Who should be our starting striker???

[Alio]

I don't want to alarm anyone ... but we're probably not going to win the league this year. Giving time to "28 year old" Yakubu at this point doesn't make a lot of sense to me -- we need to find out what we have in Beckford. I'm not saying we stick with him for the rest of the season no matter what, but he deserves a regular run to see if he can sort it out. He's shown flashes of late and I think his upside is the highest at this point.

Whether it's Moyes fault; Yak's fault, Yak's injury ... or a combination of that and a bunch of other reasons, the upshot is that Yak hasn't looked all that good. He's had a few flashes but he's missed a lot of chances as well and has generally not looked that up for it. Even when 100% fit and motivated he's always been a very streaky player and if he's not on a scoring streak it can be often be a long wait for him to get back on one ... especially long when you are playing one striker. I'd take Yak over Saha though of course, that goes without saying. Saha shouldn't play another minute all season as far as I'm concerned.

As for playing two strikers I can't get my head around it -- strikers in general have been our worst players all year. Putting two of them on and pushing Cahill (tied with Baines for player of the year thus far?) back into midfield (or onto the bench) seems like a recipe for eliminating the few goals we have scored.

Nice post that..

Who were the player's 2 people had forgotten? =)

 

[padefc]

I actually agree with all of this. When Saha is on form he's clearly the best fit for our team. Yak doesn't work well on his own for me. Beckford gets more chances in 10 minutes than all others combined for the entire game. Stick him in and hope he hits the net. I think he will come good but he needs experience at this level and we'll have to suffer through some growing pains, but the payoff could be huge.

very well put totaly agree there mate

 

[njligernj]

whats so evil about 4-4-2

why cant we have 2 strikers like most other teams?

How many strikers in the Prem have score more goals than Cahill this year?

Three.

Only Berbatov, Tevez and Carroll have more goals than Cahill.

Does Cahill score as many goals if he's playing in a traditional midfield role? I doubt it.

So if you want to play two strikers you can't think Cahill is going to be as effective. In fact you can't think our team will be as effective (not that we've been very effective thus far but its all relative) if you have Cahill in midfield instead of one of Fellaini/Rodwell/Arteta/Pienaar. Our midfield suffers and our striking suffers because if you want to push Cahill back you need to say one of our strikers -- one of our, to be frank, thus far this year, absolutely [Poor language removed] strikers -- is suddenly going to become a top three goal scorer and surpass Cahill. Put two of our strikers together and what odds the way they've been playing they have more than 8 goals between them up front?

Why can't we have two strikers? We have one striker and his name is Cahill. Whatever Yakubu, Saha, Beckford (and see above I think Beckford can come good but thus far he hasn't been) and company have been thus far thus year they aren't 1/10th as good a striker (definition: scoring goals) as Cahill.