Wycombe Royal Snowball 42 (12) appearances? 54 out of the 55 games we played. Hmmm...
You might notice that I said "Championship assists table" not "All Competitions assist table". So that would be 42 games plus however many minutes for the subs appearances probably wouldn't be far off 46 matches (in a total minutes played sense. I do remember you do lengthy anaysis on the subs appearances and minutes played for Shane Long).
Trouble with that, Wyc, is that two of Howard's assists this season were in the CUP! And you can't double his starts and just take his minutes for sub appearances. For all I know his 5 league assists might have come while playing as a sub.
His LEAGUE record this season is 5 assists, no goals in 19 (5), about 1 assist every 4 games, 0r 11 a season
And in your list can you just it to show just the midfielders as there is no point comparing him to the goalscoring AND assists exploits of strikers.
I simply grabbed the top assisters list. Don't have time to decide who is a striker, a midfielder, an attacking midfielder, a winger who scores goals (like Sinclair)
However,, having taken the assist list, showing strikers IS (IMO) relevant. Long (for example) got his 10 assists (very decent) and showed he wasn't "just a goal-scorer". When you add in the two penalties he won for himself (but missed) and the pens won for Harte to score, his contribution is massive. I'm not, however, putting the two "against each other" but merely showing that one player (Long) was actively involved in about 40 goals, (38 league) and 10 assists, (all league)(whereas even if Howard HAD played 42 league games, he'd've been on for 10 assists, no goals.
For me, no need for Howard to be scoring more than say 3/4/5 IF he is getting more assists, but his goal rate is very poor for RFC, his assist-rate ordinary and he isn't known for hard-running or getting in loads of tackles. When he dived in at QPR he gave away a pen.
I reckon he would probably be in the top 20 midfielders in the division in terms of goals and assists IF he had played a full season (this was how you used to present Shane Longs stats to us). Now as there are 23 other teams in this division I think that it pretty good.
Much as I hate to isolate and criticize individual players I feel Howard doesn't do enough work off the ball, doesn't get enough tackles in, doesn't get enough league assists and obviously doesn't get enough goals. I FAR prefer Tabb who DOES put in a shift, and I believe there are many AMs who could do a better job and be doing work when not on the ball.
