We would be mad to loan him as things stand when we are short upfront (on the basis that we've lost Varney and Dickson and Fleetwood look finished at Charlton) and Parky himself has been talking about bringing in another striker this month. However, Gray will probably be on a good Championship wage having been bought for £1.5m and it's possible we could loan him out (I can't see them covering our outlay and buying him) to fund the loan of a stiker we can't afford to buy. A change of scenery might also do him some good in terms of confidence although he doesn't look like he can cut in the Premier League to me, especially playing in a Stoke City side.
Meanwhile, Deon Burton will get the opportunity on Saturday to take some revenge against his former employers and it's high time a Charlton player did this as the goals against us in similar circumstances far outweigh those Charlton players have managed. Burton also owes us a couple of goals and this weekend would be the perfect opportunity to get them, particularly if it fuelled a second successive win and set-us up for the Palace confrontation.
As I understand it, Burton is not able to play on Saturday though I thought that this kind of arrangement wasn't possible these days.
ReplyDelete4-5-1 can appear defensive, but with the right players it can work and it wouldn't surprise me if it now becomes Parky's favourite system, not least since it may bring the best out of Shelvey, or even Ambrose, in the roving role in behind. In this system Burton is much, much better than Gray as the "hold up" man and this makes Stoke's interest in Gray interesting. As you say, a loan deal doesn't really make sense, but in the unlikely event that Stoke were prepared to pay anything close to £1.5m then I would think he has to go. He has been a big disappointment in my view and nowhere near worth the money. That said, Amdy Faye is getting a game and they are hard to beat, so maybe Pullis thinks he can get more out of players than Charlton can!!
Me too - he's our player now (not my preferred choice) so I don't see why he couldn't play. I can't see Stoke shelling out for Gray especially as there's a question-mark over him at the moment. I do believe he's a better player than we've been able to get out of him, but that's no reason to hang on if it's not working for us. Kevin Lisbie springs to mind....
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