Troy Parrott F AZ Alkmaar b.2002

[Razors left peg]

You have players being sold from the Dutch league for big money all the time. It might not be one of the top 5 leagues in football but it's one of the better feeder leagues. If you do well there it's a good stepping stone to better things. I just find it stupid for anyone to say he's not a striker when he clearly is

[~YTM~]

Only issue I'd have about Parrott leading the line as a lone striker is do we have the midfield and wide players to support him.

[samhaydenjr]

I read this first without the context of previous messages and thought you were saying you'd take Obafemi over Parrott and I honestly thought you had lost you mind

If we could get February-September 2022 Obafemi back, he'd leapfrog Parrott in my mind - has an Irish player ever produced two moments in one game as audacious as his goal and assist against Scotland? Even Robbie?

[Razors left peg]

If we could get February-September 2022 Obafemi back, he'd leapfrog Parrott in my mind - has an Irish player ever produced two moments in one game as audacious as his goal and assist against Scotland? Even Robbie?

His candle burned very bright for a very short space of time. He'd be a top class striker if he keep on the trajectory of how good he was for those few months

[irishfan86]

The lad is 2nd top goalscorer in Dutch Eredivisie and 3 goals in Europe this season while playing as a striker, but lads on football forum still think he cant play as a striker. Strange world!

To be clear I have no doubt he can play as a striker. The issue is can he play there effectively for us, who will inevitably have less of the ball when it matters most. In a premier league context, he’s the kind of forward that would thrive at a top 5 club but I don’t think would be effective at all in the bottom half of the league. I’m not happy about it but we are in a bottom half of the league situation and I don’t think his skillset is optimal for what we require.

To be clear I hope I’m totally wrong about this and he goes on to be prolific for us.

I have watched a few of the European matches where AZ is the underdog and Parrott has in some of those matches been coming off the bench, not playing from the start which factors into my assessment.

[nigel-harps1954]

We are now at the stage where the 6th highest ranked league in European football "isn't a great standard".

[seanfhear]

We are now at the stage where the 6th highest ranked league in European football "isn't a great standard".

I might even get a game there myself ! (wink)

[Eirambler]

We are now at the stage where the 6th highest ranked league in European football "isn't a great standard".

Yes, of course. There are five higher ranked leagues. There are 96 clubs in those leagues. If each of those clubs has a core squad of 23 players, that's 2200 players playing in more highly ranked leagues.

That's before you factor in the difference in standards within smaller leagues like the Eredivisie, where you have a small group of teams that are closer to being on a par with the bigger leagues, and are the clubs that keep the leagues coefficient up, while other clubs in the same division are a much lower standard.

Meanwhile we're trying to put together a squad that can hold it's own against the best countries in Europe and beat the mid ranked countries so that we can get back to qualifying for things again. To do that we need to be picking from the top five leagues in the main. Parrott isn't playing in any of them, other than a couple of token sub appearances for Spurs he never has. Hopefully he can get there, but right now he isn't.

[seanfhear]

Yes, of course. There are five higher ranked leagues. There are 96 clubs in those leagues. If each of those clubs has a core squad of 23 players, that's 2200 players playing in more highly ranked leagues.

That's before you factor in the difference in standards within smaller leagues like the Eredivisie, where you have a small group of teams that are closer to being on a par with the bigger leagues, and are the clubs that keep the leagues coefficient up, while other clubs in the same division are a much lower standard.

Meanwhile we're trying to put together a squad that can hold it's own against the best countries in Europe and beat the mid ranked countries so that we can get back to qualifying for things again. To do that we need to be picking from the top five leagues in the main. Parrott isn't playing in any of them, other than a couple of token sub appearances for Spurs he never has. Hopefully he can get there, but right now he isn't.

Not all the, teams /players, in one league would automatically fall in to the positions that you have posted !

[Eirambler]

Not even in the slightest. Parrott's a decent squad option but he's done literally nothing to date that suggests he should be our go to centre forward. Hopefully he gets there but scoring against Heerenveen and Zwolle week in week out doesn't automatically make him a top striker - one of the other leading strikers in that league this season flopped at Hibs last year. What it does do is potentially open up a move for him to a bigger team or league and we'll see how he goes if he gets that move this summer or next. But we need to stop building up relatively minor continental European leagues into something more than they are.

