Strikers Strikers Everywhere, But Who Will Score Us Goals?

What we need right now.


The usual frenzy of transfer activity is of course focussing right now on strikers. It’s this year’s very in thing. Gone are the days of left backs being wanted, that’s so 2011 fashion.

But yes, this fabled 20+ goals a season striker which we need, and must have is top of everyone’s virtual shopping list. Sylvain Ebanks-Blake has had his name added to that veritable list. Of course what hasn’t helped this clamour is that Sheffield Wednesday just renewed one striker and got another in, and went and scored a bloody good but very overdue win.

With the summer demand for Billy Sharp to be signed (despite only having a 1 in 3 goal scoring ratio) and with him going to Reading, it’s been hard to judge if he’d have been the right man, he’s spent his entire Reading loan career injured just about, so whether he went there and banged them in, it hasn’t happened, but not that it might.

So now we cast that net around for a striker, and the talk was a week or so ago that we are looking wider and further, on the continent for that guy to put the goal in the net. It almost speaks not of desperation but exasperation to me. That we thought there’d be the quality in this country to get, but it’s just not there. Whether through availability or just not having the requisite quality around, or because there’s more value for money there.

A few people chucked around Patrick Bamford's name, after his impressive displays for MK Dons, and the fact to increase his development, Chelsea might see us as a good place for him to go from January. This negates some vital aspects. There is a rumour, and I stress rumour, that Bamford’s departure from Forest was somewhat acrimonious. The club angry that their talent they had nurtured was advised to move away, apparently by family. There is also the fact Chelsea might not be our best friends with the whole Chalobah thing. This forgets that Bamford fell out with the old regime, things have changed.

Of course previously we have seen plenty of other names in the past few months since Raffik Djebbours snub or whatever it was. Some of the names are hilarious (I saw someone suggest Adebayor), but others would seem good targets. Hooper and Austen always looked farfetched. And it seems any time any striker gets a brace now some fans scream he should and could be in our team.

And what I haven’t yet done is mention our current strikers. I have done in other blogs. I do think admittedly Cox is out of form, though the unfair fickle abuse many hand out is wrong. People who don’t understand form just saying we need to get rid when this guy has proved himself at higher stages than us. Tudgay and Henderson are Championship cloggers. Blackstock, well he’s not around now. Derbyshire remains on the fringes and you wonder what it’d take to just give him a bit more of a go, and Ishmael Miller is Ishmael Miller. It does certainly seem like it needs a little reinvigorating.

And it needs to happen soon. The longer the drought goes on the more it rests in the mind. The more it will affect form. Wanted; someone to score goals. When we went up in the past it was always with a bona fide goalscorer. We need one again. Maybe not in Collymore or van Hooijdonk’s class. But someone who knows where the back of the net is.

Comments