It probably hasn't escaped your notice but our strikers aren't very good at scoring.

Odsonne Edouard has 3 goals and 2 assists in 1278 Premier League minutes this season, or a goal contribution every 426 minutes.

Jean-Philippe Mateta has one goal and no assists in 686 minutes.

It's put us in the situation where we, alongside Wolves and Everton, are the joint lowest scorers in the Premier League.

Is it time to basically give up on this pair finding some goalscoring form and try to find a system that works without them?

My theory is that we should start playing something like the following...

... with the fullbacks giving us some width and the three front players rotating the false nine role. Kind of similar to what Man City had to do prior to Haaland arriving, except we'd obviously be a very low rent, bottom half version.

Zaha has never been prolific at assisting and, although I think Olise has a good delivery on him, when he does put it in the strikers are so woefully out of form that they can't convert anyway.

Feel like rather than trying to service ineffective forwards, these three players, who have 12 of our 22 goals between them, would be better served running at defences and having a go themselves.

Edited by Canterbury Palace (20 Mar 2023 11.08am)

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold...

I was under the impression we'd been playing without a striker for some time now?

Now Zaha's got a bit of green grass ahead of him here... and finds Ambrose... not a bad effort!!!!

Guaita
Richards - Guehi - Andersen
Clyne --------------------------------- Mitchell
Lokonga - Doucoure
Olise - Eze - Zaha

would go for that but still like a striker

When we played with Townsend and Zaha up front a few years back I thought we played some of our best football under hodgson.....

i think you are right, whatever formation is played we will have more chance of scoring and winning if Wilf, Olise and Eze are playing and Edouard, Mateta and Ayew are not.

I spent half my money on gambling, alcohol and wild women. The other half I wasted. WC Fields
Here's to our wives and girlfriends...may they never meet! Groucho Marx
"One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas, I don't know." Groucho Marx

If we play without a striker who can hold the ball up (Mateta is the closest we have), then we have to play higher up the pitch.

In short, that means we have to (1) press very high; (2) in doing so be prepared to leave our defenders 1 on 1; and (3) if we win the ball in deep areas, be willing to pass the ball around at the back and bring the opposition midfield on to us. All of that creates space to hit the forwards at their feet in space.

We did it last season - we scored twice as many goals but occasionally got caught out at the back with a high line.

If we do all of that, it's absolutely fine to play without an out and out striker. If we're not going to do it, we have to play with a forward who can hold the ball up because we'll end up hitting them with long balls into the channel. That probably means Mateta in a front 2.

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