Why do we lack top quality strikers?

[Big Ramy 1314]

I hope this is not a silly question, but I have been wondering this for a while. Why do we always struggle up front for a top quality striker, I mean, even just one.. We always seem to be fine in other areas, our midfield nowadays is very strong, and has depth, our defense, is getting much better, but you have the likes of Robertson, Tierney, dare I say, one their day they are world class. Up front, we have decent strikers, but not "that one". Why? We have not had a world class striker since Ally McCoist.   So my question, why? Is it coaching? Is it the lack of talent in the striker roll? Is it more attention placed on developing  midfield and defense? Surely there has to a gem somewhere in Scotland. A striker that raises eyebrows, a striker that other countries will be aware, or even afraid of.. I don't know, all I know is if we had "that striker" our squad would have a completely different dimension...

[mccaughey85]

1 hour ago, Big Ramy 1314 said:

I hope this is not a silly question, but I have been wondering this for a while. Why do we always struggle up front for a top quality striker, I mean, even just one.. We always seem to be fine in other areas, our midfield nowadays is very strong, and has depth, our defense, is getting much better, but you have the likes of Robertson, Tierney, dare I say, one their day they are world class. Up front, we have decent strikers, but not "that one". Why? We have not had a world class striker since Ally McCoist.   So my question, why? Is it coaching? Is it the lack of talent in the striker roll? Is it more attention placed on developing  midfield and defense? Surely there has to a gem somewhere in Scotland. A striker that raises eyebrows, a striker that other countries will be aware, or even afraid of.. I don't know, all I know is if we had "that striker" our squad would have a completely different dimension...

Its a position we have struggled with for nearly 30 years. Mccoist was the last great striker we had but I wouldn't quite say he was world class but he wasnt far off it Tbf. 

Personally I am not sure why we haven't produced any brilliant strikers for the last 30 years. England seem to churn them out by the half dozen every few years and it's not just black guys either. Guys like Andy Carroll, Jamie vardy and Harry kane. 

Strikers usually have to confident cocky guys who are ruthless. I think society in Scotland doesn't like cockyness in any form. 

I don't think there's many decent strikers looking like coming through either.(i will await someone to tell me some 16 year old is at a big clubs youth set up and he looks really good). 

I reckon we will end up turning to karlan grant or Che Adams in the near future or else we will really be struggling. 

[er yir macaroon]

2 minutes ago, mccaughey85 said:

England seem to churn them out by the half dozen every few years and it's not just black guys either

You on the sherry? 

[mccaughey85]

28 minutes ago, er yir macaroon said:

You on the sherry? 

They churn out heaps of strikers we would love to have. They must have at least ten that would walk into our team instantly. 

[ProudScot]

36 minutes ago, mccaughey85 said:

They churn out heaps of strikers we would love to have. They must have at least ten that would walk into our team instantly. 

I think he’s referencing the black guys comment

[mccaughey85]

2 minutes ago, ProudScot said:

I think he’s referencing the black guys comment

Well the truth is alot of Englands young and upcoming strikers are black. We don't have a large black population in Scotland so the chances are we won't be seeing loads of young black strikers coming through for us. 

My point was that England still produce good strikers of both white and black ethnicity and we should be able to produce someone decent, if they can produce ten or more guys then surely we should be able to produce 1.

[ParisInAKilt]

We don’t produce top quality players anywhere else usually. 

Suppose you could make a case for Robertson and Tierney, McTominay to a lesser extent although he can improve and hopefully Gilmour will play at a high level. 

Faddy was very cocky and produced some great moments for us but he was never a top quality player in the general sense. 

[Big Ramy 1314]

1 minute ago, ParisInAKilt said:

We don’t produce top quality players anywhere else usually. 

Suppose you could make a case for Robertson and Tierney, McTominay to a lesser extent although he can improve and hopefully Gilmour will play at a high level. 

Faddy was very cocky and produced some great moments for us but he was never a top quality player in the general sense. 

