Guest Post by Oliver Schneider
Ifs and buts and goals
For years I was sceptical of the wisdom in frugal investments in veteran strikers, cast off by the bigger boys, or unproven imports; most of which underwhelmed or failed. Why don’t we just spend the money, get one proven top goal scorer instead of lots of smaller purchases that ultimately failed I thought over and over again.
Step forward Sébastien Romain Teddy Haller, proven in the Bundesliga, top dollar paid, guaranteed goals right? No, he barley lasts two seasons and is sold off at a huge financial loss after a disappointing goal scoring tally. Had Haller scored anywhere near his 1 goal every 2.5 games rate that he had for Frankfurt, we may well be sitting pretty in a European place right now.
Even when we do secure (and I use that word loosely) a top striker e.g. Tevez, even that turns into a fiasco.
I’m not criticising as this is most likely is a mix of poor management at the top, inadequate finances at times and lots of bad luck. It could also be that we somehow upset the footballing gods in the past and are now cursed in that position.
Imagine if Dean Ashton hadn’t suffered an ultimately career-ending injury with England. When aged just 21, he looked as close as you could get to the complete striker, scoring 20 in 27 games for Crewe before making his way to us via Norwich. A lethal combination of strength, power, technique and finishing. I read somewhere that likened him to a bear performing ballet. Incidentally Ashton recently turned 37 two years younger than Zlatan Ibrahimovi? and could feasibly still be playing for us now!
Or imagine if we had signed Jamie Vardy for £1m, which according to Big Sam we just missed out on the opportunity to do so before he moved to future Premier League Champions Leicester City.
Either of those two ‘what if’ scenarios would in my opinion bagged us an extra 10 goals per season. Looking at the historic league tables since 2006, those goals would probably have prevented relegation in 2010/2011. Our goal difference was -27, Wigan in 16th place had a GD of -21 and Blackburn a place above had a GD of -13. Using the rudimentary, approximate correlation of goal difference to final league position and my assumptions, we would have finished two places above safety and relegated Wolves. Admittedly Vardy didn’t hit the ground running at Leicester but this is a hypothetical analogy.
Where do we find ourselves now? No recognised out-and-out first team striker; a magnificent, yet injury prone right-back, wait right-midfielder, wait winger, wait striker shouldering the burden of being our sole frontman; and scrabbling about in the foreign leagues trying to unearth a hidden gem. Sound familiar?
I don’t know when or how we upset the God of Shooting Boots, but it would be nice if we could appease him.