Just a ? was he that good i can just rememeber is seeing him on the Big Match but he may have been at end of his playing days.looking in the sun today his record for England was bang on
Can anyone on here remember seeing him play....play against us ? was he that good and who played like him in recent years.?..i guess if he was as good as his record he would be on £120,000 a week now !
0
Comments
Great anticipation and just passed the ball into the net most of the time.
As a finisher few if any were better hence his stats.
Anyone know why?
Remember seeing an interview with Bill Nicholson many moons ago, talking about signing Jimmy from AC Milan. Bill Nicholson refused to pay £100,000 for him as he didnt want to be the first manager to buy a player for such an obscene amount of money and didnt want Jimmy to have the added pressure of being the first ever £100,000 player. So they agreed a transfer fee of £99,999. Interesting piece of trivia that for a friday morning ;-)
Although quite a few levels below where he made his name , if my memory is not playing tricks he reverted to central midfield and showed he could play effectively in that position and not just score goals as a poacher .
This was a few years after he left West Ham and during his battle with alcohol.
He first saw Greavsie play for Essex Schoolboys at West Ham and he said he was the greatest striker he'd ever seen.
Just a shame he succumed to the drink.
Great anticipation and just passed the ball into the net most of the time.
As a finisher few if any were better hence his stats.[/quote]
As someone who was, as a boy, taken to see Tottenham one week and Charlton the next (why I ultimately opted for the Addicks I'll never know) I can confirm that, in the modern era and in Division 3, Greavesy would have struggled to fill Dicko's boots.
Of his time, though, he was the best around, not just in terms of his finishing but also in terms of his turn of pace and ability to glide past defenders as if they weren't there.
Watch his goal from 1.02 mins
Apparantly Trevor Francis move to Forest from Brum was for £999,999 for similar reasons but they always class it as the first million pound transfer.Also Malcolm Macdonalds move to the Gooners from the Geordies in the 70s was for £333,333.
Presumably Macca didnt want the pressure of being a 333,334 pound player?
Obviously brilliantly taken but he turned slower than Phil Chapple when he first received the ball!!
To be fair, it was an awkward height ball that Greavsie received.
But he took it down and shielded it well - maybe he would have been closed down quicker today, but vitally he created space for himself and accelerated away with superb control and composure.
You see, along with having a superb touch on the ball, Greavsie's main asset was mental strength - his concentration, anticipation, awareness and reading of the game was total.
He wrote in his autobiography that at the final whistle he used to come off the park with a headache, because he concentrated so intensly ..... "I might not get many touches on the ball, but I knew that if I was alert enough to get one chance maybe in the 89th minute - that could be the winner. And my job was done".
He played the game in his head continuously for the full 90 minutes.
Maybe, he had very little involvement on the ball compared to others but his goals were crucial and his team knew that.
Clive Allen a generation later, scoring 49 goals in a season, was a similar type of player.
You could imagine the abuse Jimmy Greaves would get at The Valley, if he were a Charlton player today...... he'd be accused of lazy, bad attitude because he didn't chase lost causes and never seemed to be involved.
And booed, lol
But then he wouldn't be picked in the first place, because today he'd be deemed a luxury player who didn't have an all round game. Which is quite likely the reason Sir Alf Ramsey left him out of the later stages of the 1966 World Cup finals.
He'd score wherever, whenver he played, ask the Chelsea, Milan and Spurs fans.
Absolute legend.
I also liked, Alan Gilzean, his main playing partner at Spurs.Even at his peak he looked like my grandad but he could play a bit.
Scored something like 9 in 12 for AC Milan.
Wonder if people will think the same about Peter Crouch in 40 years time?!
It is invidious comparing players from different eras in many ways but the ability to put the ball in the old onion bag is priceless and Greaves undoubtedly had that.
But was he as good as Luther Blissett?!!
Perhaps the finest box centre forward we have ever produced postwar.
I still think that George Best was the greatest striker from that era, despite his known personnal issues.
There are some players that are so special that there gift to play natural football transends normal player expectations.
Personally speaking we never value our truly great players, we always look for flaws in there talent and ability, yet abroad they are seen as gods!
Spurs , 220 goals in 321 matches
west ham 13 goals in 36 matches
He also scored 35 fa cup goals ,7goals in the league cup ,10 goalsin the european cup winners cup,3 goals in the inter-cities fairs cup ,2 goals in the fa charity shield and 9 goals in 14 league appearances for AC Milan making 423goalsscored.Also in representative football was 67 goals ,including 44 goals for full England.
His last match was against Feyenoord at White Hart Lane on tuesday 17 oct 1972.
We've seen with Best and Gascoigne how difficult that can be.
And what a wicked sense of humour he has.
I'll never forget an edition of Saint & Greavsie when he was standing on the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle, a puff of wind got up and blew his hat off right over the parapet...."Oh me 'at." He cried out.....Saint almost died laughing and they couldn't continue with the live piece they were doing.....one of the funniest moments I've ever witnessed on TV and a moment that will live with me (I hope) for ever. Like a lot of things it doesn't sound that funny in the telling....you simply had to have witnessed it at the precise moment it happened and seen the look on Greavsies face to appreciate it.
God was it funny...absolutely priceless!
I dunno why, but i always think less of stats from 30/40+ years ago. Was the game 'easier' back then?
Those stats are rediculous tho.