ALS take on the striker situation
ALS: SAFC Fanzine
WHO SHOULD START UP FRONT?
BY BEN HARDIE
Sunderland have now gone 14 games this season without a recognised striker sticking the ball into the back of the net and with just one goal in our last three games the goals seem to be drying up. None of the three forwards who have played for Sunderland have scored so far and they’ve only contributed one assist between them. So who should be starting in that centre-forward role?
MASON BURSTOW
Burstow is the only striker out of the three to actually have a goal contribution. That came away to Sheffield Wednesday with a wonderful ball to Jack Clarke for our second of the night. He’s also currently our number one choice to start, so far appearing in the starting XI seven times. In many ways this makes sense, Mason has played games in the EFL before unlike Rusyn and Hemir with a previous spell at Charlton in League One. His performance against Sheffield Wednesday was fantastic and he probably should have scored. That does bring me to my main point about Burstow, surely someone else is due a chance now at starting? He’s played eight times and started seven of those. Four shots on target and no goals isn’t a great record for a striker. Don’t get me wrong, he has his moments but the best way to summarise him is he often looks a bit panicky in front of goal. How many times this season has he taken one touch too many before he can get a shot away? It’s been a good few. Eventually he will score of course if he keeps getting picked in the XI, and one of those chances will end up in the net. This would hopefully be a catalyst for him to bag a few in a row. However, how long can we wait for him to do this? It’s unfair on our other strikers, and especially Hemir who got dropped after only a few games for basically doing the same thing whilst in my opinion actually getting closer to being successful. Apparently Burstow has been good in training and this suggests a lack of confidence when he gets into a proper game. This makes it difficult when deciding what to do with him, if we drop him that could destroy his confidence like Hemir but also what option do we have other than dropping him? It sounds cruel because Burstow clearly tries, even so we have four defeats in our last six games and we need to start scoring more and to do that we need our strikers to start contributing. Also it’s not all on our strikers of course because our defence has at times been poor especially when it comes to set pieces.
LUIS HEMIR
Onto the next candidate now and it’s Hemir. In my opinion he was dropped prematurely and has been treated unfairly by Mowbray but at the same time he needs to apply himself more in games to try and convince the boss to put him in the starting XI since he was dropped. Although it wasn’t the best performance in the world, bringing him off after an hour in the opening game of the season when we needed a goal was a terrible decision and surely shot his confidence to bits. This also came off the back of a fantastic pre-season by Hemir so surely he deserved more than 59 minutes against Ipswich to show what he could do and then a scattering of a few minutes elsewhere. Of course, like Burstow he’s missed the odd sitter (that header away to QPR still annoys me) but the key difference is Burstow misses good chances after starting whereas Hemir misses them after playing for only a few minutes. Therefore I’m going to say Hemir should be starting ahead of Burstow, however I’ll expand on what else we should do striker wise when I talk about Rusyn. Hemir isn’t immune from criticism though, at best he can be accused of lacking confidence and at worst ‘not being bothered’ or ‘lazy’, I think the pendulum swings more towards the former. It often seems like he’s not putting his full effort in to win balls when he drops deep. Although he only featured for around a couple of minutes away to Leicester there were three balls aimed at him and he never jumped for one of them. Plus watching him for the U21s led many to conclude he wasn’t good enough, let’s be a bit lenient with the lad and assess his position. He’s moved from Portugal playing youth football to England hoping to play senior football and he finds himself once again playing for an U21 side. That would lead most players to become lacking in motivation. I’m not saying that not jumping for balls is completely excusable but only giving him two minutes when we need a goal is a bit of a joke in my opinion. Luis needs a proper run of games and has been treated unfairly by Mowbray compared to Burstow.
NAZARIY RUSYN
Rusyn is a very useful player to us, he can play as a centre-forward and can also play on both sides of the wing. Therefore, he should be played alongside Hemir for a few games. This would involve dropping Roberts out of the starting lineup. Let’s be totally honest, Roberts hasn’t been brilliant this season. He continues to give defenders some problems but he hasn’t scored or assisted once so far. Rusyn meanwhile hasn’t featured all that much since signing, he’ll be ready to prove himself and should be given a chance to do that. Nazariy has been called up twice for the Ukraine squad and did well in the Ukrainian Premier League which is of a pretty good standard and based on that a run out of more than 15-20 minutes in games is needed to truly assess how he will perform in this team. Of course we can’t see how he’s getting on in training but I can’t imagine he’s been dire.
So in conclusion, Hemir and Rusyn need to be tried together for a few games. Burstow and Roberts should be dropped as neither has really been good enough to guarantee themselves a spot in the starting XI. We have more squad depth than last season so there’s no point in continuing to play players who haven’t been performing. This does require balance however as players need a run of games, but after seven starts and no goals from Burstow it’s time to give him some time to work on the training pitch a bit more and time for Hemir to be given another chance.