Do Newcastle United need a 20 goal striker?
Posted on April 28th, 2010 | 120 Comments |
We have already noticed the keyboards and printing presses of various news outlet cranking up their output in the past few days as the clamour to be the one to get the holy grail of all press reporting – the ‘you heard it here first’ exclusive – increases. Of course much of what is reported will be false as the media adopt the ‘scatter gun’ approach in the hope that one of these rumours will come off, but that shouldn’t stop us fans speculating on targets and there has indeed already been some healthy debate and some great players mentioned that could improve the team. People have their own ideas about which areas of the team need strengthening, and there has already been some form of concensus as to which areas are a priority and which ones aren’t.
It has been mentioned a few times that a 20 goal a season striker will be needed if we are to indeed avoid relegation, and that sort of player would obviously be a very welcome addition. Unfortunately, these kind of players are not easy to come by and those that are around are more than likely outside of our much speculated about budget. In fact a quick look at the top scorers table will reveal that only Wayne Rooney, Didier Drogba, Darren Bent and Carlos Tevez have hit the magic twenty goal barrier this season, and of those only Darren Bent plays for a side outside the top four teams.
If you look a little deeper, you will find only one player outside the top half of the Premier League table that has hit double figures from their goal return this season, Hugo Rodallega at Wigan with precisely 10 goals to his name.
This is where Andrew Thomas Carroll could come in handy for us next season. The controversial local lad could be the surprise package for next season, especially if he continues to demostrate the improvement we have seen since Christmas which has yielded a return of 15 goals in 22 games since the turn of the year. I know people will say that the Championship is easier than the Premier League, but Carroll also came out of last season with some credit and the exposure to sustained first team football this time round will only have helped him.
So lets look at last season. The stats say Carroll made 13 appearances and scored 3 goals. Not impressive really, but it’s only when you look deeper that you get the opinion that maybe Carroll could cut it in the Premier League. Of those 13 appearances, he only played the full 90 minutes four times and came on as a substitute for the last ten minutes on six occasions. In total, his time on the pitch was roughly 620 minutes in total, an approximate average of 47 minutes per appearance. His return of three goals doesn’t seem so bad now does it?
I think that Carroll can easily match anything outside of the top half of the table next season, and if the supply can be kept up and he can remain injury free, then I can see no reason why he won’t be able to surpass the efforts of players such as Rodallega at Wigan.
Food for thought, eh?
NUFCBlog Author: toonsy
toonsy has written 643 articles on this blog.
Although I think Carrol will become a really good PL player I think it would be very unfair to put pressure on him to score the goals to keep us up – He does have issues with his movement in the box at the minute so he will have to improve and we cannot expect that to happen overnight.
Ameobi – Too many chances, if he’s not injured he’s strolling around the pitch looking for things to do – Too unreliable after all these years.
Lovenkrands – Will probably be our best bet to get us goals but I do worry he only ever seems to score at home.
Best – ?????
Although the question should be: Do we need a goalscorer? Every team needs or wants a 20 goal a season player but they cost minimum £10m – We ain’t going to be spending that on just one player.
So in my opinion – Yes we need a goalscorer.