Personally, when Cenk has had adequate service he's looked a competent finisher who can make and finish chances; he's certainly not an easy opposition either.
The problem was that he was often left isolated up front with very little decent service: long punted balls and very few passes to feet or with movement.
Admittedly, he's not a world beater by any stretch of the imagination and I do feel we need other options up front, but with the right play he will give a fair return.
Our real problem is that our play was, and continues to be, a style that offers little or no creativity and a lot of that I lay on the toes of having a lacking midfield.
I that was a symptom of how bad our defense was.
Big Sam knew they couldn’t defend space so he had them drop off and defend deep so there was no space.
This meant the midfield had to cover 2/3rds of the pitch effectively turning sigurdsson into an extra full back and Rooney dropping into the Centre circle.
Our central defenders can’t bring the ball out either so our midfield gets bypassed.
I don’t like Sam but it was the right call because we stopped conceding.
I don’t think Silva will allow our Centre backs the same luxury. On the plus side we now have the players to deliver The high pressing game up the other end of the pitch but because of that OUR defense will be under more pressure than ever.
We need a different kind of center back if not two
...and a finisher up the other end to punish mistakes created by pressing
