Choose one today: Jason Prior v Shola

Take a punt:

If you had to keep either Jason Prior ( untested/young/eye for a goal) or Shola ( experienced/well loved/has scored key winners) which would it be?

Me? I'd take the Prior route. Cheap as chips , we could either get the lad loaned out to a League 1 side or keep him as an Andy Carroll in the making.

 

I would take the famous "James perch soiled rag" over Shola

 

Shola - experienced Premier League striker. Don't know why the hype over Prior. Sure, nice to see such a nice story but honestly let's face it. He's likely not good enough and will not be signed; he's 23 - not the next Carroll.

I think people are letting the romanticism of the whole Prior episode get to them.

 

This

 

I think its moreso the hatred of Shola to be honest. He was unspeakably dire yesterday and has been similar on so many occasions that it's hard to remember the few glorious moments that he can produce. Spurs goal or the assist for Ba against Norwich (I think it was) spring to mind, but these moments are so few and far between and so buried under a pile of massive cockups that its hard to remember or even care about them.

 

This

Shola is crap a lot of the time. But he always seems to pull it off when we really need him.

 

Have to laugh at Pardew says Ben arfa doesn't help out defensively. Does he actually watch Shola, the guy stands and waits for the ball, and when he loses it just ambles about. Prior cannot be worse then Shola.

 

My thoughts as well.

 

As much as I think Sholas time is up, I'd still take him ahead of some untried 24 yr old who has been playing non league who I have never seen play. Yes he bagged for the reserves but so did a lot of others who turned out to be complete ****hawks. More required before he'd be a sensible choice ahead of Shola.

As for Shola, he did yesterday what he does most of the time. ust a complete lack of effort and quality. Unfortunately he's a 1 in 6 or 7 type guy. That one is usually useful and influences the game. But its not enough to justify the other 5 or 6 ****e games. If we want to progress we need better than Shola, Stevie Wonder can see that.

 

'Experienced' is one tag - 'proven' is another entirely.

 

Sholas a centre forward.

 

Shola, it was his goal (and a class one at that) that got us a point at Spurs, keeping us unbeaten and going some way to proving the 'they've not been tested yet' doubters wrong. It was shola who set up Ba for the first goal at Manure - had we gone it half time at 0:0 I'm not so sure we'd have gone on to win!

Say what you like about Shola, but he still produces occasionally, and look back at our 08/09 season - all we needed was one of those occasions from any of our 'star' players to keep us up!

 

............who struggles to score.

 

That.

 

Give him a chance and he'll put it away. He's not a great all round striker by any means, but his finishing is absolutely fine. My comment was in reference to the comment about Pardew saying Ben Arfa doesn't defend (which I don't even think he's said anyway...).

 

But you can use Ben Arfa in an attacking role so it is probably right to compare them. Many of us would have started with Benni instead of Shola yesterday. I certainly would have and I think we would have dominated from the off. We'll never know though.

 

Prior easily.

Frankly I think with Shola on the pitch, we basically play with 10 men for large periods of the game. Prior would only have to have a slightly better touch, better ball control, a good shot on him and a decent footballing brain to be better than Shola.

 

I'd agree, I'm not even arguing that. The point I'm making is someone waaay up indicated the reason Pardew didn't want to play Ben Arfa on the wing (a position that does require more defending than lone striker) was because he wouldn't defend, but that didn't apply to Shola.

I don't think Sholas a worldbeater by any means (despite the current username) but knocking his defending is like having a go at Tim Kruls goal record. Besides which apart from the last 5-10 minutes where a decade of destroying most of his lower body meant he was completely spent he did a fair bit of chasing yesterday, as did Ben Arfa.

 

I'm not being funny , but has anyone seen Shola actually run?

 

Cool.