Signing a striker should be a priority for Newcastle.
Posted on July 9th, 2010 | 183 Comments |
The problem for me is that both of those are midfield players, and in my opinion we should be making signing a striker a priority. Now it’s only speculation surrounding those two players, but they are both tipped to move to Newcastle soon if you believe what you read in the press.
That is all very good and what not, but what happens at the business end of the pitch? Who is going to put the ball in the back of the net? We need to score goals to survive in the Premier League. Do I have faith in the players that we have at the minute being able to do that? Yes and no is my answer, which is obviously confusing so let me explain a bit more.
I think it’s pretty much nailed on that Andy Carroll will be our main striker next season. Home and away, and whatever formation we play in, Carroll will be the one who retains his place in the team, barring injuries or suspension of course, and let’s not forget that there is a chance we could lose him altogether at some point as he could well be off to serve some time at her majesty’s pleasure.
If it happens, it happens, but if it doesn’t then I do believe that Carroll has it in him to lead the line and score at least ten goals next season. But will that be enough? I’m not so sure.
In all likelihood we will probably end up with just Carroll up front when play away from St James’ Park, with someone like Kevin Nolan operating just behind him on the field of play. But for our home games, especially against the sides that we stand a chance of getting points off, then we have to go with two up front.
Step forward Peter Lovenkrands. Pistol Pete formed a deadly partnership with Andy Carroll last season as they plundered 35 goals between them, but can they replicate that in the Premier League? Obviously they won’t score the same amount of goals, but I do think that they will score goals.
The problem for me arises when we are missing either of them. What happens then? Can we really rely on Leon Best, Shola Ameobi, Xisco or Nile Ranger to step into the breach? I don’t think we can, and that is my main concern and also why I would like us to spend a chunk of cash on another striker who would be able to step into the team.
At a push Ameobi can do a job for us, if he remains injury free, but my major concern is if something happens to Lovenkrands. What happens to the team then?
Our strikers seem to be very unbalanced at the minute, and by that I mean we seem to have an abundance of big lump, target men type strikers, which is fine for covering Andy Carroll, but no good if Lovenkrands needs a deputy for whatever reason.
With that in mind, I would like us to pursue a kind of deep lying/support striker that can run in and around the big lumps up front, like Lovenkrands does. Some one like Mevlüt Erdinç would seem to have been ideal, although there have been no further developments on that story. What about Juan Albin, the player we were linked with a while back? I am sure it was mentioned at the time that Albin is out of contract, although I can’t remember for definate.
In short, Carroll and Lovenkrands will do, but our backup isn’t of sufficient quality in my opinion. We could probably scrape by without Carroll, after all he may not even turn out to be any good in the Premier League, but it is the lack of another nippy forward like Peter Lovenkrands that really concerns me.
NUFCBlog Author: toonsy
toonsy has written 643 articles on this blog.
Robbie Keane!
A great move for both him and us.