One striker or two?
Posted on June 5th, 2011 | 18 Comments |
The French press are announcing the ‘imminent’ arrival of Gervinho at Newcastle, which sounded promising until I noticed they got their information from Sky Sports.
Allegedly we’ve made a €16m bid for the player (£14.25m) – which may be true – but I can find nothing to confirm that Gervinho will be on Tyneside at all, let alone imminently.
But what do we need in terms of strikers anyway? And what sort of formations is Alan Pardew likely to consider?
For most games last season we played two up front, even after our (then) top scorer was sold to Liverpool.
Last season we used the following strikers:
– Ameobi, scoring 9 goals in 30 games,
– Lovenkrands, scoring 7 goals in 29 games,
– Best, scoring 6 goals in 12 games,
– Ranger, scoring 1 goal in 28 games (most of which were as a sub), and
– Carroll, scoring 11 goals in 20 games.
And our top scorer turned out to be a midfielder in the shape of Kevin Nolan, who scored 12 goals in 32 games.
I think most people accept the our front line does need strengthening, but how much? Do we need two first-rate strikers? Do we need one first-rate striker and perhaps a new ‘prospect’? Or do we simply need one first-rate striker, making do with Ameobi, Best, Lovenkrands and Ranger as the number 2 or backup striker?
I suppose part of the answer depends upon the system Alan Pardew intends to play. He has certainly favoured 4-4-2 up until now but, given the proliferation of midfielders we have (with more allegedly being targeted), a 4-2-3-1 formation might be on the cards.
We already have: Nolan, Tiote, Barton, Jonas, Gosling, Cabaye, Ben Arfa, Ferguson, Guthrie, Smith, LuaLua and Raylor fighting for a midfield place and we’re allegedly after additional midfielders such as N’Zogbia and Hoilett. We could easily field a team of 11 midfielders! Even if we assumed Barton will be sold and Smith will be essentially put out to pasture, there are still a lot of players competing for places even in a 5-man midfield.
We could feasibly line up something like:

We have of course also acquired the services of the 18 year-old Mehdi Abeid, who can play as a striker or an attacking midfielder, but I have no idea whether he is intended to be a ‘future prospect’ or an active member of the first team next season.
What do you think?
We definitely need two strikers irrespective formation & gervinho coming…loverman can go & it sounds like ranger might be off as well. I’d keep Shola & Best and get two more and bring Airey into the squad.
One last thing, Cabaye isn’t ours yet…