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I said before we signed him we could have Pele or Maradona up front and we still wouldn't score because we don't create enough chances.
I'll assume he'd have scored a couple. They may have proved vital.
He'd have found it difficult, however he may have been a perfect fit, he may have held the ball up, brought others in as well as scoring a couple.
He may also have been rotated along with niasse and never quite found form. I'm inclined to believe he would have had a positive influence on us though, still may not have been enough.
I could say ffs.. But i will say FoR ****S SakE! 🙈 And this.. please join Opta for some statistic.. It’s evident where we ****ed up, and Sala wasn’t it..
1 or 2 goals could have made a difference so it's entirely possible yes
Of course the tragedy is for Sala's family.
However, that doesn't diminish in any way that his untimely death hasn't affected our chances of staying up and as a club its appallingly bad luck. Especially with the fact that we were so desperate for a striker of Sala's quality.
Has something like this ever happened before?
No.
The honest answer has to be that no one knows - City fans did not even have the opportunity to form some sort of opinion of how Emiliano Sala would turn out for us based on having seen him play a game or two in a blue shirt.
All we have to go on are highlights reels from his time at Nantes and, based on that flimsy evidence, I would say that he would have been better in the air than any other striker available to us from February onwards. Premier League defenders aren't too used to facing forwards who specialise in heading the ball these days and so it may have been that Sala would have been equally as influential here as he was with Nantes in the autumn, but a player like him would rely on good service more than some of the more explosive forwards you get in this division - it might be that we would have ended up frustrated at his lack of impact while thinking that he could be so much more effective if he was getting a regular supply of crosses.
We have lost 10 games since we had agreed to sign Sala. 7 of those were by more than 1 goal. We lost 2-1 to Arsenal, Chelsea and 1-0 to Fulham. In any of those defeats by a single goal, would Sala have made a difference? Bobby Reid kept missing chances at Arsenal, a game we should have won. Let's not assume that Sala would have buried some of them. Strikers have off days, especially if there's a desperation to find the net. At Fulham, we were awful but they had their keeper to thank for giving them the points. I don't recall us creating that much against Chelsea, but we were resolute at the back and had dodgy decisions to thank for losing the game.
I wasn't expecting any prolificacy from Sala in a side that doesn't create many chances for its strikers. Assuming Sala would have gone up front on his own, I reckon he would have been starved of possession and would have cut a lonely figure who got demoralised as any normal striker would in our team. 1 tidy striker wouldn't have painted over the many deficiencies in our current team.