Pretty much every team who ever wins the league has a very good frontman that the whole team is based around getting the good chances too. When arsenal won they had henry, Chelsea- drogba, united have had many Rooney, nistelroy, cole to name but a few, even Liverpool nearly won the league with Torres our only real target man. So my question is and has been since Torres left, who is our frontman? Suarez is a great player, but lacking sometimes in his finish. Perhaps it could be Carroll, but the team has never been focused to give him the best chance, maybe he isn't good enough but he's never been given the full focus of the team. This season, looks to have started as the last ended, playing decent football and creating chances but no focus on finishing off the good play. This has to be rectified soon, either we focus the team to supply one of our strikers with chances that we know they are likely to finish, ie Suarez one on ones, Carroll crosses, or we bring in a new frontman and focus the team to best supply them. If this is not done quickly I suspect a season much like last, lots of chances but an overall disappointment that we could have really achieved more. P.s I know that things have changed and the players are adjusting to a new system, and this is not a bash at them as the football they have played has been of a good quality, but it's plain to see that the problems of last seaso are still with us.
I think everyone is agreed that the goal scorer issue from last year still has not been addressed. And until it is we will struggle to put teams away.
Newcastle have Ba, then Cisse and scored for fun last season. Spurs had Ade and finished top 4. Arsenal had RVP. We have Borini, an unknown entity in the PL. Hope he does well, but it never excited me and I'm not convinced. Carroll....we spent £35m on him. We are miles behind the teams we want to be amongst.
And here lies the problem. Modern day football is unforgiving to clubs that aspire to be higher but are unwilling to part with huge sums of money. Unless the academy lads are the next Messi's (or the positional equivalent), we discover some real hidden gems for bargain basement prices or FSG are finally get their act together and get the club making more money to spend we are only going to fall further behind the current top 5/6
Soldado, Llorente, Leandro Damiao, Huntelaar, Falcao, Pazzini, Wolfswinkel, Bas Dost, Hooper, Fletcher, Di Natale, Cavani, Negredo, Dzeko, Berbatov, Gameiro, Remy, Cardozo, Rhodes, Cisse, Bent, Holt. ANYONE WITH A PROVEN RECORD OF PUTTING THE BALL IN THE BACK OF THE NET, PLEASE.
I have to disagree, I don't think we are miles behind, I think we have as good a squad as a lot of the top teams. The problem seems to lie in the tactics, when we had Torres we would play constant through balls knowing he would get on to some of them and that's where his finishing was strongest. At Chelsea they didn't play that way and so he wasn't as good. For us Carroll is strong in the air so lots of high crosses into the box would give him the best chance of scoring. We don't do that because Suarez is short and not good in the air. Suarez is good at taking people on so would be best suited to coming in from wide and either going inside to take a shot on getting to the goal line and crossing across goal, we don't do that because we play him as a frontman where he get caught on the ball. Gerrard would be good for Suarez to pull back fo on the edge of the box, but he no longer has the legs to play midfield and support striker roles. So the options we should be playing are, play Carroll get lots of high balls into the box from quick counter attacks, or play Suarez out wide have him cutting in or crossing from the line, buy new frontman who's a good poacher with Gerrard playing behind frontman with less midfield responsibility. Or we get a pacey striker who we can play through balls too. ATM we don't seem to be playing to any of our players strengths, which is why we have such a poor chance conversion record.
We can't rely on Carroll to be our Torres. He had a conversion rate of about 5% last season... no where near good enough. We need to get rid and find a TOP 4 QUALITY striker which he is not.
The LFC team need to watch how Germany delivery the ball to Gomez because I feel Carroll is very similar. Big, strong, gets stuck in, powerful strike, super reflexes, good in the air, scares defenders. Carroll is quicker and more mobile than he gets credit for to.
i just got to shrug and say... the OP is right, if you've a guy on fire he lifts the whole team. if suarez poked in 2 yesterday in the first 20mins we'd have crucified them. he missed sitters and blazed others wide and them we fell apart. Anyone remember back in 1995 and alaan shearer? you had to score 2 v blackburn to win cos he was SURE to get a goal. there are many examples of this but right now any side coming to anfield knows all they need to is keep it tight and a point is the least they can hope for.
So everyone knew what we needed apart from FSG and Ian Ayre? That's not a surprise seeing as they are clueless.
He outscored all but 1 of our players in the league last season while only starting 5 games. Sad but true.
The reality is that last season under Kenny we create3d lots of chances and just coiuldnt score. So BR comes in and gets rid of Kuyt, Maxi, Bellamy and Carroll and replaces them with Borini, (who had never played a game in the Prem.) And expects us to correct our problems from last season
