OK, but Bear, I watched the game back... I just didn't see Gyokeres making intelligent runs off the ball, turning defenders, spinning them or running in behind. If he's not moving effectively then the ball is going to go to feet. I also don;t think he has the pace to really acre defenders - there were a couple of moments where he had the chance to stretch his legs in the Liverpool game and the defender easily caught him.
To be fair to Gyokeres, I think he's still getting up to speed with the pace of the PL Also remember, this guy hasn't really had a pre season to get used to a new club and the methods. It's another game under his belt, but I think we need to be patient. Something that football fans seem always to be in short supply of.
Jay, its because scoring record numbers of goals doesn't mean you are more efficient at scoring goals, a lot of the goals we scored were goals when the games were already dead, winning 5-0 doesn't give us more points than winning 2-0, but if we win 3 games on the trot 5-0 against mediocre competition, it still has the same point value as winning 3 difficult games 1-0 or 2-1. The latter is the point I want to make. We will only win the big prizes if we can score in and win the key games. What are key games ? Games where we are dropping points, scoring goals that snatches a draw instead of a defeat or a win instead of a draw. Scoring in cup games to get us through to the next round. All too often we don't score in key games, that as why we have done so poorly in the cup competitions with Arteta. Havertz is too hit n miss, he is just as likely to miss the target as he is to hit it when through on goal. We needed a more reliable goal scorer, we needed a CF who is more likely to make the runs that get on the ends of crosses we continually sling in and never have nobody in the box to convert. Thats why we all wanted a more traditional CF, thats why we needed a better finisher than Havertz. And for all the talk about consecutive record goals - they won us nothing !!! Scoring when it matters is far more important than just scoring lots of goals.
When we broke our record we scored 4+ goals in 9 games - same as City did when they won the title that year. We didn't win that year because City were simply better - just. That doesn't mean we have to rip up a record goal scoring system and get a 'traditional striker'. We didn't break our goal scoring record for any other reason than we were a brilliant attacking force over the season. How is it that Havertz was able to go through a spell of 6 months in that season when he moved to striker and be the top scorer in that time in the entire PL? He's only played as striker in two half seasons for us and in that time scored 22 goals and assisted 11 times (PL alone).