That's the thing, they are not top quality. England have them, wales has Bale, Ireland had Keane. I just wish we could produce one, a striker that you know something special can happen. That was never the case with Fletcher, Millar, Beattie, and so on.. Why? This black v white thing I don't agree with, sorry. We have to spot them early, and focus on them, not just bring them into the fold. Take them aside, and.work with them properly as they are a rarity unfortunately in Scotland..

[ParisInAKilt]

We’ve been technically behind the vast majority of other countries my whole life so there’s obviously something fundamentally wrong in how we coach players. 

Maybe we’ve been unlucky as well but even the most naturally gifted of players need nurturing to some degree. 

[scotlad]

It's funny, for years England bemoaned their lack of top quality left-sided players, particularly in midfield - arguably it is only this (and their lack of a reliable goalkeeper) that prevented their otherwise talented mid-noughties team from being a genuinely top side.  Meanwhile, the current Scotland side has two left-sided full-backs of genuine international quality!

Our dearth of strikers is a massive cause for concern though. We have scored one goal in open play in our last three internationals and that came from a midfielder. We have lacked regular goalscoring forwards since the days of Jams McFadden and Kenny Miller.

[mccaughey85]

2 hours ago, ParisInAKilt said:

We don’t produce top quality players anywhere else usually. 

Suppose you could make a case for Robertson and Tierney, McTominay to a lesser extent although he can improve and hopefully Gilmour will play at a high level. 

Faddy was very cocky and produced some great moments for us but he was never a top quality player in the general sense. 

Well we have produced some excellent midfielders and left backs. Hutton was a good right back as well. We even have had a few decent centre backs in the last thirty years but producing even 1 really good striker in the last thirty years has been a problem. 

We are not asking for a Harry kane or lewandowski but a guy who can score goals in a top league would be start. We haven't had a genuine epl quality striker since gallacher. 

 

[ProudScot]

35 minutes ago, mccaughey85 said:

Well we have produced some excellent midfielders and left backs. Hutton was a good right back as well. We even have had a few decent centre backs in the last thirty years but producing even 1 really good striker in the last thirty years has been a problem. 

We are not asking for a Harry kane or lewandowski but a guy who can score goals in a top league would be start. We haven't had a genuine epl quality striker since gallacher. 

 

Steven Fletcher scored more goals in the EPL than Gallacher did, didn’t he? 

He’s also not top quality but in his prime was probably better than the strikers we have now. 

Edited December 25, 2020 by ProudScot

[bookerman]

27 minutes ago, ProudScot said:

Steven Fletcher scored more goals in the EPL than Gallacher did, didn’t he? 

He’s also not top quality but in his prime was probably better than the strikers we have now. 

http://www.premstats.com/the-6-scottish-players-to-score-the-most-premier-league-goals/

 

Acording to this he third with 53 goals. Duncan Ferguson is first with 63.

 

 

Sums it up really that we not had someone who scored reagulay in the last 30 years.

[ProudScot]

Forgot about Duncan Ferguson. Should have had over 50 caps and been our main striker from about 1997-2004

Edited December 25, 2020 by ProudScot

[ParisInAKilt]

3 hours ago, mccaughey85 said:

Well we have produced some excellent midfielders and left backs. Hutton was a good right back as well. We even have had a few decent centre backs in the last thirty years but producing even 1 really good striker in the last thirty years has been a problem. 

We are not asking for a Harry kane or lewandowski but a guy who can score goals in a top league would be start. We haven't had a genuine epl quality striker since gallacher. 

 

Suppose it depends how you define excellent but I agree striker is a position we’ve definitely lacked genuine quality in. 

[davy-hay]

The thumb (despite being picnic short of a banquet) is top quality and good for us. 

 

 

[Tartan Chris]

3 hours ago, ProudScot said:

Steven Fletcher scored more goals in the EPL than Gallacher did, didn’t he? 

He’s also not top quality but in his prime was probably better than the strikers we have now. 

Was annoying Levein in his wisdom decided to fall out with Fletcher between 2009-12 when he was in good form at Burnley and Wolves. Think he hit double figures in those three seasons. Came back into the fold finally 2 games before Levein was finally put out of his misery.

Since then injuries and loss of motivation have meant his international career has fizzled out but still pretty decent in the championship, started off well for Stoke.

