Ollie Watkins

[Smirker]

Two assists and a goal but a dreadful display of finishing. Don't care if people don't like hearing it.

We won, finished in the top 8 of the group and Ollie played a massive part in the result, don't care if people don't like hearing it.

That must mean criticism is banned then.

Peter Withe could have hit it a bit cleaner.

Not the same. That's one finish, I'm talking about a habit. It's a massive flaw in is game regardless of the ones he does score.

but he does score plenty. Part of the problem now is that any chance he doesn't take is a sitter than anyone in the world should score according to a bunch of people which means nothing else he does will ever be good enough and it's fucking exhausting seeing so many people slagging off a guy who's well on his way to being our top scorer for the 5th season in a row in a period where we've gone from finishing 17th before he arrived to being in the last 16 of the champions league.

He missed five sitters.

[AV84]

I still think part of the "problem" this season is that we're not getting as many goals from other players as we did last season. Watkins misses stand out more because, other than Rogers, nobody else is really contributing on that front. Understandable that people expect their striker to score, but his misses definitely become more noticeable when we can't seem to rely on anyone else to add a few.

(Not including Duran in that, because obviously he's scored a few very important goals off the bench, but when he starts I don't really expect him to do much.)

[ChicagoLion]

He was very good tonight except his finishing. The pitch let him down on the penalty.

[Monty]

All I can say is that I don't think he'd be very beloved at Arsenal.

[brontebilly]

When he has too long to think he's incredibly average. That one in the first was a sitter, no need to attempt a chip there. The peno was a horror show, funny looking back as it didn't matter. I know I've forgotten at least one other shocker of a miss tonight. Two poor enough efforts at near post.

Liam Scales was playing league of Ireland football not too long ago and honestly that's his level. The other CB was physically weak and bullied in every duel.

[Ian.]

He didn’t miss any chances did he? Did any of them miss the target?

[pauliewalnuts]

Well, it's not just about missing the target, is it?

[eamonn]

Not tonight he didn’t. We won 4-2 and he was directly involved in 3.

And missed five sitters.

There werent five sitters. You're expecting him to score every chance he gets when no striker anywhere does that.

[Smirker]

Two assists and a goal but a dreadful display of finishing. Don't care if people don't like hearing it.

We won, finished in the top 8 of the group and Ollie played a massive part in the result, don't care if people don't like hearing it.

That must mean criticism is banned then.

Spread it around a bit though. It’s weird if you only pick on our best striker in a generation after having a part in 3 of our 4 goals.

It isn't a one off, it's nearly every game.

And the past gen has been arguably our worst in our history. Being the best of that bunch isn't saying much.

[Tuscans]

Two assists and a goal but a dreadful display of finishing. Don't care if people don't like hearing it.

We won, finished in the top 8 of the group and Ollie played a massive part in the result, don't care if people don't like hearing it.

That must mean criticism is banned then.

Peter Withe could have hit it a bit cleaner.

Not the same. That's one finish, I'm talking about a habit. It's a massive flaw in is game regardless of the ones he does score.

but he does score plenty. Part of the problem now is that any chance he doesn't take is a sitter than anyone in the world should score according to a bunch of people which means nothing else he does will ever be good enough and it's fucking exhausting seeing so many people slagging off a guy who's well on his way to being our top scorer for the 5th season in a row in a period where we've gone from finishing 17th before he arrived to being in the last 16 of the champions league.

He missed five sitters.

They weren't sitters. You know there's a bloke in goal trying to stop them yeah?

[Ian.]

He gets so much unwarranted stick, I really don’t get it? They were not sitters, he’s hit the target and they were saved or cleared off the line. He’s brilliant for us and the best striker we’ve had in a very long time.

[paul_e]

He missed five sitters.

That's utter bollocks and shows exactly why it's so fucking tiresome having to argue about this so much. He missed a penalty because he slipped and scored 1. Over the entire game he had 4 other chances. No striker in history has ever had a 100% conversion rate, in fact 1 in 5 is considered pretty good. If you look at xG (which remember compares chances to a huge dataset of similar ones and gives a value based on how often they result in a goal) he had 1.83 tonight, .79 of which was the penalty. All of his other chances combined add up to an expected return of 1 goal.

Across his time with us all of these same figures apply, he scores something like 18% of the chances he gets. Which makes him an average finisher, not shit, not brilliant, just bang in the middle.

but instead of focusing on that some of us prefer to look at the fact that he also has a significantly higher than average number of assists and works his fucking tits off making space for other people. He's a huge net positive for us and the fact that we've improved so much as a team since he arrived should show that.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Is it a joke every time you’re weird about Watkins?

Weird? I think I've made myself clear on Watkins but I'll simplify it for you; he's world class at getting himself into goalscoring positions. It's an art very few strikers have. His problem is he's not the most technically gifted of players, especially for this level which is why he misses so many chances. If he was he'd be playing for Real Madrid.

[Smirker]

He missed five sitters.

That's utter bollocks and shows exactly why it's so fucking tiresome having to argue about this so much. He missed a penalty because he slipped and scored 1. Over the entire game he had 4 other chances. No striker in history has ever had a 100% conversion rate, in fact 1 in 5 is considered pretty good. If you look at xG (which remember compares chances to a huge dataset of similar ones and gives a value based on how often they result in a goal) he had 1.83 tonight, .79 of which was the penalty. All of his other chances combined add up to an expected return of 1 goal.

Across his time with us all of these same figures apply, he scores something like 18% of the chances he gets. Which makes him an average finisher, not shit, not brilliant, just bang in the middle.

but instead of focusing on that some of us prefer to look at the fact that he also has a significantly higher than average number of assists and works his fucking tits off making space for other people. He's a huge net positive for us and the fact that we've improved so much as a team since he arrived should show that.

The context of the chances matters. They were all easy to score and he missed five of them.

[paul_e]

He missed five sitters.

That's utter bollocks and shows exactly why it's so fucking tiresome having to argue about this so much. He missed a penalty because he slipped and scored 1. Over the entire game he had 4 other chances. No striker in history has ever had a 100% conversion rate, in fact 1 in 5 is considered pretty good. If you look at xG (which remember compares chances to a huge dataset of similar ones and gives a value based on how often they result in a goal) he had 1.83 tonight, .79 of which was the penalty. All of his other chances combined add up to an expected return of 1 goal.

Across his time with us all of these same figures apply, he scores something like 18% of the chances he gets. Which makes him an average finisher, not shit, not brilliant, just bang in the middle.

but instead of focusing on that some of us prefer to look at the fact that he also has a significantly higher than average number of assists and works his fucking tits off making space for other people. He's a huge net positive for us and the fact that we've improved so much as a team since he arrived should show that.

The context of the chances matters. They were all easy to score and he missed five of them.

xG is the context of the chances, that's it's entire fucking purpose. Why are you so determined to moan about him tonight of all fucking nights? It's just fucking weird at this point.