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Striker Shortage


Caledonian Craig

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Guest Scot1
5 minutes ago, Caledonian Craig said:

It has been discussed lately in various threads about Scotland''s dearth of strikers through the years.

To put it into contrast McGinn scored his 13th goal for Scotland today and moved joint tenth as Scotland's most prolific goalscorer.

I believe McGinn also has 6 assists. 
Move McGinn up to play off the  Centre Forward, he is a danger in and around the box. 
Build our forward line around McGinn, get the midfield correct and we will have runners from deep linking up and getting beyond McGinn, ie McTominay or Lewis Ferguson 

Edited by Scot1
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7 minutes ago, Caledonian Craig said:

It has been discussed lately in various threads about Scotland''s dearth of strikers through the years.

To put it into contrast McGinn scored his 13th goal for Scotland today and moved joint tenth as Scotland's most prolific goalscorer.

His strike rate is not far of Kenny Dalglish's .

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Guest Scot1
11 minutes ago, ceudmilefailte said:

His strike rate is not far of Kenny Dalglish's .

We should be playing him the same way Dalglish was played. 
What we need to do is find out the best partner for him regarding the opposition. At the moment McGinn playing off Adams is probably the best starting pair we’ve got at the moment. If Adams isn’t effective sub him for Stewart or Dykes. 

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1 hour ago, Caledonian Craig said:

Yes and for a midfielder to be in amongst our most prolific goalscorers ever just demonstrates how utterly pathetic we have been at unearthing international goal-scoring strikers.

I don’t think you can unearth something that isn’t there to begin with. 

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i've thought for a while now (probably sounds total nonsense though - and am not advocating 4-6-0 Levein) but our centre fwds (Adams & Dykes) are so poor imo , i'd rather play with wide guys ; Christie types and have McGinn further forward - as a lot of our goals seem to come from other areas anyway - it feels like if we play both adams & dykes at same time ; especially against better teams we're almost carrying 2 passengers -  i thought this when we played england in euros

Dykes had a great first 45mins v Serbia away ; seemed to win everything and hold up play well - but v Ukraine i thought they both looked way out of their depth

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2 hours ago, Caledonian Craig said:

Yes of course. I should have said producing international goalscoring strikers.

We have tried to unearth them in a way by selecting people who weren’t necessarily always Scottish but the problem is if they were that good they’d have been selected by their country of birth long before we sniffed them out. 

If we could produce a Ronaldo/Messi or even a Lewandowski or Haaland type it would make such a difference to the number of goals we score that it would make up for weaknesses elsewhere. 

Maybe we’ll produce one at some stage in the future. We live in hope. 

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41 minutes ago, Texas Pete said:

We have tried to unearth them in a way by selecting people who weren’t necessarily always Scottish but the problem is if they were that good they’d have been selected by their country of birth long before we sniffed them out. 

If we could produce a Ronaldo/Messi or even a Lewandowski or Haaland type it would make such a difference to the number of goals we score that it would make up for weaknesses elsewhere. 

Maybe we’ll produce one at some stage in the future. We live in hope. 

Well I hold little hope. In the history of our national team which stretches to 150 years we have produced two prolific goalscorers in Denis Law and Kenny Dalglish and even their goal-scoring prowess does not come close to matching other countries products. It is mystifying and depressing.

Edited by Caledonian Craig
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Guest Scot1

To be honest, I’m not so concerned about the strikers, centre forwards. McGinn has a good amount of goals and assists, Adams isn’t bad either, Dykes, Stewart and perhaps even Nisbett, can all do a job.

What we need and I think it’s an indication of the setup of the team being off, is more goals from the midfield. And I’m talking about central midfield, not attacking midfielders like Armstrong or Christie or McGinn (Although more goals and assists from Christie and Armstrong would be nice). 
Depending how the midfield is set up, I’d be looking for more goals and assists from the likes of McGregor (or Turnbull if played) and McTominay (or perhaps Ferguson if played) and even Gilmour to chip in with the odd goal / assist. I think they are capable of it. 
If we get the midfield right, we should be better defensively and offensively. 

Edited by Scot1
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How much of it is down to the mindset and how we play?  When Kenny Miller played fifty yards ahead of everyone else chasing lost causes a world class striker might have scored a few more but would our mindset have changed if we had, for example, Healy or Mitrovic (not world class but top scorers for the nation beyond what we've had)?   

Granted I don't pay attention to many other nations qualifying but from the qualifiers of the last 20 years Pele would have been hard pushed to challenge Law and Dalglish.  Is our goal scoring ration in comparison to similar nations about the same suggesting a wider spread of goals or do we score less than most other teams too?    

