Striker Shortage

[0Neils40yarder]

3 hours ago, er yir macaroon said:

If you’re looking for an attacking midfielder look no further than Lowry, the lad is a sensational talent. High hopes for Doak and Elliot Anderson. 

That much of a sensation that he carries Scot Gemmills luggage about

[Texas Pete]

11 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.

No, I’m not that hopeful either. 

We would kill for a Dalglish or Law level forward just now. Dykes and Adams are the best we have and they couldn’t lace their boots and they aren’t even a product of the Scottish youth system. 

Depressing. 

[er yir macaroon]

1 hour ago, 0Neils40yarder said:

That much of a sensation that he carries Scot Gemmills luggage about

Says more about Gemmill than it does about him. 

[Clyde1998]

14 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.

Even they were only prolific for relatively short periods for us.

Dalglish was only prolific for a period of about four years: between 1974 and 1977, he scored 16 in 37 (0.43 goals per game) compared to 11 in 55 (0.20 goals per game) for his career outside that, which seems fairly ordinary for our strikers.

While Dennis Law scored over half his goals for us in a two year period between 1962 and 1963 - scoring 16 in 10 (1.60 goals per game); he was 14 in 45 otherwise (0.31 goals per game) - still a decent return mind.

I wonder how much of it is down to the chances created for our strikers, as opposed to the lack of ability of the strikers themselves. We'll never know for certain what sort of shots-to-goals rate (or especially xG) Law and Dalglish had, but I reckon it probably didn't change much over their Scotland careers despite the reduction in goals.

[Toepoke]

35 minutes ago, Clyde1998 said:

Even they were only prolific for relatively short periods for us.

Dalglish was only prolific for a period of about four years: between 1974 and 1977, he scored 16 in 37 (0.43 goals per game) compared to 11 in 55 (0.20 goals per game) for his career outside that, which seems fairly ordinary for our strikers.

While Dennis Law scored over half his goals for us in a two year period between 1962 and 1963 - scoring 16 in 10 (1.60 goals per game); he was 14 in 45 otherwise (0.31 goals per game) - still a decent return mind.

As I'd mentioned earlier Denis was crippled with injuries after the mid 60s. He was brought back from the international wilderness by Tommy Docherty in the early 70s, but he was never the same goal threat.

Kenny played more of a midfield role early in his Scotland career and took a much deeper position later on as well, allowing younger legs to do the running for him.

 

[Tartan blood]

21 hours ago, er yir macaroon said:

If you’re looking for an attacking midfielder look no further than Lowry, the lad is a sensational talent. High hopes for Doak and Elliot Anderson. 

Interesting that some of people think attacking midfield is part of the problem. I definitely don't. McGinn is overachieving in that department i.e it isn't his main responsibility to score goals. Armstrong, Christie and Fraser are all capable of chipping in. And do. Our wing backs and defenders all contribute, too. 

And, as you say, we have quite a few young attacking mids breaking through. Striker most definitely is the problem. I started a thread ages ago about the striker curse. I don't think it's a coincidence that our only decent striker prospects at the moment weren't nurtured in the Scottish system.

It seems like Rory Wilson is the only young striker causing any ripples. Thank goodness he is leaving Scotland early. We might have to wait longer for him to break through, but at least he is away from the Scottish culture.

[er yir macaroon]

50 minutes ago, Tartan blood said:

Interesting that some of people think attacking midfield is part of the problem. I definitely don't. McGinn is overachieving in that department i.e it isn't his main responsibility to score goals. Armstrong, Christie and Fraser are all capable of chipping in. And do. Our wing backs and defenders all contribute, too. 

And, as you say, we have quite a few young attacking mids breaking through. Striker most definitely is the problem. I started a thread ages ago about the striker curse. I don't think it's a coincidence that our only decent striker prospects at the moment weren't nurtured in the Scottish system.

It seems like Rory Wilson is the only young striker causing any ripples. Thank goodness he is leaving Scotland early. We might have to wait longer for him to break through, but at least he is away from the Scottish culture.

Yup, striker is a problem. I do still like Nisbet but I think he needs a move. He’s got a calmness about him in the box and I think he would flourish with top players around him. Send him to Belgium for a bit.

