So we have Petr Cech.
I’ absolutely chuffed about that, like over the moon and stuff. I feel it’s a really good move, i have always said i love the two keepers we have and i questioned the move but on a very basic level, Cech is better than what we have now so it’s a good signing period.
There has been a lot of debate as to who will make way and the way it’s looking it just might be Ospina. The Colombian has done nothing wrong, he’s been awesome, but to win a level of ruthlessness is required and that’s what we have here.
So with Cech done, who’s next?
We know that the Vidal rumors are utter trash and the Carvalho is lazy speculation. This is not to say we aren’t interested, but he’s having a good tournament with the under 21s and he’s been linked with us before, so i’m saying the links are just lazy. If we bought him i guess I’d be reasonably happy, unfortunately all i have is reputation as I’ve never seen him play.
But the most common theme I’m seeing is people asking for a new attacker.
Or more accurately a 30 goal a season striker.
Now i used to assume that it was just a thing people said, but it seems that people really mean it. They want a 30 goal a season striker. I was on twitter and there was a spurious link to Aubameyang and while I’m not giving any credence to the rumors i thought wistfully that it won’t be a bad signing. Someone replied saying “I don’t like the link, we need a beast, a 30 goal a season striker”
So it got me thinking…just how many strikers do that per season?
And amongst those ones, who was available?
Now when we mention the best strikers in the world…or best goalscorers you call Messi, Ronaldo, Lewandowski, Neymar, Suarez, Aguero etc Those don’t seem like names we can acquire at the moment. Another thing people need to understand is that 30 goal a season benchmark is rare…quite rare.
I did some digging. I checked the stats for players like Benzema and Cavani. These stats are from whoscored who for God knows what reason do not include domestic cups..but this is a fairly accurate description:
Now while this doesn’t include domestic competitions, we can see that Benzema only probably pulled off 30 goals once; 2011/12 where he had 28 goals. He probably scored in the Spanish Cup and that might have had him hit 30, but that’s once.
Cavani
This also shows Cavani crossing the 30 goal mark once. 2012/13.
Now this is not to say these are not good strikers or we shouldn’t be chasing them, but the term 30 goals a season like they do it every season is quite annoying.
I also did checks on Suarez and Lewandowski. Suarez has done over 30 once and Lewandowski hasn’t at all. So what does this tell us? There are only two 30 goal a season goalscorers in the world; Messi and Ronaldo. Everyone else might do it once or the other, but it’s never consistent.
Now another fact is this; Strikers of that calibre are usually created, not bought. A lot goes into it; the system, the team, the coach etc. We had Henry and RVP…even Adebayor crossed the 30 goal mark. Guess what? All these players were created, they didn’t come to the club as 30 goal strikers.
Now I’ve said all this, I’m not saying we can’t do with a goalscorer or someone who can help and so on, but let’s stop brandishing the term 30 goal a season and calling players who have probably only crossed the threshold once. And if we need a reminder of how funny things could be; Falcao was one of those fabled ’30 goal a season’ strikers…how many goals did he have last season?
So by all means let’s get an attacker, a goalscorer, but we should also trust in the ability of the coach to coax out the best from whoever he gets even if it’s not the name we’re all clamoring for.
We don’t need a 30 goal striker to win the league, Chelsea didn’t have one last season. We need the best TEAM in the league. Here’s hoping we get that.
Till later
