Whether we go down or stay up the highest priority for this club is to recruit at least two goal scoring strikers (preferably 3) next season. Lack of goals has been our Achilles heel for far too long now and that problem has defined Hull City as a team. I know Jelavic is popular for his work ethic, but IMO we would have been far better off with someone like Austin who just puts the ball in the net consistently. N'Doye could be a great player, but sadly I suspect it won't be with us. Aluko just isn't a striker Sagbo doesn't even deserve to be mentioned.
Why does everyone always want a truckload of new strikers? Jelavic is spot on, N'Doye can score, Hernandez may turn it on, he wouldn't be the first player to struggle in his first season and he won't be the last. For once, up front is possibly the strongest area of the squad, if we stay up we don't need to sign anymore strikers. What we need to focus on is getting supply to those strikers from midfield and the wings.
The problem this season hasn't particularly been the strikers, more the complete lack of goals from midfield. I haven't checked, but off the top of my head: Huddlestone, Livermore, Quinn, Meyler, Elmo, Brady, Quinn, Robertson, Ben Arfa, Ramirez and Ince have 6 goals between them. Thats every player who has played a midfield position for us this season apart from Diame with 6 goals.
We only need to keep the strikers we have now to have a superb bunch for the Championship. It looks like Hernandez will go but if Jelly/N'doye stay with Aluko then thats as good as you can get. Before the Aluko bashers turn up, the Championship is probably the ideal level for him too. We need one more to account for injuries but surely that won't be hard to achieve or maybe it's about time they let one of the youth/ressies step up
Our problem as been mistakes! Back pass at wba, leaving remy unmarked, not clearing our box on numerous occasions! I'm sure there's more! Leagues have been won (arsenal) by teams only scoring one goal a game! It's at the back we've not been 100%
I've checked, and even if you include Diame we've scored 10 goals from midfield this season, Sunderland on the other hand have 15. Every team in the bottom half of the league will make mistakes. At the end of the day (urgh) the players we've got are with us because they aren't good enough to be with bigger clubs, and so are going to make mistakes.
I suspect N'Doye saw us as a stepping stone to bigger clubs in the PL Has he done enough to alert suitors? Possibly..
Our supply to strikers has been shocking. Put Gary Lineker in his prime up top and he wouldn't score many more than Jela does in this team. I don't remember a single case of us playing a pass in behind the defence for a striker to run though and put away. We make a conscious effort to avoid playing through the middle, instead passing it out wide to launch fruitlessly into the box. A combination of poor tactics and a poor midfield has cost us this season.
The truth is our strikers aren't intimidating which is the main reason we don't intimidate the opposition. They don't score enough goals which is supposed to be the main aspect of their job description. They consistently miss sitters which has Bruce virtually pulling his hair out every game. The excuses need to stop.
Again I can't remember the exact stat, but I believe in the entire season last season we only created 8 chances via through balls. The average for a standard game was as high as that. You'd have thought though that this would actually encourage the midfield to get forward, knowing they just need to get on the end of a ball rather than create themselves.
Consistently miss sitters? I can only think of two sitters we've had all bloody season, Jelavic away at Leicester and Hernandez at home to Chelsea. What bloody sitters are you on about? We don't create any!
Our strikers have 18 goals between them this season. In compairison: Villa 21 Palace 15 Burnley 15 Leicester 20 Newcastle 21 Sunderland 13 QPR (including Austin with 17) 23. So although the stats aren't great, we're much closer in terms of goals scored through strikers than we are midfielders.
Even 6th placed Liverpools strikers have scored less than ours this season. Strikers is not the problem whatsoever.
15-20 would be highly prolific for us, the ones we have now can get to that in the Championship if that's where we end up. We do well v the Spuds though so maybe all is not lost yet....
