Van is the Man

sunama

sunama

sunama

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ive just seen the champ league game vs basle.

a lot has been said about the current crop of top strikers that are playing on this planet.

many feel henry and ronaldo are the best, and few feel that Ruud Van Nistlerooy is the best.

taking bias out of it, i have to say RvN is absolutely the best striker currently on this planet.

he can set people up, score tap ins (not missing a single tap-in, something that henry and rest do), score great goals, score from seemingly impossible angles.

for me, one thing henry and ronaldo have on him is pace. apart from that RvN is better than those guys in EVERY dept.

i remember being quite envious when blackburn and newcastle acquired the services of Shearer who at that time was the best finisher in the world. as a result man utd though created many chances were losing crucial games in the champions league (andy cole wasnt very good at scoring tap ins). and i can say that i would quite envious of any team that had a striker of RvN's callibre.

im just glad man utd have him and not some other club :D

just wanted to share my thoughts with u guys.
 
reason why this isnt spoiler thread is cuz no scores have been given.

also im not basing my decision on one game. im basing it on the fact that he scored 36 (or was it 34) goals in his first season.

also, RvN: top goal scorer in champ league last year.

top goal scorer in this years champ league.

in the champ league henry isnt in the same class as RVN. he is always off the pace (set by RvN) by a few goals. can someone dig up stats on how many goals henry scored in champ league this season and last season?

also ronaldo is always injured and he doesnt score many goals (perhaps due to injury, but that is part of the make up of a player, ie. how injury prone a player is, although RvN gets injured and plays half games, yet still scored 1 or 2 goals in these games). how many goals has ronaldo scored this season, in the champ league and the spanish league?

a lot of people think ronaldo is great. for brazil he is. i cannot disagree. but for his club, he hasnt scored many goals - for inter or real.

henry is good, but RvN is just that bit better.

if its goals u want, i would rather have RvN. if i want a midfielder+leftwinger+striker, then henry can do this.
enough said.

ps. i still think that forlan is total ****. if i were AF i would try and swap forlan for heskey.
 
Originally posted by m1ck
I've seen nothing 'special' from henry for quite sometime, cant remember a goal actually, yet RvN is scoring match in match out 3 goals on saturday 2 today.. hes a top class striker no need to say anything more.
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actually dude, although i think RvN is the best. henry did score a great goal that RvN simply cannot do. it was 2 weeks ago i think.

henry is very very good. one problem he does have is his lightning pace. he races up the field, and he has to stop & wait for about 2 secs for everyone else to catch up (defenders and teammates). if he had someone else with him, ala owen/anelka, then that would be a terrific counter attacking option.
 
indeed. however, the point im making is that RvN is seemingly able to score the majority of the goals. something that henry doesnt seem to be able to do.

utd desperately need an extra striker. right now we only have 2 (forlan doesnt count)!
 
Originally posted by NitrogenY3K
But what no one can deny is that both are 2 of the best strikers in the world atm along with ronaldo.
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does anyone know how many goals ronaldo has scored for Real Madrid, and in how many appearances. me think ronaldo isnt that hot at scoring. (for brazil he is good, but not for club).
 
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Originally posted by Jazz
real madrid aint scoring to many either ;) man utd rely mainly on rvn, real madrid no way do they coz they got like loads of others who can :eek:

for real he has been poor goal scoring wise, he still hasnt fully got injuries out of his system once he does we all know what he can do, country wise everyone gives him the ball so he is bound to score :p
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personally i think he has peaked already. this is good as he will ever get. cuz he has been "coming back from injury for 4 yrs now" and always seems to be up for playing in the world cup. he just gets injured for his club. quite amazing that. he should be ok again in summer 2006, but then he will get mysteriously injured again for the start of the 2006/2007 season, immediately after the world cup. ala 1998 and now 2002.

we must accept that this is ronaldo's new level. like it or not. this has been the case for many yrs now.

coming back from injury says a lot about the character of a player. RvN was also injured yet he came back the first season and scored many goals. ronaldo doesnt seem to be able to do this. shearer also got injured and went onto become a top class finisher.

so i dont think we can make excuses for injuries etc. cuz all players have to deal with them. thats part of being a player, learning how to look after yourself (on and off the pitch), how to warm up, how to move on the pitch, how to avoid damaging tackles (within reason). these are all skills that dont seem to be picked up by most observers.

a lot of people also dont realise that sportsman are almost permanently in a state of injury. its just a case of managing the injury so that it hampers your training and performances as little as possible. when most footballers play, i can almost guarentee that they are playing with a few knocks, knicks, twinges etc. of course when the knock/knick/twinge gets really bad, they might need to come off the pitch before 90 mins is over, or worse, they might have to miss a game or 2.

frankly im not impressed at ronaldo's new level.
 
rvn had a cruciate ligment injury. this is career threatening. shearer and RvN (of the to players) as far as i know, are the only people who have come back from this injury.

also like i said, part of a skill as a sportsman is to look after yourself, and to make sure u do your physiotherapy excercises. working hard in the physio therapy sessions is crucial to recovery and staying free from injury.

i know that some players are just unlucky with injury, but imo some players do very little to prevent injury in the first place. and once injured make little effort to come back from injury. i think ronaldo falls in to the latter bracket. do u guys not find it strange that he is ALWAYS fully fit to play for brazil (in summer of world cup year), yet injured for his club. to me this indicates that as summer of world cup year approaches, he works hard on his body (physiotherapy exercises), to repair the injuries. after world cup summer has passed, he goes back to his old routine (whatever it may be).
 
