ELIOT RICHARDS AGAIN...

It's a bit more complicated than Elliot Richards = good or Elliot Richards = crap.  Football's a team game - Robbie Ryan looked awful for us but for Millwall he played 200 games most in the 2nd tier.  Adam Barrett looked out of his depth with us alongside Christian Edwards and Anwar Uddin - when he was put alongside Spencer Prior he became a club legend at Southend. Yet every time I've seen him back at the Mem I haven't thought he looked a miles better player - just a more experienced, confident one playing in sides that were set up to use his strengths and minimise his weaknesses.

The reason people keep signing Elliot Richards is the same reason he sent most Rovers fans completely round the twist during his time with us.  There's no doubt he can do things on a football pitch that very few other players in League 2 are capable of; the trouble is he doesn't do enough of it and has serious faults in other aspects of his game; particular tracking defensively.  Managers will think it's still worth a punt on someone that age just in case it clicks and he 'gets it'.  That's what I always felt with Richards; he didn't really get the game very well.  He had raw ability on the ball but his reading of the game was utterly terrible.  He made poor decisions, never seemed to have a natural instinct for either getting in space to pick up a pass or for picking a pass himself.  Attacks just seemed to break down or slow down with him so often if he was ever in a position where he had to make a decision.  If he just received the ball and could go straight for goal and not think about it he looked good other than that he looked lost on a football field.

The result of that was a player who could look a million dollars when we were on top and there was attacking space in the game but who would more often than not vanish as a presence for large tracts of the game.  All I'd say about Richards is he did some nice things but not nearly enough of them and I'd ultimately put him in the 'luxury player' category.  I think he's only going to be good if you set up your team to his strengths and he's never shown that he's good enough or consistent enough to justify that.

No - not a headless chicken.  A headless chicken would have been more useful than Richards in the end.  Richards had the end product - he just didn't have workrate or reading of the game to get himself in the position to deliver it regularly enough.  I've far too many games in which he was a passenger.  Doesn't mean he won't ever make it but I have serious doubts and I actually think our switch with Gow was a reasonable one at the time which looks poor in hindsight.  We swapped a guy who had been very inconsistent and never really consistantly impacted the game with an injury prone player who could dominate at games at that level.  It was a calculated risk that didn't work out but I really don't think Richards would have been the difference.  We needed goals and he's never been a consistent goalscorer.  I've seen worse players in a Rovers shirt but I've seen few who were more maddening than Elliot Richards because at times there seemed to be a player there but never when it really mattered.