Friday 7 August 2009

A Tale Of Four Strikers

With the strike force Tottenham Hotspur have you'd think they have the rest of the Premier League running scared wouldn't you??

With a strikeforce consisting of Jermain Defore, Robbie Keane, Peter Crouch and Roman Pavlyuchenko, Spurs should have a realistic chance of making a Europa League place this season.

The key word there: should.

Let's have a look at their strike rates last season.

Jermain Defoe - 13 goals in 29 appearances for both Portsmouth and Tottenham.

Robbie Keane - 12 goals in 35 appearances for both Liverpool and Tottenham.

Peter Crouch - 16 goals in 48 appearances for Portsmouth.

Roman Pavlyuchenko - 14 goals in 26 apperances for Tottenham.

None of them leave a lot to be desired.

Although Harry Redknapp has acquired a strikeforce that can be rotated and changed when deemed fit. Manchester United showed it could be done with their elusive four of Cole, Yorke, Sheringham and Solskjaer during their treble winning season and a contributing factor toward this was the lack of ego these players possessed. The same could be said about Tottenham's striking quartet.

It is refreshing to see this, whereas further north in the blue side of Manchester, it should be interesting to see the opposite effect, where big superstars could be left on the bench one week and throw a tantrum.

This is where the manager plays a role. Veterans such as Ferguson and Redknapp know how to handle such players where inexperienced managers may fail at such a task.

I would expect either Defoe or Keane to partner Crouch or Pavlyuchenko as the season goes on.

Keane and Defore provide pace whereas Crouch and Pavlyuchenko provide power, a great combination if used effectively.

My first choice for a front line at White Hart Line would be Crouch and Keane. I feel both would score more regularly given a run in the team than the other pair. Crouch has shown at Anfield that he has what it takes to make it at the top (why Liverpool sold him is beyond me!) and Robbie Keane, prior to his move to Liverpool, was scoring for fun alongside Berbatov.

Spurs fans will be hoping that now the front line has started to take shape for the coming campaign, the goals will come.

Like I said earlier, they should...

3 comments:

  1. I like the idea of Crouch and Keane up front, but I'm thinking we might see a good amount of crouch and defoe together since they seemed to form a succesful duo at pompey

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  2. True, but that was for only half a season, I suppose the benefit of playing for England together is a good thing too.

    It will be a very tough decision for Redknapp, the only one who seems expendable is Pavlyuchenko as he didn't score nowhere near regularly enough last season.

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  3. I think the best is yet to come from Pav. He must have suffered last season due to not having a proper break between the end of the russian league and the start of the prem. Hopefully a good rest and a chance to improve certain areas of his game over the summer will show!

    I think the key players for Spurs this season will be Modric and Palacios. Little Luca seemed to have a slow start at the lane because nobody could figure out where or how to fit him into the team, however 'arry seemed to crack it at the end of last season by putting him on the left with the freedom to drop inside and behind the strikers. That extra support up front combined with the Palacios battling in midfield turned the season around for us last year. Someone like Palacios who was willing to work and fight for the ball in midfield took alot of pressure of our defence, which for a while has been fairly suspect.

    King and Woodgate are both made out of glass and never seem to go long without injury, Dawson simply lacks the quality that we need to progress, Assou-Ekotto "...would rather be making music than playing football", Gareth Bale has never been on a winning spurs side (last time I checked anyway), and Gomes only recently gave up his pre-game ritual of lubing up his gloves. Corluka, however, always looked solid when called upon, and hopefully the additions of Naughton and Bassong should provide a bit of extra relief.

    As a spurs fan I'm getting tired of the disappointment that comes from predicting a top-4 finish every season (we've been saying this year-on-year for as long as I can remember now). I can't see this happeneing, especially now with Man City buying their way up the predicted table. I'll settle for a place in the Europa League at the end of this season, we've rushed too many previous managers without giving them time to settle and build a team. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day.

    And thank god we got rid of Zokora. He was S**t

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What do you think?