This striker that we are looking for thats going to solve all our problems

[DHSF]

Actually, five goals could win us 10 points, other than that I definately agree with you. I think many players, even within our own setup could do better than Adebayor. Not necessarily because of skills, but because of hunger, work ethics and the need to be recognized. Which Adebayor incidentally has near end of seasons and/or contracts.

When I was writing my post I knew something was amis - youre right - 10 points.

fudgein clown shoe

 

[rosenthal]

At this point i'd go for Patinkle Cisse.
One of Cisse, Adebayor or Defoe are likely to be on form at any time.
Should be within our budget limits as well, especially with his Wonga strike

 

[harr1984]

It's half the problem. The other half is the lack of intelligence/craft/guile in the team.

Why I think Sig is going to be massive for us, he has the skill and can unlock defences. He has that x factor for me....

 

[onlyme]

You would think we were a club in crisis. We could do with a new striker but we are scoring 2 goals a game with both our strikers out of form. Ade is coming back into form and if Defoe gets back into the form he displayed in the first half of last season we have no worries.

 

[africanspurs]

If that's true what you say about Defoe Affy (scoring a bucket load for Arsenal) why has he never attracted serious interest from sides better than us? Sides who would have been able to scout him and come to the same conclusion as you - that our teams lack of movment/intelligence is all that's stopping him from being a 20-30 goal a season?

no idea mate. why didnt teams scout leon britton or michu in proper fashion etc. That kind of list is endless.....rickie lambert etc.

i just know in my gut and experience that defoe is much more with a team that creates clear cut chances than with us that dont

 

[africanspurs]

'can' doesnt mean 'will' I didnt say 'will'. Its all semantics and you know it is.

I think this whole idea that we struggle to break teams down is 100% correct ESPECIALLY at home where we struggle and to be honest I have been bored to death. Away we are brilliant and have no qualms about that, its at home that we struggle and thats no coincidence because we do lack that creative outlet. But you can create all you like, if you dont have the finisher to finish off the chances then youre still not gonna score the goals. Ideally you need both a creative outlet and a goalscorer but i think we wont have the funds for both so if its either/or then its a striker for me.

How many chances did we see Ade miss that even you could have scored? Sunderland, Swansea etc etc etc

I mentioned 15 but I could also have mentioned one or two and you know what? that would have got us CL... its one or two points forget 15.

okay then, we have eradicated 15 points. now even focusing on one or two points that would have gotten us CL ...why does it have to be a wonderous striker as opposed to more fluidity in open play and more guile in attack that creates more chances? why the hunger for a 25 million pound striker and not just better ball players? a better approach towards breaking down stubborn teams as opposed to shelving out 20 to 30 mil?

 

[africanspurs]

When I was writing my post I knew something was amis - youre right - 10 points.

fudgein clown shoe

a differential of 5 points makes me a clown shoe and your point misunderstood? LOL

get a grip man, even if it was 10 points it would still be the same effect from a teams perspective. you would still be looking for a big time players

and for 1 or 2 points you dont need a big time striker...you can do with a better game approach especially if its as clear as day that your approach doesnt work against teams that should lose to you on paper

 

[africanspurs]

It doesn't matter if Benteke was plan A or not really. You have to show flexibility in the market, and if a player's circumstances change making him potentialy gettable whereas before he appeared out of reach, then why shoudn't we be able to shift our attention onto said player?

Jermain Defoe? Ok, he never looked like scoring 20 goals in a league season in any Spurs team: didn't do it last year when we were apparently lacking craft in midfield. Didn't do it when we had the guile of Modric and VdV. Didn't do it when had players like Berbatov or Kanoute alongside him, didn'T do it as a lone striker, didn't do it with a ball playing CM like Carrick threading the balls through. When will he do it? Never. Not a chance.

I'm struggling to understand the mild attitudes towards Ade. By all accounts he isnt an inconsitent kid who is desperate for success, he is a lazy taco, probably the highest paid player in the club and he didn't score all season. His goal vs Chelsea? Cameron Jerome scored a screamer against Southampton - should we sign him?

If we had had a striker instead of Ade who could possibly have scored 10-15 goals then we knows where we may have finished. I can't believe that people seem to be adverse to the notion that if your strikers score then you finish higher in the league. Bonkers.

