El_Nombre wrote:otherbournemouthsaddler wrote:I don't want to get into a slanging match about whether 22 years old is young or not but thought i would check on one of our strikers who started at the same age namely Matty Fryatt.
Lucky for me as maths is not my strong point they were born 10 years apart so makes the comparision easier- Fraytt 1986 Baka 1996
Baka made his debut in 2013-14 season
Fryatt made his debut in 2003-04 season
Fratt's LEAGUE stats for Walsall 2003/4 - jan 2006 apps- 70 goals -27
Baka for Walsall in only the LEAGUE 2013-to nearly end of 2017-2018 apps: 75 goals - 8
I'm not using this as a direct comparision between the two - Baka hardly got a sniff for the first three seasons and Matty Fraytt was a special finisher.
By the age of 22 it should give some indication of how good a footballer is likely to be at the current club- he might end up becoming a world beater but it's really not happening for him at Walsall.
League 2 might be a lot better for him - I really dont want us to go down to find out....
Your absolutely right, I don't think Baka is as good as Fryatt and I don't think he will turn out to be. I've made that pretty clear.
It's young enough to not be out of the realms of possibility though. Fryatt ALWAYS looked like he would be a good player. Some players do that. Michael Owen came out of the womb looking like he would score a ton of goals. But there are examples in the other direction.
Daryl Murphy had 34 goals in 226 appearances, a scoring rate of 0.14 a game, similar to Baka 0.13, before at the age of 30 going at virtually a goal every other game in the Championship for Ipswich when he signed properly.
Granted he looked better than Baka but I don't remember many people who thought Rickie Lambert would go at a goal every other game in the Premiership when he was struggling at Stockport County.
On a completely different scale (purely because these examples are more famous examples), I don't remember many people thinking Marko Materzzi would be going on to win World Cups and European Championships when he was getting sent off at Everton 3 times in 27 appearances and nobody in England wanted him. Luca Toni couldn't get out of Serie B, about League one level, until he turned 25, started banging them in and won a World Cup medal and a couple of League Titles at massive clubs.
22 is no age in football.
There we go, I've done it now, backed up my "you're just trying to disagree with people" argument with fact so now I will have too much time on my hands.
The problem for me though is the fact that we have used him as a first choice striker for the last two seasons and have got really bad returns for the investment.
You say Rickie Lambert struggled at Stockport County yet he scored 12 league goals in one season - which is more than Baka has done in his entire Walsall career. You'll never guess his age when he scored those 12 goals in a season - yup he was 22.....
As one final anecdote - i did some filming for Gainsborough Trinity a few seasons back. The media bloke there was a Telford fan and made a point in telling me that in all the years he had watched football he'd never seen a worse footballer play for his club while Baka was on loan there. At the time i thought it was harsh because of how young he was then- now that Baka is a grown man and has had 2 full seasons i think he may have a point.
When he is released by Walsall he will really struggle to find a club willing to give him the amount of time that we have - I've seen MUCH better in non league.