Just get him running the other way instead of facing his own goal and he is a nuisance.
If we had some pace on the wings to play off him we'd be a different outfit.
It is the right wing position that needs addressing more than any. If we had an attacking outlet like a Deulofeu on a good day we'd be scoring a lot more goals.
Beto
Re: Beto
But are you willing to carry him for 2/3s of the season where even when we play to his strengths he can't control a ball and misses chances just to accommodate him for the 1/3 where he hits a purple patch?Cods wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2026 10:42 am But putting it in the onion bag is still putting it in the onion bag... purple patch vs exactly one goal every second game.
I know and understand your feelings on him. I'm not a fan either, just that I think the opinion needle has swayed too far into the negative direction.
He'd score 17 goals this season at current rate assuming playing 38 games, which, playing the way we play isn't too bad, especially given the stop and (no) starts season he's had...
As he's never played more than 25x 90s in a season in his career, and averages fewer than 17x 90s per season over his career, hitting 15 goals from so few games a season he'd need to be a goal per game striker,...a very tough ask.
Of those players that have hit 15+ in a season over the last decade, less than 10% of them have done it in fewer than 34x 90s (that is, almost all of them have played *more than double* the game time Beto averages per season). That's why pro rata is the only way we can view it objectively.
If you take out the Rom seasons, our top scorer has hit 15 or more goals only 6 times in 46 seasons (since 1979/80), so in comparison he's not doing too bad at all.
Despite all this I don't think Moyes is particularly fond of either him or Barry, so I expect a finisher to arrive at the club in the near future.
That's the issue. He has these spells where suddenly he's not just scoring but his all round game is pretty decent, but they are outliers in form not something you see regularly.
The rest of the time he's utterly crap.
The purple patch massively inflated his stats but actually the reality is he's a liability for the majority of a season, and not because of how we play but because every aspect of his game is terrible apart from when it suddenly clicks for a spell out of nowhere.
Very likeable guy, huge credit for the goals last season that kept us up, but we need to sell him in the summer and buy someone who can deliver in all aspects of the game over a full season.
Re: Beto
AjaxAndy wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2026 3:16 pm But are you willing to carry him for 2/3s of the season where even when we play to his strengths he can't control a ball and misses chances just to accommodate him for the 1/3 where he hits a purple patch?
That's the issue. He has these spells where suddenly he's not just scoring but his all round game is pretty decent, but they are outliers in form not something you see regularly.
The rest of the time he's utterly crap.
The purple patch massively inflated his stats but actually the reality is he's a liability for the majority of a season, and not because of how we play but because every aspect of his game is terrible apart from when it suddenly clicks for a spell out of nowhere.
Very likeable guy, huge credit for the goals last season that kept us up, but we need to sell him in the summer and buy someone who can deliver in all aspects of the game over a full season.
Whilst I agree with your entire argument, a lot has to be said about the fact Beto's two "purple patches" have happened to coincide with getting a proper run of games without being chopped and changed combined with other players not just blammo-ing it at his head at 100mph on the hopeful diagonal.