Not even if it gets you promotion? The goalkeeper is different, no one else can save shots so he's the only player whose role really is different to the rest of the team. The 10 outfield players just have to put the ball in the net between them and keep it out at the other end. We did that very well last season with no high-scoring strikers. I can't believe we're still debating this considering how good that season was... The Wolves one was his 6th of the season: Brighton, Doncaster (that's the cup one), Millwall, Leicester, Peterorough, Wolves.
Simpson scored one goal in 31 appearances in the last six months of the season. Whatever way you look at it, that's appalling and we were very lucky to get automatic promotion with our shocking goal scoring record. Unless we resolve that issue for next season, we'll get slaughtered.
Our promotion was a massive success though and we proved that it isn't all about having a 20-goal a season striker. As did Cardiff. Neither of us were lucky. We need new strikers for various reasons, but if they score 2 goals between them next season and we stay up that will be another huge success.
If our strikers only score 2 goals each in the Premier League, then our midfield (as it is now) will not score enough goals to keep us up. It's simple. We created enough chances in games to put opponents to the sword. We lacked the quality up front to put those chances away and it nearly cost us automatic promotion. We were lucky in the respect that Watford etc failed to capitalise. But the standard of the opposition in the coming season means we need at least 1 striker who can put the ball in the onion bag
It should have hurt us last season, we were lucky that other clubs ****ed up, we made a right hash of it in the end and we got away with it, rather it being a good plan. Only a complete moron would try and compete the same way in the Premier League next season. Fortunately, Brucey isn't one and we will sign a striker or two who know how to score.
It's all well and good saying that we were lucky to have gone up automatically but the fact is we were better than 22 other teams over 46 games. Ourselves and Cardiff were very effective in preventing teams from scoring against us whilst scoring a couple ourselves. I'd rather we be a team that didn't have to depend on one player to score all of our goals and that they're shared out throughout the squad, saves us from being a one trick pony. Plus if you look at the likes of Austin at Burnley and Rhodes at Blackburn, having one man run the show isn't guaranteed a high league finish. We had good performances from almost everybody this season which in turn has seen us promoted.
Top scorers from some of our rivals for next season: Norwich Holt - 8 Snodgrass - 6 Pilkington - 5 Hoolahan, Bassong, Martin, Turner - 3 Stoke Walters - 8 Crouch - 7 Jones, Adam, Kightly, Jerome - 3 Sunderland Fletcher - 11 Gardner - 6 Sessegnon - 7 Johnson - 5 McLean, O'Shea, Own goals - 2 Newcastle Cisse - 8 Cabaye - 6 Ben Arfa - 4 Sissoko, Gouffran - 3 It's a wonder so many teams get by with all these **** strikers. Between those teams there are only four strikers who got more than three goals in all of last season. Stephen Fletcher is probably the only reliable goalscorer from those teams, and yet his team couldn't score for ****. Wigan had another reliable scorer in Kone but no bugger else scored more than 3, and they were relegated. Reading had a top scorer of 12, more than anyone else mentioned in this post, yet they hardly ever started him, instead preferring strikers who 'can't score' and they too were relegated. Strikers accounted for 21 of QPR's 30 goals last season, yet they too were relegated. What does all this prove I wonder...
It does show that you don't need a 20 goal a season striker to stay up. But that's good in the PL, you often get more open play which can bring midfielders into the game more. In the Championship, there is more reliance on the front two to contribute goals and it stands out if you don't score goals. As OLM said, we were so, so lucky that Watford, Boro and Leicester bottled it when they did because we just weren't scoring enough. You'll get punished more if you don't have solid, out and out strikers in your side. The Reading example is a good one; Le Fondre was putting them away but wasn't getting a game because the manager was trying to 'choke' teams with technical play and trying to nick a goal on the break. It didn't work and they were relegated. It's a similar ploy to that of Phil Brown in our inaugural PL season and it almost cost us (in fact we luckily stayed up on the last day). If we don't purchase somebody who can put the ball in the net, we'll be buggered. All season long.
The Le Fondre example proves that both managers agreed there were better options than the top scorer.
Yeah and they got relegated as a consequence! Which option in a football team is better than your strongest forward? It's like when ***an and Garcia kept being paired up front together instead of Cousin and Folan.
So you're saying McDermott and Adkins don't know football as well as the stat-obsessed City fans who are so intelligent they can deduce who's a good striker and who isn't simply by looking at the goalscoring charts, or that if one of us managed them and just picked the top scorers, they'd have stayed up? As for that ***an, Garcia partnership, that was because Folan was **** and Cousin couldn't be arsed so yes they were more effective.
You're obsessed with goal scoring charts, my opinion was arrived at by watching us play every week. You think ***an was a better striker than Cousin? Presumably you think Brownie was right to leave Geovanni on the bench and play Kilbane, just because he worked hard. All of this is completely academic anyway, as Bruce has strikers as his main priority, as he watched the same games as me last season.
I'll never claim to be better at football management than an actual manager or coach, it's a tough gig and I have massive respect for them. But you don't need a UEFA Pro License to see where they're going wrong. It brings us nicely back to the point that a player shouldn't be a striker if they can't score goals. It doesn't make them a bad footballer, it just doesn't make them a striker. Charlie Austin is a Championship striker because he scores **** loads of goals consistently, whilst also creating goals for others with his hold up play, strength and vision. Jay Simpson is not a striker, he doesn't score nearly enough to be classed as one, however the rest of his game means he could be deployed as an advanced midfielder where his hold up play and strength could be put to better use. He isn't a **** footballer, he just isn't a striker. Just like Alex Bruce isn't a midfielder. It doesn't make him a bad player, it just means his skills aren't being utilised in the right area.
Not at all, but as we all know Cousin was, like many of our PL signings, utterly pointless for large periods and that's when he didn't get picked. I can see why Cousin didn't play for that reason, but I regularly complained about the 4-6-0 formation because that was hardly ideal either. The real issue there was that the squad simply wasn't good enough, we signed too much crap and realised halfway through the season that we had no decent attacking players after King left. But the manager disagrees with both of those things. I can see where you're coming from RE Alex Bruce, but even then when I think about it, I don't actually believe that SB plays him for the fun of it, there's a good reason and it's one that we just won't understand. I'd love to have a manager explain his thinking on certain things like this but without that option, none of us can ever really know the players as well as the manager does.
I think Simpsons inclusion in the team came down to the fact that Gedo, Aluko and Fryatt all picked up injuries, coupled with SB's apparent disdain for Proschwitz, meant he had no real option but to include Simpson. We should have pushed a little harder in January for a more reliable striker. Boyd and Gedo were decent enough signings, had we signed Austin, Hooper or Rhodes (hypothetically of course; we couldn't have afforded them then) then I don't think Simpson would've got a look in. They'd have been brought in to partner somebody else.
