I agree with you and Putitout in that Zaha is our best and most effective player by a mile, and we'd be in trouble without him (even if we are better placed now to survive when he goes).

I'm not so sure the other forwards are lucky Wilf is there, though.

Obviously, he provides goals that they do not (which is your point). However, if I was a Palace striker I would say that Wilf, for all his goals and even his assists, doesn't try to provide a stream of dangerous crosses in the way another winger might.

When I was a kid, John Salako and Eddie McGoldrick were in the team exclusively to provide service to Wright and Bright, and for no other purpose whatsoever. If the wingers tried to score an individual goal, they would get both barrels from the strikers who, had they played with him, might have strangled Wilf by now!

The use of a selfless striker, doing the hard yards for the benefit of a skillful but individualistic inside-forward is now commonplace, but it does generally come at the expense of the striker's goal-tally.

In fairness to Wilf, this is a chicken-and-egg situation at Palace. A few years ago, Zaha would regularly beat his fullback and flash a dangerous ball across goal, only to see it go to waste as we didn't have a striker good enough to meet the ball.

I think Wilf adapted to this. First, he stopped crossing it and started trying to draw fouls in the box, then he stopped running at fullbacks and focused on quickly shifting the ball to the side and shooting. That works, so he hasn't stopped doing it.

Perhaps if we had a good enough striker Wilf would cross it more, and perhaps if Wilf crossed it more the strikers would look a bit better. Either way, I feel that we are luckier to have Wilf than our strikers are.

Edited by TheBigToePunt (01 Sep 2022 1.54pm)

Chelsea have confirmed Aubameyang signing. I wonder if that has any impact on their alleged interest in our beloved son?

Now Zaha's got a bit of green grass ahead of him here... and finds Ambrose... not a bad effort!!!!

I remember it well!
Wright (and maybe Bright too?) had gone by then, but I'm sure I remember one report quoting a palace player who preferred not to be named, but who felt he spoke for the dressing room in saying 'Nigel Martyn doesn't get paid extra for each clean sheet, so why does Eddie get this goal bonus?'.

For those who didn't see him play, Eddie was a good second-tier winger, then an average-to-poor top-tier winger who the crowd would sometimes 'express disappointment in'. Then, completely out of the blue one day, Coppell moved him to sweeper. Imagine if we suddenly put Mateta in goal - it was that unlikely.

Anyway, for the rest of that season, he was utterly, spellbindingly brilliant. He made the game look so easy. He would nick the ball off striker's feet, dribble his way out from the back, start attacks, and hardly seem to break a sweat (note - I may be misremembering some of this....).

He was so good that Arsenal bought him. Then they played him on the wing, and found out very quickly what we could have told them - that he wasn't very good there.

I reckon PV has had Wilf watch a few reels of vintage Thierry Henry; the goal against Brentford was very much in the Henry mould.