Forest/Liverpool

[ChorltonCharlie]

Wood was a decent player for us and his goal record in a team with an objective of avoiding relegation demonstrates that. As usual on here though it seems to turn into a binary argument with one upmanship as the objective. The truth is somewhere in the middle. He was a player that fitted Dyche’s system and when we got quality balls into the box he usually could be relied on to get his fair share of goals. I only say usually, as his form in the last few months of his Burnley career was not up to scratch, though there’s a caveat that as a team we weren’t at our best.

When you look back at Wood’s time in a Burnley shirt it was odd that he was never in any way a fan favourite. I always put that down to his all round game. Compare him with Ashley Barnes and their goals per game are both decent for a bottom half PL side. It is in Wood’s favour of around 1 in 3 compared to Barnes record of 1 in 4.5 . In fairness to Barnes he made a lot more appearances from the bench, and I suspect minutes per goal it’s a lot closer. So why is/was Barnes so much more popular? My theory would be Burnley fans in general think Barnes brought more to the game than Wood. Barnes may not have been great every week, but we could have a disappointing game and Barnes could still be a pest. Or we’d win a game and Barnes antics and hold up play would have been seen as a key part of the victory. With Wood I think a lot of reasonable fans felt that if Burnley played well then there was a good chance that so did Wood, but it was rare to feel the team had under performed and Wood was an exception. That’s just my opinion based on what I saw and what people who sat around me/went to games also seemed to think.

What we’re seeing with him at Forest goes along with that. They play to his strengths and get good quality crosses into the box whilst being quick on the counter attack (Wood one of those players who’s a lot quicker than you’d think at first glance). I dare say that like many pros Wood has continued to adapt and improve. To me that’s fair play to both Wood and Nunez and good luck to them. But it doesn’t mean that Wood has always been under-rated and anyone who doesn’t agree knows nothing about football. There will have been imbeciles down the years who tried to rate him as a pub player, but I think the consensus amongst most Burnley fans was he was above average for what we needed, but had his limitations.