Goals from strikers this season

[red g]

2 more strikers and 2 wingers.

Eto
Tevez
a fit kewell
Mancini

that would bring numero 19 home no problem

Ps is mancini available, how has he done this season?

[tomasjj]

No way.

[REDSCOUSER]

Morten Olsen.

He's 55 years old, managed Denmark, I think he retired now.

[captainfog]

That stat shocks me.

Not surprised about the rest of the team though, our wingers are either crap or injured

[Joe Le Toff]

of course we had one of the best of his generation Jari Litmanen but oh how he was wasted

[Rocket]

its because only drogba this season has been your typical 20+ goal a season striker.

Henry has been injured, and nobody else has one

[anfieldanfield]

And some people say it's not essential that Pennant scores goals....tsk..

[MrMichael]

We seriously lack, with the exception of Gerrard. any real goalscoring threat from midfield whatsoever. Actually we have done for seasons, but have had a lot more distance shots go in than I can remember this year.

It is a complete fallacy that we need "world-class", "20 goal-a-season" strikers to win the league. The Scum team that dominated the late 90's never had this, Yorke and Cole were average at best and were consistently matched in scoring terms by the likes of Scholes, Giggs, Kanchelskis, Beckham and even Keane. If I remember correctly, several seasons all 4 of their midfield scored more than 10 league goals. At the same time we had Fowler, then Owen, banging them in all the time, and never even got close.

Not that I don't want to see better strikers at Anfield, but I do think we could win the league with Kuyt and Crouch up front scoring ~15 each. This season's stats do show that. I seriously doubt we ever would without a seriously improved goal threat from the midfield.

[Charlie_B]

Not enough players scoring is what it is. If you look at the Chelsea squads from the last three years, the defenders and midfielders chipped in, we only have three players that have regularly chipped (other than strikers), being Riise, Gerrard and Garcia. That's the stat that we need to improve.

[Mr Tourette]

I always think about the attacking threat of previous league winning teams. I think of players like giggs, scholes, rooney and ronaldo. Pires, henry, bergkamp, llungberg. drogba, lampard, cole, robben and duff.

Aside from gerrard in midfield we dont seem to have much of a consistent goal threat. we are well organised and capable occasionaly of great football but its not enough - and this is for me why we are easily good enough in europe but nowhere near good enough in the league.

The others - Alonso, macher and sissoko all great players that i love but not counted for obvious reasons - pennant? gonzalez? i dont think so. As much as pennant has improved hes no goal threat whatsover is he? To be honest im looking forward to kewell and garcia coming back and i didnt think id ever say that. otherwise our best player on the left is riise.

This is why id concntrate on signing goalscoring wide midfielders (the stats above helps assist the argument) more than spending 40million (ha ha) on a single player like eto who wont come to us anyway - ask me 'why not' if you want - but i doubt many of you would put your money where your mouth is.

Buying Eto would not make us instant league winners. But playing gerrard in the middle and insuring that we had two top class goalscoring midfielders either side of him just might. If we want to win the league we must have more players consistently providing a goal threat from midfield.

[Red_Polo]

And some people say it's not essential that Pennant scores goals....tsk..

FLMAO you really are hilarious - essential for what exactly? To remain as a squad player next season? Hardly. Go back and read that thread you're harking back to, you made a stupid negative comment about Pennant, and you were rightly pulled up on it.

Does our midfield need to score more goals than it managed this season? Yes. Is that mainly because Pennant scored so few? No, it's because we've got defensively minded CMs, no quality at all at LM, Gerrard has had a poor season, Garcia has been out injured. Frankly I think all that is far more an issue than Pennant scoring 3 less league goals than a winger who was first choice in a league winning team and got into the PFA team of the season iirc.

I've noticed it is characteristic of the negative stances you sometimes take, that you refuse to look at the whole, and focus exclusively instead on a small negative part as though it were the only thing that mattered. That doesn't make any sense, you have to judge each player in terms of the sum of what they offer, not with simplistic narrow perspectives that effectively amount to an 'ah but Cisse scored 2 more league goals for us than Bellamy this season so he must be better for us' or a 'Pennant's only scored one league goal so he's **** and anyone that has scored one more than that is better for us'.

Having Bellamy on the field hasn't consistantly been to the detriment of our general play the way Cisse often was, and I would suggest an extra 2 league goals is nothing like enough to make us want Cisse back instead. Of course that's not to say it means Bellamy has been any good either. Likewise, looking at the big picture it's easy to appreciate that Pennant mightn't score many goals, but on current form (and it was current form we were discussing in that thread) he has been creating chances quite regularly for us, so whilst we need to look for better, he would make a very decent squad player.

[desertscouser]

No way.

Ribery.

But I read a couple of days ago that he 'dreams' of playing for AC Milan, Juve, Barca, Real, Chelsea, United and Arsenal. Sadly quasimodo doesn't fancy us as a decent option.

[bigfooty]

I'd agree that we haven't had enough goal threat from wide positions this season, particularly with Kewell being out.

The other problem is the way we play in that we need our strikers and our wide men to score more goals. Rafa frequently plays two defensive midfielders. Compare this with Arsenal and Man Utd, who play one sitting midfielder (Gilberto / Carrick) and one more creative type (Fabregas / Scholes). Chelsea tend not to play 4-4-2 as much, but when they do they allow their central midfielders - Lampard in particular - to get forward much more than we do. I don't know the goal stats but it gives the apperance of our midfield being better at containing rather than scoring, which is fine when your strikers are on form but not so good when they are less than clinical.

[tomasjj]

But I read a couple of days ago that he 'dreams' of playing for AC Milan, Juve, Barca, Real, Chelsea, United and Arsenal. Sadly quasimodo doesn't fancy us as a decent option.

Yes, I saw that.
Hopefully that is all just bollocks, in the Owen "I about to sign a new contract" league.

[Red_Polo]

I'm disappointed but not hugely surprised at Ribery omitting us from that list, I think there's every chance Cisse has badmouthed Rafa to him.