On Peter Crouch

There are now many rumours associating us with elongated centre-forward Peter Crouch.  The Times says this:

Sunderland have made a bid for Crouch and Fulham are also keen on him. The striker doesn’t fancy a move to the North East and his £70,000 a week wages would break Fulham’s salary structure. The Cottagers could possibly pay him a yearly loyalty bonus to compensate – the financial outlay would be the same, but it would cause less friction in the Fulham dressing room. Roy Hodgson is prepared to sell Bobby Zamora to Hull to fund the deal on condition that Crouch or another striker are lined up to replace him. Mark Viduka is an option, although he would also command high wages.

Interesting.

I have always liked Peter Crouch.   He is not bald like me, but having been somewhat lanky throughout my useful footballing days I have always felt a degree of kinship with the man.    Clearly he’d be a huge upgrade for us:

These are his league numbers for the last five seasons.   What you see there is someone who has scored at a good rate, can put the ball on target, but importantly, still scores when he’s having radar issues.     One thing I’ve (rightly, I think) harped on about, is that any forward player who comes to Fulham will find things harder.   I’ve shown how all of our players found it hard to hit the target last year, relative to their own career levels and to the league overall.   It’s how we play, a by-product of being defensively solid.   Anyway, old news.  But what we see with Crouch is that he’s already experienced this in some fashion in moving from Liverpool to Portsmouth.   Moving from midfields containing Steven Gerrard to midfields containing Richard Hughes will do that.    And he still scored 11 times!

Crouch has a history of scoring goals, is an aerial threat (currently we have Dempsey and Hangeland and they got one each or something daft last season), a team player and a known quantity.    He won’t be cheap and he really deserves a big club, but for whatever reason his options seem a little limited.    People look at him, and see someone who looks a bit different, and judge him accordingly.  But the reality is he’s someone who helps you win football matches; I’d be delighted if we signed him.