[romanticscot]

Well, if we are just talking about goal scoring, we had Jordan Rhodes, his style didnt work for us as we defend from the front line back, but even in the domestic game, Leigh Griffiths for a spell was pretty prolific, from 2012 to 2017 barring I think a broken leg(?) he was the best we have produced.  

Someone made a comment above and I believe coaching is to blame, and a unfortunate scenario of being not a great team that we have asked our strikers to do more than concentrate on the core elements of being a striker have contributed to the lack of quality strikers.

 

 

[Taylor1996]

It's actually a good question.

Thinking about it, though, do we produce any "top quality" players? 

Andrew Robertson got where he is through his own temerity and persistence. You could say the same for Kieran Tierney. And McTominay, he was brought through by the coaching system in England.

Our coaching system is to blame. It's to blame for many generations.

Darren Fletcher, Barry Ferguson, Craig Gordon, James McFadden were all products of incidents, rather than design. Those players were anomalies. Accidents.

The coaching in Scotland is bad. I've only known it be be bad.

Look at Paul Lambert for example, he was at Motherwell till he was 26, playing in the SPL, he was known as a decent attacking midfielder. Nothing more.

He joined Borussia Dormund. Within a season he got transformed into the best anchorman in the world, with Zidane in one pocket, and the European Cup winner's medal in the other. (Juventus put in a bid, they were so impressed)

So, that's it in a nutshell.

Nine years in Scotland, with Scottish coaches and managers, he was a decent player. One year in Germany, under their tutelage, he turned world-classs.

Are the performance schools working? The next couple of years will tell.

 

 

[Taylor1996]

If we played two up front as opposed to one, it would've been a lot more fruitful.

For 18 years we had Kenny Miller, Steven Naismith and Steven Fletcher running around like headless chickens, feeding on hopeful long balls.

Playing two up front would've occupied more of the opposition defenders and midfielders, thus, giving our midfielders more space to create.

A team can only play one upfront when he's world-class, especially at the international level.

[Malcolm]

 

this has been a problem for almost 40 years.  If you are talking about the highest level we have not had a world class striker since dalglish packed in.  Even then, dalglish  didn’t really do it at World Cups.  Scored one against the Dutch and one against New Zealand... so that’s two in nine.  Not too bad i suppose.

a damning statistic is that since then, we played nine games in three world cups and a striker failed to score in any of them from open play.  And that was when we had good teams that qualified.

 

[Malcolm]

Just now, Malcolm said:

 

this has been a problem for almost 40 years.  If you are talking about the highest level we have not had a world class striker since dalglish packed in.  Even then, dalglish  didn’t really do it at World Cups.  Scored one against the Dutch and one against New Zealand... so that’s two in nine.  Not too bad i suppose.

a damning statistic is that since then, we played nine games in three world cups and a striker failed to score in any of them from open play.  And that was when we had good teams that qualified.

 

actually a bit harsh, dalglish was dropped for the Brazil and Russia games. So 2 from 7. 

[The Black Bra]

5 hours ago, Malcolm said:

actually a bit harsh, dalglish was dropped for the Brazil and Russia games. So 2 from 7. 

Only vaguely remember ‘82 World Cup due to age. Didn’t realise Dalglish didn’t start those two games. Assuming he came on as sub. Seems crazy, he must have been one of the best players in Britain, never mind just Scottish players. 

[Big Ramy 1314]

How is the scouting system in Scotland? Does the SFA have their own scouts travelling across the country looking for hidden gems? They should be, they are out there. He be playing for Pittlocherie juniors FC, Isle of Skye UTD, Wick Wankers FC, but he is oot there.. Find him . spend the fuckin money and go and find them... Just ma opinion...

[daviebee]

On 12/26/2020 at 2:59 PM, The Black Bra said:

Only vaguely remember ‘82 World Cup due to age. Didn’t realise Dalglish didn’t start those two games. Assuming he came on as sub. Seems crazy, he must have been one of the best players in Britain, never mind just Scottish players. 

Dalglish came on as a sub against Brazil and didn't feature at all v the USSR.