Every time I go along to match involving Kris Boyd I keep telling myself that this might be the time that I finally see the player that the press have been trying to claim he is. But once again on Saturday I left the stadium wondering how on earth the guy who was playing centre-forward for Rangers manages to even get into their squad, let alone be a first
pick for his country.
Seriously, is there really nothing more to this player than what he offered on Saturday? Granted the service that the Rangers strikers received wasn’t the greatest that they’ll get all season, but even then Boyd was still given opportunities to get into the game, but all he seemed interested in doing was giving Hearts defenders Berra and Zaliukas black eyes, and moaning to the referee when he his latest deliberate elbow to the face was spotted. Add this to the fact that the guy appears to have no ability to control a ball that’s dropping out of the air whatsoever and has no pace to speak of, and you’re not really left with an awful lot are you?
Statistics are difficult things to disagree with and I have to admit that Kris Boyd’s goalscoring record, even if it is in the lowly SPL, is a very impressive one since he signed for Rangers. However any time I’ve seen him live (which is quite a few times now) he’s been absolutely hopeless. Personally I think that a lot of his success comes via the fact that match officials aren’t strong enough to penalise him properly for the persistent fouling that he dishes out during a game. Thankfully on Saturday he was pulled up for most of his thuggery towards the Hearts defence (although Mr McDonald clearly bottled out of sending him off for committing 13+ fouls), but you could see by his genuinely outraged reaction to being penalised that he’s used to getting away with this sort of thing, and I think this is the key difference when it comes to strikers playing for the bigger clubs.
Remember when Hearts had Mark De Vries playing for them? He was a decent enough big guy but obviously had faults in his game otherwise he wouldn’t have been with us, but he used to get pulled up for fouling of this sort so many times that it was embarrassing. He still managed to get into double figures for both of the full seasons he played for Hearts, but if refs had let him away with more he could easily have scored 25-30 instead. Boyd was in the same sort of predicament when he was at Kilmarnock – all he’d generally do was foul for the duration of the match, and it was touch-and-go whether he’d actually get away with it or not. In the end I think he probably did have one really decent season there in terms of his goals return, but once he ended up at Ibrox and started getting more of the decisions, just look how the record improved.
I wonder how many other poor players could score 20+ goals per season if they ended up at Rangers or Celtic. I suppose they’ve already had a fair few over the years (even the likes of Brattbakk and Bo Andersen scored a lot of goals), but it does sometimes make you wonder how many goals that the likes of John Robertson could have chalked up for them if he’d gone there in his prime.
As for Boyd, he may well continue to score another barrowload of goals for the remainder of the season elsewhere, but on the continued evidence I’ve seen of this guy in the flesh, he won’t be any loss whatsoever to the Scotland national team.
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ohh my god what aload of pish here you go slagging kris boyd cause of an off day lol many goals has he scored eh whos near him in the hearts side lol go bile ya heids ya shower of numpties and what will hearts win this season answers on the back of apostage stamp too roadrunner……blah blah ……….
erm check the goal difference says it all lol
Some of his elbow antics on Saturday were shocking, I agree MrH. How he managed to stay on the park is a mystery… or rather, it isn’t. I personally found it rather funny when he attempted (yet again) to elbow Berra for the 8th time, only to go down in the box like a sack of tatties and indignantly demand a penalty. Given his recent attitude with Scotland as well, I can only conclude that he is a charming guy and perfect Rangers material. Just like our wily (wily? geddit?) friend above, actually.
Don?t know if any of ?use? noticed but Boyd also did an odd forward roll somersault type thing in celebration of Hearts own goal – as if he had just scored the goal of the season.
roadrunner noones claims boyd is a bad finish we claim hes a bad player all round i bet boyd cost more goals than he cost with wrong choices and just being him a lazy lazy man!!! look how he copes when miller isnt doing all the dirty work!! boyds pish but hes a deadly pish 😛
I just wonder what he’d be like if he did sign for (dare I say it) Hearts or someone else in the SPL. He always looked a donkey for Kilmarnock and although he goalscoring record has improved at Rangers, I do wonder whether or not he has actually improved as a footballer or not. On Saturday’s evidence I would think not!
hes definetly a good goal scorer although going by comments from fans & how often he was 1st choice with rangers is he a good team player? I thought he was a we bit hasty with his scotland decision i mean ffs hes not even been 1st choice pick @ rangers
Great article there Mr H and one which I find impossible to find fault with ,, Ive always had a great deal of respect for Walter Smith and the very fact that KB continually fails to convince Watty that he is worthy of regular starting berth pretty much tells me all I need to know ,, he bought Kenny Miller to solve this conundrum and all he has done is compound matters further ,, quite apart from being identified as a lump of wood as far as his athleticism goes I think his tendency to resort to using his elbows as battering rams and his blatant petulance towards match officials is merely an attempt to conceal his obvious inadequacies as an alleged top class striker ,, as the long suffering supporters of Birmingham City will no doubt discover to their cost sooner rather than later ………
Yes IMcD – I noticed Boyd’s “roll” and celebration after Karipidis’s o.g. Oh well – I hope it made him happy, especially around 2.20 that afternoon. Burley made reference in his recent newspaper interview to having spoken to Walter about him – and pointed out that he wasn’t a regular in the Rangers 1st team either !! Having said all that, the guy does have a pretty good scoring record, even allowing for the “favours” he probably gets. It would be interesting to see how many goals Jamie Mole or Calum Elliot would score in a Rangers jersey, though !!!
Was that the one where he went down in instalments and had to be helped back to his feet ….????
It was. As discussed elsewhere though, Mr McDonald did Hearts a favour by allowing the big clown to stay on the field, as his team continued persisting with high balls to him that were never going to work.
http://www.celticsupporterassoc.co.uk/showthread.php?p=144#post144
read tht its interessting