Right now Evan Ferguson at 75% is still comfortably ahead of Troy for the centre forward spot. Hopefully he can get there in time, but for now he either plays in a support forward role for us, plays as a sub, or doesn't play at all.

[Razors left peg]

Not even in the slightest. Parrott's a decent squad option but he's done literally nothing to date that suggests he should be our go to centre forward. Hopefully he gets there but scoring against Heerenveen and Zwolle week in week out doesn't automatically make him a top striker - one of the other leading strikers in that league this season flopped at Hibs last year. What it does do is potentially open up a move for him to a bigger team or league and we'll see how he goes if he gets that move this summer or next. But we need to stop building up relatively minor continental European leagues into something more than they are.

Right now Evan Ferguson at 75% is still comfortably ahead of Troy for the centre forward spot. Hopefully he can get there in time, but for now he either plays in a support forward role for us, plays as a sub, or doesn't play at all.

Funny how you don't mention his goals against Ajax or even Roma... but I suppose that doesn't fit the narrative

[pineapple stu]

Can we agree it's a good league, but not a great league Bill?

(I can't agree that the second top scorer in a league renowned for producing decent young players - albeit not with a 100% success rate - has done "literally nothing to date [to] suggest he should be our go to centre forward". It's not as if the other options are pulling up sticks either. There's not a massive amount between our options at the moment.)

[EalingGreen]

We are now at the stage where the 6th highest ranked league in European football "isn't a great standard".

I would take your point generally, but would also make one major qualification.

There is a big drop-off between the top four leagues (England UEFA Co-efficient: 106.624), Italy (92.918), Spain (88.025), Germany (83.081) and the fifth (France 67.379).

Fair dues, Netherlands (64.150) aren't too far behind France, but even there there is a further qualification. Namely that those UEFA ratings are based on the performances of each country's teams which have qualified for Europe, with all entrants averaged out. And while the top four each have 7 or 8 entrants, the Netherlands only having 6 means that their league's depth isn't so tested, points-wise, as the bigger leagues. Which only reflects further what we all knew already, namely that once you get past Ajax, Feyenoord and PSV, there is a much greater drop-off in quality than you see between the top teams and the rest in the top four leagues. This top-heavy variability in quality, which understandably reflects respective differences in population, is also to be seen eg in Portugal and Belgium, reaching its culmination in Scotland.

Where does this leave TP? It seems to me that after falling away somewhat from the immense potential he originally showed at Spurs, he's now working his way back nicely at AZ, so that if he continues down this path, he's got to be a contender for the top three Dutch teams.

Whether he could go beyond that to a big team in a big league, must be debateable, since he might still reasonably need a season or two to adjust further and you simply don't get that at that level.

All that said, from where I sit as a Spurs fan who has kept an eye on his career even since he left us, he's surely good enough for regular starts for a middling international team like ROI - I'd have him like a shot for NI, were he one of ours!

[Eirambler]

Funny how you don't mention his goals against Ajax or even Roma... but I suppose that doesn't fit the narrative

No they're encouraging, that's what we want. But, similar to Idah, he's not playing that level of opposition week in week out. The Eredivisie is a good place for showcasing potential talent and hopefully he can get the move to a bigger league before too long. If he moves to a mid table Serie A team or somewhere like that and scores regularly there, that obviously changes everything. But right now, he's still a decent poacher at a lower level and unless Ferguson has an absolutely disastrous start at West Ham he'll still be the red hot favourite to start against Bulgaria.

[Razors left peg]

No they're encouraging, that's what we want. But, similar to Idah, he's not playing that level of opposition week in week out. The Eredivisie is a good place for showcasing potential talent and hopefully he can get the move to a bigger league before too long. If he moves to a mid table Serie A team or somewhere like that and scores regularly there, that obviously changes everything. But right now, he's still a decent poacher at a lower level and unless Ferguson has an absolutely disastrous start at West Ham he'll still be the red hot favourite to start against Bulgaria.

Ferguson at his best has the potential to be our best ever striker, even better than Robbie in my opinion but he has a lot to do to show that right now. I just find it silly the constant need to denegrate other leagues when other countries who beat us on a regular basis are happy to pick players from these so called lesser leagues.