The man is on course* for about 15 goals in a team without its two main chance creators, he's better for goals V xG than Haaland, Watkins and Isak, among others, this season.

Outside of goalscoring, at which he's rather good, Haaland is fairly average. But I'd still take him :-)

And critically, Edouard's playing in a team that hasn't had its two main creative outlets -- and has played super defensively with a low block -- all season.

Strikers are judged first on goals, and on that simple metric the data you selected say he's above average.

I accept he lacks a bit as an all round player. But he's doing well this season on metric number 1.

I will also accept I misrepresented you a bit, but the thrust of your comments is, for me, wrong.

*I don't say he'll keep up his scoring rate but who knows. Maybe he'll even improve it with Eze and Olise both playing

I don’t know - Kris Boyd, Gary Hooper, Anthony Stokes and the likes all come to mind.

I'm sure you all saw Haaland's laughable miss - I'm sure Edouard would have put that away, so when Pep comes in with an £80m offer we ought to take it seriously.

So could the entire league though. The striker debate always ends up the same way - name them.

Son, Bryan Mbuemo, Hwang, Edouard and Solanke are the only non-European team players to have more than 4 goals. Not a single Chelsea or Man United player has. Only 1 at Liverpool and City. Suggests that Solanke is the only striker in the league at a non-European club who could fit the bill? He got 6 in 33 last year so isn't an obvious improvement.

If that striker existed and was available, there's many clubs they'd be at before they're at Palace.

I think that’s quite a selective way to present the data - you’ve excluded the like Ferguson, Watkins, Bowen and Wilson because they now play in Europe but all of those were signed from the EFL or LOI which are markets certainly open to us.

Jackson also has 6 league goals for Chelsea, not that it’s particularly relevant.

It’s also a tiny simple size in which Edouard’s numbers look quite good - there were plenty of forwards at comparable clubs who outscored his 5 in 35 appearances last season; Ings, Welbeck, Iheanacho, Mitrovic, Rodrygo, Watkins, Harvey Barnes, Brennan Johnson, Awoniyi, Solanke, Podence, Mitoma, Solly March, Che Adams, Vinicius - it’s hardly a list of superstars is it?

More broadly, I think comparing strikers on one single metric is a bit simplistic - yes, Edouard is a reasonable goalscorer, but essentially every player above outperforms him creatively.

I’m not expecting a 20 goal striker but I don’t think it’s unrealistic to think we can find an improvement on Edouard.

Edited by EverybodyDannsNow (05 Dec 2023 8.34am)

I've excluded the European ones on the basis that we wouldn't have been in a position to sign them in the past ~18 months and the point is about our recent or upcoming ability to sign a striker.

Ferguson is probably the only one that we could've pinched at the time but we could do without another thread on Brighton's scouting department. We reportedly tried to get Bowen and Watkins and couldn't do the deal for either so even at Hull and Brentford we weren't their pick.

Therefore, there isn't a club in the PL around our level or below that with all the scouts combined has managed to put a forward on the pitch this season that's performing demonstrably better than Edouard. Consequently, I think it is unrealistic that we find a striker demonstrably better than Edouard because the majority of PL clubs are consistently failing to do the same thing.

Even taking last year's list (Edouard played 50% of total minutes last season) there's a lot of wingers in there. How many of them are the complete forward who scores goals, runs the channels, does the hold up etc. which is what was requested?

Awoniyi, Watkins and perhaps the very central Mitrovic and the ageing Welbeck? The striker everyone wants is super, super rare.