How good was... Louis Saha?

jsp

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Time for another one this time it’s a striker.

1 Dong Fangzhou or for the older boys and girls Gary Birtles
10 Rooney/Law
 
7
He was a Fergie signing that didn't excite me at the time.
He was ok for United, from memory he was often injured and of course would have had Van Nistlerooy to compete with.
His best years were at Fulham and I am sure they have the fondest memories of him.
 
wasn't impressed when we bought him. But I ending up thinking he was a great buy. A really good player not necessarily and out and out goalscorer. 7.5
 
Cannot believe people are saying Saha was a better player for us than Nani.

6. Typical Ferguson signing in picking out the top talent from premier league clubs and did for a while look like he was going to strike up a good partnership with Rooney. But his best premier league return for us in his 5 season spell was 8 goals. As a striker that just isn't good enough to be considered anything but average. Unfortunately for him injuries robbed him of a great career. He was a brilliant talent but I don't think you can call him anything but an average United player.

I was genuinely excited when we signed him but he never really got going the way I thought he would.
 
I actually think Saha was a really good striker he just couldn't stay fit was at the club 5 seasons but only made 124 appearances scoring 42 goals so around 1 in 3 which in that era wasn't terrible. I think you could tell Fergie rated him because when he was fit he normally started but the injuries were a killer it never seemed to be long term ones just niggle after niggle. Reading his Wikipedia page seems like a lot of his injuries came on international duty which I kind of recall was a major frustration for Fergie at the time.

It was his form in 05-06 that sort of saw RVN out the door that summer. Saha really gelled with Rooney and Ronaldo in the way that RVN didn't because he was more of a team player than Van Nistelrooy who was a ruthless scorer. Ruud expected everyone in the team to feed him not really returning the favour which had created some tension in the team as Ruud was used to having his own way. That tension eventually saw RVN leave the club after he was left out of the league cup final that year for Saha who had scored the goals that got us to the final.

Saha played a huge role in that 2006-07 title win his early season form got us off to a flier out ahead of Chelsea who at the time were the relentless Mourinho winning machine and we managed to stay there. In previous seasons we'd stuttered at the start and had to try and play catch up but this time was different we set a good early pace.

I think ability wise he's a 7 possibly even an 8 but the injuries have to drag him down a little so overall I'd give him a 7 out of 10.
 
Talent wise he was possibly an 8. He gave us something we didn't really have up top at that time. He gave us speed, skill and athleticism. He was incredible but the injuries really held him back and stopped him fulfilling his potential so overall its hard to grade him higher than a 7 perhaps when a tough 6.
 
I'm with JSP on this one, a serious talent hamstrung by injuries ( pun intended). Remember him scoring against Chelsea most of all.

His goal return makes it difficult to go above 6.5. Had he stayed fit, he could've been an 8.
 
I think he dovetailed well with Ronney and Ronaldo who probably benefitted from him.
 
I remember being nonplussed when we signed Saha. He was a good player but never seemed like a great one, and he already had a lengthy injury record. I wished we had signed Brian McBride instead as long as we were picking players from Fulham, and not because McBride was a more potent goal-scorer, but because he was American. Saha only had 86 appearances in 4 years for United, which is unacceptable, seeing as how were regularly playing around 50 games a season. Those years, 2004-2008, we had some funny players in the team and it looked like Fergie was throwing shit at the wall to see what would stick: Dong Fangzhou, Kieran Richardson, Henrik Larson, Alan Smith, are some names from 2006. We sold Van Nistelrooy in 2006 and I think I'm still feeling that loss.

Oh yeah, back to Saha. He was a 7.
 

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