But then again scoring goals isnt a criteria most are interested in for our new striker. I am. Big time.

its funny you mention defoe in a team with vdv , bale and modric...if you actually pay attention to how we plAyed with that team...it wasnt set up for defoe to score..especially with that personell and the WAY harry had us playing. not to mention defoe wasnt in the first choice partnership

not sure who said more goals from the forward doesnt help us. pretty sure you made that bit up on your own possibly? but why is just the striker the root lying cause of our problems? when we could be scoring less goals for A different reason

 

[NaijaSpurs]

not sure who said more goals from the forward doesnt help us. pretty sure you made that bit up on your own possibly? but why is just the striker the root lying cause of our problems? when we could be scoring less goals for A different reason

The reason I think it is a striker problem is because during last season I remember cringing on numerous occasions when our players missed guilty edge chances with Adebayor being far and away the main culprit. I do not think he was the only problem but I did think he was a total let down and the main problem. I also reject the notion about him creating space for Bale to score goals. SUre it may have happened once or twice but if you go and look at Bale's goals last season you will find that Adebayor contributed next to nothing.

I would feel match better if the Adebayor that ended last season started this season but he is so unreliable that we cannot afford him to be our first option.

 

[NaijaSpurs]

no idea mate. why didnt teams scout leon britton or michu in proper fashion etc. That kind of list is endless.....rickie lambert etc.

i just know in my gut and experience that defoe is much more with a team that creates clear cut chances than with us that dont

I disagree with you about us not creating clear cut chances. I would suggest that because our players miss so many chances that it gives an illusion that maybe we do not create clear cut chances

 

[africanspurs]

I disagree with you about us not creating clear cut chances. I would suggest that because our players miss so many chances that it gives an illusion that maybe we do not create clear cut chances

this isnt the kind of point i can really debate without being a video editer. but if you think that we consistently created many chances where strikers where clean through on goal in the 18 yard area...or if we consistently created chances where the opposition were on the back foot and we had a decent attacking position on the counter/ in transition of some sort then i guess we will have to severely disagree.

I look at the chances created by arsenal and united and city and chelsea...and their opportunities were immensely of higher quality and there fore higher chance of conversion than ours were

again , without video evidence i wouldnt be able to really argue the point properly pro / or con

 

[Klinsmania]

We didn't create chances because the strikers' movement was so poor that the midfield weren't able to create the opportunity. Better movement leads to more options for the man on the ball, which leads to more goals. Ergo, if you upgrade on Defoe and Adebayor we will score more goals without having to change the style of play.

To answer your original question, I think Defoe would score fewer goals if he was at the scum because their play is more one touch than ours and his lack of real technical ability would hinder that. I'll reverse the original question, if we had had Giroud up front instead of Defoe/Adebayor last year would we have finished higher than them? The answer to that, in my honest opinion, is yes.

 

[jurgen lineker]

Is the striker really going to solve all our problems? or is there something else, inherently deeper, thats the root cause of our misfortunes in attack

Agreed, made the point myself a few weeks back too, the main issue we had last season was not necessarily our forwards lacking form but the lack of incisive play in the final third. No imagination and a lack of movement culminated into us having only one real plan come the end of the season, get it to Bale. The forwards did not help matters in patches, granted, but our lack of bite in the final third last season stemmed more so from our midfield than it did from our forwards.

Last season we very much scrapped or relied on a piece of genius for the majority of our wins, i can only recall a handful of games where we seemed to be in full control. Losing VDV and Modric in the summer was a big blow as it cost us creativity and intelligence in the final third. Modric more so as we lost our conductor, the guy that dictated and controlled. All our current midfielders are far too direct. Sig i guess can play the creative role but i'm not too sure AVB is all that convinced. We'll have to wait and see how Holtby develops, still too early to judge but in his debut v Norwich he looked like the playmaker we required, since then however he has developed into more of a scrapper. I was hoping we would be in for a playmaker this summer but since Paulinho has come in i guess we can rule that move out.

 

[superfaisty]

Its been said to death but the problem is not so much the strikers but the team approach/ formation.

What's our best formation? Well last year we played a sort of 4231 and with Sandro and Dembele in the centre we looked good, but we looked good when we switched to 433 with the personnel we had ie no Sandro.

The key for me is where Bale plays. If he right Wing Forward, then we can have someone like Holtby or sig behind the main striker ahead of Sandro and Paulinho/ Dembele with Nacer/Townsend on the left, so its a finisher we need- someone like defoe, although more consistent.

Bale playing in the hole behind the striker, with proper width from Nacer/ Lennon/ Townsend we need a lead the line type forward- an onform Ade or similar powerful forwad type. I would love soldado.

The key is we have options to swap our play around, what we don't have enough of is variation / competition upfront. That's why we probably need a soldado and a remy. In Levy we trust ( though lord knows why given his track record in thee transfer market).

 

[Pirate55]

When we had Keano and berba up front we had a midfield of Zokora, Jenas, Tainio and Lennon. Still scored a shed load of goals. Very good strikers or a good strike partnership create the chances themselves even where the rest of the team is mediocre. imagine that partnership with the midfield we have now.