Maybe there's an element of having Hobson's Choice too particularly NI who played Healy despite him having a pretty patchy club career.  Being the main man for his nation for yonks must have benefited his ability as the understanding would have been greater than chopping out one ok striker for a slightly better one regularly.    

We haven't produced an absolute superstar no doubt but there's maybe more to it than that in finding a striker who could score 15-20 goals for us.  

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I really would like to get Ryan Fraser back in the set up.  I think he would make a difference, unfortunately I don't know whether that will happen.  The other player is Scott Wright. I wouldn't put him on from the start for Rangers and he's not prolific as a goal scorer but he does offer something a bit different, even if he's just coming on from the bench for 20-30 minutes.

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I agree that we need to focus on our attacking midfielders to cover our poor options up front. 
 

when the likes of Armstrong is in the side I feel we are so much better going forwards especially against poor opposition .

the flip side is still unfortunately mctominay and Gilmore especially against better opposition where we still have to cover too much for their deficiencies.

this pushes us back mctominay due to his Jack of all trades master of none role.

Gilmore I know is a favourite but it’s always more a backs to the wall performance when he is in the side due to him being a fairly defensive midfielder and offering nothing going forwards .

so for me we are better when both of these are not in the side 

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1 hour ago, DAVIDB46 said:

I agree that we need to focus on our attacking midfielders to cover our poor options up front. 
 

when the likes of Armstrong is in the side I feel we are so much better going forwards especially against poor opposition .

the flip side is still unfortunately mctominay and Gilmore especially against better opposition where we still have to cover too much for their deficiencies.

this pushes us back mctominay due to his Jack of all trades master of none role.

Gilmore I know is a favourite but it’s always more a backs to the wall performance when he is in the side due to him being a fairly defensive midfielder and offering nothing going forwards .

so for me we are better when both of these are not in the side 

Has Gilmour changed?  When he first broke into the Chelsea side he seemed to be playing further forward and seemed very capable of setting up attacks.

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1 hour ago, DAVIDB46 said:

I agree that we need to focus on our attacking midfielders to cover our poor options up front. 
 

when the likes of Armstrong is in the side I feel we are so much better going forwards especially against poor opposition .

the flip side is still unfortunately mctominay and Gilmore especially against better opposition where we still have to cover too much for their deficiencies.

this pushes us back mctominay due to his Jack of all trades master of none role.

Gilmore I know is a favourite but it’s always more a backs to the wall performance when he is in the side due to him being a fairly defensive midfielder and offering nothing going forwards .

so for me we are better when both of these are not in the side 


I always feel Mctominay is more of a goal threat.

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7 hours ago, Auchinyell Sox Change said:

i've thought for a while now (probably sounds total nonsense though - and am not advocating 4-6-0 Levein) but our centre fwds (Adams & Dykes) are so poor imo , i'd rather play with wide guys ; Christie types and have McGinn further forward - as a lot of our goals seem to come from other areas anyway - it feels like if we play both adams & dykes at same time ; especially against better teams we're almost carrying 2 passengers -  i thought this when we played england in euros

Dykes had a great first 45mins v Serbia away ; seemed to win everything and hold up play well - but v Ukraine i thought they both looked way out of their depth

4-6-0 is as effective a formation as any other providing it's coached properly - I suspect that's where Levein and Houston went wrong!

Where we're concerned though, as well as a dearth of strikers, we also have dearth of wide midfielders.  Armstrong and Christie can play there but they're inside forwards really.  Ryan Fraser is the best of that type available - when he is available - but James Forrest looks like he's done, Matt Phillips, I assume, has chucked international football and Oliver Burke turned out to be pace and power and little else.

Mikey Johnston doesn't appear to have kicked on as we'd have hoped but he still has time on his side; there's the kid Ben Doak who recently signed for Liverpool but it's still far too soon to tell if he'll make the grade.  That leaves Lewis Morgan and Scott Wright but you have to wonder if they are international standard.

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1 hour ago, scotlad said:

4-6-0 is as effective a formation as any other providing it's coached properly - I suspect that's where Levein and Houston went wrong!

 

Yes as mentioned before the problem with the 4-6 in Prague was we kept lumping the ball up the field for Kenny Miller to chase, when he was sitting on the bench.

 

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7 hours ago, Caledonian Craig said:

Well I hold little hope. In the history of our national team which stretches to 150 years we have produced two prolific goalscorers in Denis Law and Kenny Dalglish and even their goal-scoring prowess does not come close to matching other countries products. It is mystifying and depressing.

Denis would certainly have got closer to 50 international goals but by the late 60s his knees were destroyed unfortunately. 

 

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