Judging a forward on his goal production over the last 4 or 5 games is pretty silly. The best goal scorers in the world average 1/2 goal per game and will sometimes score more than 1 goal therefore obviously they will score in less than 1/2 the games they play in. Because of the luck factor in soccer whether they score or not in a particular game or even over a few games is not very informative. It is a bit like flipping a slightly-weighted-towards-tails coin: sometimes you are going to get several heads in a row and slightly more often several tails in a row and either streak tells you nothing about the coin. But when the former happens and the guy scores in 3 games straight fans tend to overreact and sing his praises from the rafters. And of course when the latter occurs and he doesn't score over 4 or 5 game fans tend to overreact the other way and we start to hear "dump the bum, he is garbage!" The only reasonable way to rate a forward's abilities based on goals/assists is to look over many, many games. The more the better. Historically Keane has been close to 0.5 g/gm against much tougher competition, Barrett closer to .25-0.3 g/gm IIRC. But you say "We only care about what he does these days, since he came to LA. Maybe he doesn't care about the Galaxy and just came here to loaf?" Fair enough, let's see if that holds up. 2012 is still too short a span to be a real accurate estimate of relative abilities but even in that short span Keane is decidedly outperforming Barrett: Keane 3 goals, 2 assists, total of 10 pts. Barrett 0 goals, 3 assists, total of 3 pts. Actually Kean isn't just outperforming Barrett, he's outperforming ever other player on the team even though he's only played in 9 of the Galaxy's 13 games: 2012 total points - Keane 10, Becks 8, Landon 6, Buddle 5, Juninho, Magee, & Barrett tied at 3. But since Keane has played more minutes than Barrett it is fairer to compare the two on a per minute basis: Keane 810 min, .33 g/m, .25 assists/m, .89 pts/min Barrett 481 min, .00 g/m, .56 assists/m, .56 pts/min So judging by offensive productivity alone, which is what some of you are advocating, Keane is outperforming Barrett by 60%. This ignores all of the times that Barrett needlessly gives away possession, which has to hurt us on the defensive end. And for those on the Barrett bandwagon here is a list of a few more random players who have scored more than Barrett in 2012: Juninho, Sarvas, Magee, Jimenez, and Noonan. I'm sorry but there is too much randomness in soccer games to make a big deal of any short term streak, even Barrett's little 3 assist streak. (Last point: one poster is favorably comparing Henry to Keane. Maybe so, but it is important to remember that Henry himself since he has come to MLS has had a few very, very long strings of games without scoring. But management knew his history, knew the fickleness of goal scoring, and stuck with him. The reward has been that this season prior to his injury Henry has been a goal scoring machine.)
A very nondescript 60 minutes vs Hungary for Robbie. TBH he didn't get a lot of quality passes in his direction. Ireland looks a lot like this years Galaxy, anemic offense and awful defending. It's looking like Keane should be back from the Euro's nice and early...
Ireland is out of their element in that group. They are a decent nation but they can't compare to Italy or Spain.
spain v ireland http://soccernet.espn.go.com/gamecast?id=334197&ref=espnfc&cc=5901 Here's Robbie Keane: "It's a major tournament - anything can happen. There is no reason to believe that we can't get a result."
Keane reminds me of Ruiz. He is always falling down and demanding a foul. He does not impress me as a good player.
The all time leading scorer for Ireland, the eleventh most goals in Premier League history. Yeah he’s rubbish.
Not to mention he is first in goals and 3rd in assists for the LA Galaxy this season. I know it's only 3 goals and 2 assists but as we all know scoring can be streaky. Better to look at long term scoring rate/gm and Keane is at the very top of that list. Keane is not our problem.
Of course he is not rubbish and I know scoring is streaky. But it has been a very long time since he has done anything productive for us. Being the leading scorer on Galaxy is tantamount to being the world's tallest midget. He IS a problem despite his "gaudy" scoring stats.
If his scoring stats are poor over a full season of 30 or so games, or an Angel-like 20 game scoreless streak, then I'll be ready to identify him as a "problem." But not on the basis of a few games. Portland decided that Cooper, despite being a long-time proven goal scorer, was the "problem" for them because he had an admittedly subpar-for-him 8 goals in 29 games last season. So they got rid of the problem. How has that worked out for them? But a much better comparison for Keane is Henry. Both came to MLS following a several year history of scoring goals at very high rates against tough competition. Henry at age 32, Keane two years younger at age 30. Anyone know how many goals Henry had in his first 15 games for the Red Bulls? Two. With 3 assists. Keane in his first 15 games with LA? Six. With 4 assists. Seven goals if you count CCL play. Nine if you include 100%, no-doubt-about-it legitimate goals that he was robbed of (once in 2011 CCL, once this season). And it might be worth remembering that a great play by Keane helped set up the goal that won us the MLS Cup. Hey, what about assists? First 15 games - Henry 3, Keane 4. But despite Henry's inability to find the back of the net at the beginning of his time with the Red Bulls the organization wisely decided to trust his long term history more than short term results. Last season Henry was the 3rd leading scorer in MLS and 1st in non-pk goals/minute (for regular players). Even this season - where he's missed 25% of the games due to injury - he is still the 3rd leading scorer in the league. And again #1 in goals/minute for players with more than 250 minutes played. So I'm sorry, Cadaver but I'm not ready to write Keane off as a bust at this point. In fact I don't even buy the "he isn't trying" argument. Keane has never been an out-jump'em, out-run'em, or even out-hustle'em type of scorer. He has always been an opportunistic striker who uses trickery to turn little chances into goals at a high rate. Ok, he's missed a couple of those chances this year. It happens. Frustrating when your team is losing, but it happens. Wayne Rooney - despite playing for Man U which usually dominated opponents - went on a 10 game streak without a single goal a few years back. Maybe they should have dumped him then - it isn't like he has worked out very well since, right? Not meant to be an attack on you personally Cadaver but soccer history has shown repeatedly that the whole "what have you done for me in the last 5 games" type of thinking applied to strikers is bonkers.
Sorry Sir, you hit on my pet peeve: statistical records in English football that refer only to the Premiership. In many respects, the Premiership was little more than a rebranding of England's top flight. It meant bigger changes behind the scenes than to the competition itself. The top ten Premiership goalscorers aren't even in the top ten England top tier goalscorers of all time. And it's not all down to anomolies and eras where games ended 3-2 and and 6-4. Ian Rush of Liverpool, whose late career overlapped the start of the Premiership, scored more top division goals (not including his time in Serie A) than Alan Shearer. Anyhoo, a bit OT, but I think that stat of Robbie's while not unimpressive (he's in the top 11 of the last 20 years, after all) is very misleading to the layman. Also, Carlos Ruiz has scored just four fewer international goals in 22 fewer appearances than Keane.
ireland has no excuse for early exit http://www.goal.com/en-us/news/3396...reland-has-no-excuse-for-early-euro-2012-exit
Keane disappointed after euro exit http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/eu...Keane-disappointed-Italy-defeat.html?ITO=1490