Exactly. Good strikers have great movement to create the space for themselves. Berba and RVP are the best examples of this - as was Cantona, Sherringham, Gilzean, etc

Ade, Defoe, Dempsey and Lennon are just too static and don't give the midfield much to aim for.

 

[Pirate55]

this isnt the kind of point i can really debate without being a video editer. but if you think that we consistently created many chances where strikers where clean through on goal in the 18 yard area...or if we consistently created chances where the opposition were on the back foot and we had a decent attacking position on the counter/ in transition of some sort then i guess we will have to severely disagree.

I look at the chances created by arsenal and united and city and chelsea...and their opportunities were immensely of higher quality and there fore higher chance of conversion than ours were

again , without video evidence i wouldnt be able to really argue the point properly pro / or con

I agree with you that we don't create many chances. We had so many long range pot shots last season for the very reason we weren't able often to get round teams,open them up and create good chances.

 

[africanspurs]

Exactly. Good strikers have great movement to create the space for themselves. Berba and RVP are the best examples of this - as was Cantona, Sherringham, Gilzean, etc

Ade, Defoe, Dempsey and Lennon are just too static and don't give the midfield much to aim for.

pretty sure we had berbatov's creativity in there somewhere.

where was steed malbranque anyway? i thought teemu was a sick note...and didnt we have huddlestone playing one of his better years then?

nt sure if it was a jam packed season of teemu, zokora, a goal scoring jenas and lennon to be honest. and like i said...have we got berbatovs creativity anywhere in this team and also in the strikers we have been linked to?

what was the squad that year anyway?

also uts funny you mention lennon being static when in fact his movement is fine IMo and its the timely delivery thats the issue. not to mention a bad relationship with kyle walker

 

[africanspurs]

We didn't create chances because the strikers' movement was so poor that the midfield weren't able to create the opportunity. Better movement leads to more options for the man on the ball, which leads to more goals. Ergo, if you upgrade on Defoe and Adebayor we will score more goals without having to change the style of play.

To answer your original question, I think Defoe would score fewer goals if he was at the scum because their play is more one touch than ours and his lack of real technical ability would hinder that. I'll reverse the original question, if we had had Giroud up front instead of Defoe/Adebayor last year would we have finished higher than them? The answer to that, in my honest opinion, is yes.

the defoe thing is actually quite surprising, ade can score near 30 goals in arsenal , giroud can score there, chamahk when he is first choice can score, but its defoe that will not be able to score transition goals and chances in the box.

very odd reasoning , how many 1 touch strikers are even out there? not many, the one touch play...thank you for mentioning that btw as it proves a point about the difference in playing style and approach between our team and theirs.......all comes from the supplying players...not the striker. the idea that one touch play is what will stop defoe from scoring doesnt make sense to me.....why would defoe need to be playing 1 touch ball in order to score in a team that makes a bad habit of passing the ball into the box without the need of a true striker? the play with gervinho, he is NOT a one touch player,......yet he misses chances upin chances that defoe wouldnt, podolski isnt a one touch player...yet he scores his fare share...walcott isnt a one touch player, but his opportunities are plentiful....and giroud is not a 1 touch player as much as it seems you need to in your opinion to be successful at arsenal

i'll tell you this , even with bale playing up top we looked void a true penetrative approach to the games we played against disciplined teams. and thats a wide forward / winger playing up there

 

[DHSF]

okay then, we have eradicated 15 points. now even focusing on one or two points that would have gotten us CL ...why does it have to be a wonderous striker as opposed to more fluidity in open play and more guile in attack that creates more chances? why the hunger for a 25 million pound striker and not just better ball players? a better approach towards breaking down stubborn teams as opposed to shelving out 20 to 30 mil?

Depends where your ambitions lie - top four or the league? I want the league. Top four is secondary. To be league winners and maintain your competitiveness you cant just 'do enough' you gotta do more than that.

In that vase, why bother with strikers - why dont all teams play 4-6-0 and just have six midfielders. A striker a fluid more creative and clever striker would enable players like Bale to flourish even further and before you know it we can start talkin about CL etc

 

[DHSF]

a differential of 5 points makes me a clown shoe and your point misunderstood? LOL

get a grip man, even if it was 10 points it would still be the same effect from a teams perspective. you would still be looking for a big time players

and for 1 or 2 points you dont need a big time striker...you can do with a better game approach especially if its as clear as day that your approach doesnt work against teams that should lose to you on paper

I was kidding about the fudgein clown shoe dude haha. It was you being a clown shoe for spotting my error. In jest.