We expect too much

Earlier this week West Ham officially linked Fulham with Bobby Zamora.   We have permission to talk to him, it seems.  I'm happy enough about this - he seems like quite a good player - but many Fulham fans aren't.   Which is an understatement and a half.   

But I wonder what they want.   A goalscorer, of course.  But goalscorers are very hard to find. 

Setting the bar low, here is a list of the eleven players who have scored ten goals or more - more than once - in the last three seasons:

Frank Lampard 3
Ayegbeni Yakubu 3
Robbie Keane 3
Wayne Rooney 3
Darren Bent 2
Dimitr Berbatov 2
Didier Drogba 2
Steven Gerrard 2
Nicolas Anelka 2
Jermain Defoe 2
Thierry Henry 2

That’s it.   Any good forward can score ten a season consistently, right?   Doesn't look like it. 

I’m beginning to think that there really is no such thing as a consistent goalscorer for teams like Fulham.  Teams like West Ham, Newcastle, Aston Villa, Blackburn, Portsmouth, Man City, etc, etc, none of them have found someone who can score ten consistently.

It just doesn’t happen.  I’m beginning to think that the key to success is to concentrate on creating chances and having players who are sufficiently able to knock a decent proportion of them away.

Which is where the Bullard-Davies-Gera axis is going to be so important.  Here are the assist totals for our players over the last two seasons:

07/08
Murphy 2
Dempsey 2
Bouazza 2
Kamara 3
Bullard 3
Davies 8

06/07
Volz 2
Rosenior 2
Radzinski 3
Queudrue 3
Jensen 3
Diop 3
McBride 4
Helguson 4
Davies 4

Davies played half a season two years ago, so he’d probably have made about 8 then too.   Bullard played half a season this time, so would have had more.  Gera had 7 assists for WBA last year, 8 the year before that.  So that’s a good thing.  These three could make 25 or so goals between them.

It comes back to this idea of having a few capable players who can bag a few goals.  Zamora could score 8 or 9 or more, Nevland impressed everyone off the bench, David Healy is, for all his faults, a goalscorer, and Clint Dempsey managed six in half a season of centre-forward play, which, all things considered, looks alright to me.  That rate, assuming he’d carried on, would’ve led to 10-12 goals, which is about as many as we can reasonably hope for unless we spend big, find a needle in a haystack, or get lucky.

All of which suggests that a lot of people are aiming too high as far as centre-forwards are concerned, and that our current options probably aren’t as dire as has been suggested.  Which doesn’t mean that a very good centre-forward wouldn’t help - of course it would - more that we’re unlikely to find that player and shouldn’t necessarily be too downhearted about this.  Bobby Zamora might just be alright.

Comments

[rich]

but otherwise, no, there are no more. That's the point of the article!

[rich]

Ronaldo should be in it, yes. He was chopped off in a pivot table column header accident, and, well, why not, eh? Man's an idiot anyway!

[Arek]

Is this the complete list?

Christiano Ronaldo springs to mind, I'm sure there must be a few more?

[Bisa Amoo-Gottfried]

I think that H.U. makes a good point about the support a striker gets from the rest of his team. It might be interesting to compare the ratio of shots to goals for the players mentioned, just to see how many chances they had. It was said of Andy (sorry, Andrew) Cole that he needed several chances just to score one goal. That's fine when you have the likes of Giggs, Scholes, and Beckham giving you support as well as a telepathic link with your strike partner (Dwight Yorke). But in a team that maybe won't create as many chances for you, that's when you can see a true striker's worth. Look at how well Santa Cruz did at Blackburn last season. One could argue that if he had played for Man United, he could have scored more goals purely down to the extra oppurtunites he would have had to score; and we'd now be calling him the new Van Nistelrooy.

[Keith Lewis]

Zammo will do well at Fulham but just don't expect any goals to be with his head! He's shocking in the air.

[Bisa Amoo-Gottfried]

I am the only one who's noticed that, on your list of top scorers, only 2 midfielders made it and they are both English. There's a message in there somewhere.

[Chris Forte]

Bobby will do a great job for you if he gets regular football. He's good at getting the important goals. Remember a couple of seasons back when Tevez got all the credit for stopping the Hammers getting relegated. Look at how many points Bobby's goals were responsible for and you realise maybe he should have had a share of the glory.

[Euan]

Think you forgot ronaldo

[Jonathan Norman]

The other thing to note is that many players goal scoring tallies are artificially inflated by penalties. Goals from open play are what you should be judged on (although granted it does take some skill to stick away a spot kick). By your logic though it is important that a centre forward can also make chances for those other players in the side, maybe this is where Mr Zamora might be viewed with some suspicion (and a heavy touch)

[Aaron]

Decent article, and I agree in the main with points made about needing quality players to make goals.

I am a Villa fan, and Ashley Young was a revelation last year in creating goals for strikers who will never be prolific; Carew, Agbonlahor, and Harewood.

This got us to sixth in the league, however in order to push on a goalscorer is needed, the top 4 all had consistent goalscorers.

I feel that the decent enough player to put away the goals for Fulham helping them to push on is not Zamora, and the money could have been far better spent on a player with talent, perhaps an unknown quantity without fear and without average at best goalscoring pedigree.

[H.U.]

Fulham were weaker in other areas of the field last season comparative to other teams than in forward strike ratio. Fulham's left-side last season, for example, only contributed 2 goals and 2 assists in 38 games, an utterly paltry tally. Essentially, strikers did not get chances from one side of the field. This was at the end of last season an attacking piece that Fulham needed to fill.

How can a left-winger be perhaps more important for Fulham than a forward re. scoring goals? I think you kind of answered the question. In a league in which many of not most victories are determined by under one goal, where a single goal essentially gives you a massive advantage over your opponent, is it not vital to have players who give your team goals? These players are goalscorers, as we recognize, as well as those who put the ball on the foot of the goalscorers. Putting the ball on the foot of a goalscorer in the opposing team's penalty area with his face to goal - think van Nistelrooij - is an incredibly important part of football. It is as important as a goal. A player cannot score if he does not have the ball. At the end of last season, it was evident that Fulham needed such a player to fill the left-side.

But, and this is where I disagree with you, Fulham do need someone who can score. The problem with Fulham's forward line came with the injury to Kamara, who scored 5 goals and got 2 assists in 1655 minutes of playing time last season (.39 per 90 minutes = average, otherwise known as better than all of Fulham's other forwards). They do need reinforcement who can fill this production and should aim for someone who can get similar numbers to Kamara (.40 goals+assists per 90 minutes). Their current strikers do not do so.
http://soccerstatistics.blogspot.com/2008/05/team-case-study-fulham.html

[Mike Farrow]

This is one the more insightful pieces I've ever seem on the subject of attacking play. First season that West Ham were promoted, Harewood bagged 14 in the league and that is a decent total outside the top 4. He has never repeated this. The stat for me is 0.4 - if you can get to 0.4 goals per game outside the top 4, you've done very well.

[Richard L]

Good point but i think zamora will get about seven cos hes rubbish at finishing one on one chances but is good at heading. Him playing up with AJ though could just be a master stroke on Hodgson's part. Hes fast and a great finisher so we have a bit of everything up front even though it may be a bit costly.

In total 16mil for the pair= 20 goals

I think they will be a great pair especially with service from jimmy, davies, gera etc.