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"of the to players" should read "of the top players" (that i can think of).

this doesnt even have anything to do with RvN anymore. its more about ronaldo not being what he was.

am i the only one who has notices that he always plays for brazil but can barely scrape together more than 2 consecutive games for his club?

his stats over his entire career are better, but lets concentrate on the last 2 yrs.

also i dont think its right for u to say that a player is great NOW, based on what he did 3 yrs ago (though he did have a good world cup, but now he has gone back to patchy performances for club, similar to inter).

also as i understand it, rvn and shearer both had cruciate ligament injuries. injuries that take about 1 season to heal. ronaldo had the same. if u are saying this is incorrect, then what injury did shearer have before he came to blackburn, and what injury did RvN have before he came to man utd? enlighten us.
 
Originally posted by Davey_Pitch
You mean, concentrate on the last 2 years when he's had severe injured for 95% of it? Yeah, seems fair :rolleyes:
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yep its fair. when judging a player, u have to judge him on injury, warts and all. u dont judge him only on his good qualities, but also on his bad qualities.

for the past few years, ronaldo has been injury prone and hence hasnt shone. so right now he is not in contention to be one of the best strikers, though if he makes it back from injury he may well be.

if u want to use results of 3 years ago, and by that say ronaldo is one of the best, then by that arguement, i can also say that man utd are the best team in the league (cuz thats what they were 3 yrs ago).

u cant have it both ways.

when we say a team or sportsman is (one of) the best we usually mean, on current form. not on what that person did 3, 5 or 10 yrs ago.

as many have stated, rvn and henry are currently 2 of the best strikers on the planet. ronaldo used to be the best....not anymore.
 
Originally posted by Jazz

rvn is also a confidence players just a couple weeks ago i remember 1 utd fan here saying that he looks like a 1 season wonder, so he has 2 good games and now he is a hero again.

at the moment he is utds only source of goals and if he is heavily marked i do wonder how they will get their goals, maybe forlan ;)
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dude, 2 good games dont make u the champions league top goal scorer, 2 yrs in a row. RvN is of that highest quality, and as a man utd fan, im glad he is playing for us and not on another team.

also as far as that forlan thing is concernced....u know forlan sucks major ass. i cannot believe that he even gets any time on the pitch. he is a classic example of a non striking striker. he has to be the worst finisher in the premiership, by miles.
 
Originally posted by Cemetery
I fully agree. Forlan is not a bad player at all. He has really good vision & sets up a number of chances & has a fair few pops as well.
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he has many pops at goal but misses most of them (probably 90% of them). he is a non striking striker. totally unacceptable.

what really makes me laugh, is when we need a goal, we bring on forlan as a substitute. now if i were a defender of the opposing team, i would think this is some sort of practical joke, as bringing on forlan practically guarentees that u wont be scoring any more goals.
 
yep AL super AL SUPER ALAN SHEARER, was the chant that j.pearce used to use.

in the mid to late 90's i rated him very highly. top goals scorer in the league 4 seasons in a row. first striker to score 100 goals in the premiership. first player to score 30+ league goals, 3 seasons in a row. for england he was matching everything ronaldo's goal scoring record.

even now, these premiership records still stand, and i believe it may take many many years for it to be matched. even RvN or henry havent been able to score 30+ league goals yet. if RvN plays like has been playing for the last 18 months then i think he can match this, but what will be most difficult is scoring 30+ goals for 3 season in a row...is shearer hadnt already done this i wouldve thought this is not humanly possible.

in the last few yrs, K.phillips is the only one to have managed to score 30+ goals in a season, but since then he has gone AWOL.

i hope that newcastle and blackburn fans appreciate that what they saw was probably one of the best finishers that the game has ever produced and in their lifetime they may never see someone of that callibre ever again.
 
btw, rather than saying that forlan has played 41 games and scored 3 (1 penalty made by beckham), which is a bit misleading cuz he has played mostly as a sub, does anyone know how many minutes he has actually played, so then we can divide by 90 and get a more realistic idea of how many games he has really played.

2 goals in open play from 41 games sounds bad and even i think its a bit harsh. i expect he has realistically played about 12-15 games worth of play (if we add up all the actual time he has spent on the pitch).
 
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