly missing. Wilson and Ojo also did a lot of hard work during our good run pre-Christmas as well.

Regarding full-backs for first half of last season we had Bacuna and Bennett. If NG, Sang and Bagan can do better than that combination then even though Bennett appears to be a big miss, us being exposed on one side, that doesn't become different til second half of the season.

We were much better than midtable sides, surprisingly bad against bottom sides and poor (a few one off days aside) against the best in the division last year. Midtable sides might get closer to us but we should be better against bottom sides so still waiting to hear how we're much worse than last year.