Premier League 24/25: Page 50 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Premier League 24/25

TambourineMan

Newcastle are shit. Liverpool will walk all over them in a couple of weeks.

flobaba

Love Salahs post game statements. Just what Liverpool needs right now.

goon

flobaba

They have Trent and VVD on expiring contracts too. Couple of bad results and they’ll be holding ice cream meetings.

Dom

Sadly I think Liverpool are too savvy to give Salah a new mega deal. He's playing (and doping himself up to the gills) for a new contract, but he's old for a striker.

Qwiss

Dom they're nothing without Salah.

Asterix

I've been texting a few Liverpool mates to congratulate them on winning the Premier League already. They're not happy with me doing that, but it's worth a try.

Dom

I agree but he'd start next season as a 33 year old. Giving a striker that age mega money + a 3 year extension would be negligent.

It's a saga that can derail their season so I'm hoping for it to drag on and for Salah to keep briefing against the club.

Bernard Woolley

Somehow Liverpool are always stocked in the forward positions while we have struggled for 15 years now to bring through a striker from anywhere. Torres, Suarez, Sturridge, Salah, Mane, Jota, Diaz...just shows that if you focus on bringing someone in to add to the forward line, it can be done without the hand-wringing that no one is available on the market. By contrast, we lucked out with Saka coming up through the ranks and that's pretty much it. All of our other forwards signed have been flashes in the pan (Auba had a good 1.5 seasons) or plain terrible (Lacazette). Havertz may eventually move into the good category, but not quite yet in my book.

daredevil

Bernard Woolley

Equally, take a look at Chelsea and Man Utd over the same time span. Liverpool have outperformed, but there was once a time (2000's) when there was enough attacking talent to go around, now it's relatively slim pickings.

Mirth

Bernard Woolley eh, we’ve had players win the golden boot a couple of times in the past 15 years which is more than Chelsea or United managed. And Auba was solid through his entire first contract

Claudius

daredevil coaches stopped making strikers.

Dom

My uneducated hunch is that the financial rewards in football are so great these days that younger players and their coaches are doing risk-reward analysis on whether to commit to being a centre forward.

A centre forward that scores 8-12 goals a season would be labelled as not good enough. A wide forward that can score 8-12 per season - and also do a bit of closing down and pressing - can potentially fetch 80m+ in today's transfer market.

flobaba

Economics 101. Supply and demand. If that’s the case, the next decade should see a proliferation of strikers to fill the vacuum. The aim of the game is still to score goals, and your most valuable asset when that’s your objective should still be your 9, or players who can help approximate what a good striker does or should be doing. That’s why we are talking about bringing in a Gyokeres whilst unsure of his quality, and bidding big for a young Sesko. The shopping cart of all clubs in the world bar maybe Man City would include killer striker first and foremost if they could find one.

Clrnc

If we look at the goalscoring charts everywhere, the goals scored by strikers are actually more than previous. It's a myth.

Whether the type of strikers has changed is another story. That's stylistically

daredevil

Clrnc

The claim isn't that strikers are scoring fewer goals today. The claim is that there are fewer strikers today.

Clrnc

Qwiss Leicester got him. That was swift

Clrnc

daredevil there are hardly any false 9s around these days. Even Kai is playing like a target man sometimes. Every team starts with a striker. How are there lesser?

It's one thing to say lesser world class strikers available which is subjective, but lesser strikers nope.

Sicario2

The more I think about it, the more I think we need City to beat Liverpool. The latter are on cloud 9 and need to be brought down to earth asap.

daredevil

Clrnc

Fewer strikers and fewer top class strikers.

Teams used to play 2 strikers in the past, now they play with 1. Teams also expect their strikers to do a lot of work outside of the box, so strikers who honed their skills inside the box are fewer. So there's a drop in demand and there's a drop in the number of players who offer the traditional striker skillset. Add to that Messi and C. Ronaldo being the idols of the upcoming generations, and you've got a perfect storm for why there's so few around.

This is not subjective, it's widely understood if you aren't living under a rock.

https://worldsoccertalk.com/news/modern-decline-of-classic-centre-forwards-why-harry-kane-blames-lionel-messi-and-cristiano-ronaldo/

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/4609183/2023/06/16/harry-kane-no9/

There was a time when clubs had at least 4 strikers on their books. Now they have 1 or 2 max.

goon

You've gone from an decade with the likes of Lewandowski, Aguero, Kane, Suarez, Benzema, Zlatan, van Persie, Cavani, Falcao among others to Haaland and what, a geriatric Kane and Lewandowski?

I wonder if top strikers are being converted to wingers/attacking midfielders at a young age.

Claudius

goon Top strikers aren't being created. That's the thing. Coaches are training interchangeable pieces. And there is a lot more focus on on-the-ground technical capacity. Players are more mutable than before. The other piece is the adoption of these 433 formations with pressing. Two things there. First, the wide forwards are charged with scoring more than old school wingers who were supposed to cross. Second, pressing and transitions become a much bigger source of goals. The ability of good teams to camp in the opposition half, win the ball and get a shot off in seconds places less emphasis on a striker who is supposed to wait for a cross and outmuscle defenders.

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