Here.
Watch out for Matthew and Toby in the very first second. Portsmouth… looking back that was one of the best days I can remember. Magic times.
July 11, 2008
Why we shouldn’t be too disappointed with the idea of Bobby Zamora
Here are the players who have scored ten goals or more – more than once – in the last three seasons:
Frank Lampard 3
Ayegbeni Yakubu 3
Robbie Keane 3
Wayne Rooney 3
[Ronaldo 3]
Darren Bent 2
Dimitr Berbatov 2
Didier Drogba 2
Steven Gerrard 2
Nicolas Anelka 2
Jermain Defoe 2
Thierry Henry 2
That’s it. I’m beginning to think that there really is no such thing as a consistent goalscorer for teams like us. The only outlier on that list is Darren Bent, whose goals came for Charlton. Otherwise we’re looking at Chelsea, Middlesbrough/Everton, Spurs, Man Utd, Spurs, Chelsea, Liverpool, Bolton (has Anelka been elsewhere?), Spurs, Arsenal.
Teams like West Ham, Newcastle, Aston Villa, Blackburn, Portsmouth, Man City, etc, etc, none of them have found someone who can score ten consistently.
It just doesn’t happen. I’m beginning to think that the key to success is to concentrate on creating chances and having players who are sufficiently able to knock a decent proportion of them away.
Which is where the Bullard-Davies-Gera axis is going to be so important. Here are the assist totals for our players over the last two seasons:
07/08
Murphy 2
Dempsey 2
Bouazza 2
Kamara 3
Bullard 3
Davies 8
06/07
Volz 2
Rosenior 2
Radzinski 3
Queudrue 3
Jensen 3
Diop 3
McBride 4
Helguson 4
Davies 4
Davies played half a season two years ago, so he’d probably have made about 8 then too. Bullard played half a season this time, so would have had more. Gera had 7 assists for WBA last year, 8 the year before that. So that’s a good thing. These three could make 25 or so goals between them.
It comes back to this idea of having a few capable players who can bag a few goals. Zamora could score 8 or 9 or more, Nevland impressed everyone off the bench, David Healy is, for all his faults, a goalscorer, and Clint Dempsey managed six in half a season of centre-forward play, which, all things considered, looks alright to me. That rate, assuming he’d carried on, would’ve led to 10-12 goals, which is about as many as we can reasonably hope for unless we spend big, find a needle in a haystack, or get lucky.
All of which suggests that a lot of people are aiming too high as far as centre-forwards are concerned, and that our current options probably aren’t as dire as has been suggested. Which doesn’t mean that a very good centre-forward wouldn’t help – of course it would – more that we’re unlikely to find that player and shouldn’t necessarily be too downhearted about this.