[Guest Scot1]

I agree with the general sentiment, to an extent. Obviously it would be beneficial to have a top class striker/centre forward. Unfortunately we don’t, what we do have is a quality 2nd striker in McGinn and a decent striker in Adams (who will improve, he’s still 25 y/o) and I believe a decent prospect in Stewart. 
But I think it comes down to your “philosophy” on how the game is played. I think we should be playing a possession based game, I believe we have the players to do so. I think with the current set up we are guilty of moving the ball from back to front too quickly (specifically from the 2 midfielders, ie Gilmour and McGregor, up to the front line, McGinn, Adams, Armstrong or Christie. The reason for this is they simply don’t have any other option. There’s only 2 of them in Central Midfield. So we don’t move teams around, unsettle them, get them out of position before we move the ball forward. This makes it difficult for our frontline to be effective. 
I think if we were to put more bodies in central midfield, and play a short, quick passing game, and I believe we have the players to do so. Our attacks would be more effective, we may create less chances, but better, more clean cut chances. I also think one of the benefits of this would be  goals from central midfield as we would have runners from deep linking up with the forwards and getting beyond them. This, I believe would be harder to defend against and would hopefully lead to more goals coming from other areas of the team, specifically our central midfielders. 

Edited June 16, 2022 by Scot1

[Scots_Wha_Hae]

20 minutes ago, Scot1 said:

I agree with the general sentiment, to an extent. Obviously it would be beneficial to have a top class striker/centre forward. Unfortunately we don’t, what we do have is a quality 2nd striker in McGinn and a decent striker in Adams (who will improve, he’s still 25 y/o) and I believe a decent prospect in Stewart. 
But I think it comes down to your “philosophy” on how the game is played. I think we should be playing a possession based game, I believe we have the players to do so. I think with the current set up we are guilty of moving the ball from back to front too quickly (specifically from the 2 midfielders, ie Gilmour and McGregor, up to the front line, McGinn, Adams, Armstrong or Christie. The reason for this is they simply don’t have any other option. There’s only 2 of them in Central Midfield. So we don’t move teams around, unsettle them, get them out of position before we move the ball forward. This makes it difficult for our frontline to be effective. 
I think if we were to put more bodies in central midfield, and play a short, quick passing game, and I believe we have the players to do so. Our attacks would be more effective, we may create less chances, but better, more clean cut chances. I also think one of the benefits of this would be  goals from central midfield as we would have runners from deep linking up with the forwards and getting beyond them. This, I believe would be harder to defend against and would hopefully lead to more goals coming from other areas of the team, specifically our central midfielders. 

I think I broadly agree with this. I'm not sure we quite have the players to play a short passing game throughout the team at this point, especially when faced with a hard press, but we are close. A little more technical ability in our centrebacks and a little more in our forward and we would be there.

I think the other thing we are missing though is a penetrative passer - someone who can play the hard, fast and accurate passes to feet that our attackers would thrive on. It's more or less the same point you made, but our attack tends to be laboured with slow build up and lots of latteral passing, but not of sufficient quality to actually move teams around enough. We then end up inevitably using low odds passes into the danger areas or losing posession. You can also see that Clarke is trying to add more switches of play to our general build up to move the point of the attack quicker, but over the last window the number of long passes that were inaccurate (and invariably ended up out of play) was a little embarrasing. I don't know quite why that was as I think the players have the ability - perhaps just the pressure of the occassion getting to them. 

[Guest Scot1]

42 minutes ago, Scots_Wha_Hae said:

I think I broadly agree with this. I'm not sure we quite have the players to play a short passing game throughout the team at this point, especially when faced with a hard press, but we are close. A little more technical ability in our centrebacks and a little more in our forward and we would be there.

I think the other thing we are missing though is a penetrative passer - someone who can play the hard, fast and accurate passes to feet that our attackers would thrive on. It's more or less the same point you made, but our attack tends to be laboured with slow build up and lots of latteral passing, but not of sufficient quality to actually move teams around enough. We then end up inevitably using low odds passes into the danger areas or losing posession. You can also see that Clarke is trying to add more switches of play to our general build up to move the point of the attack quicker, but over the last window the number of long passes that were inaccurate (and invariably ended up out of play) was a little embarrasing. I don't know quite why that was as I think the players have the ability - perhaps just the pressure of the occassion getting to them. 

Because we have so few central midfielders on the pitch, they aren’t getting up in support of the forwards. As you said, this leads them to try playing 20 yard pin point accurate , through the eye of a needle, passes which have a low chance of success. When ideally it should be 5 yard “killer” passes. Much easier to get a 5 yard pass on the money than a 10,15 or 20 yard pass. I believe McTominay, Gilmour, McGregor, Turnbull are all capable of the “decisive” pass if they are up close enough to the forwards. 
I take your point about the centre half’s, I do think McKenna is improving as a player and Souttar also has good potential. But I do think we can play out from the back even under a press with the Centre half’s we have. It’s just giving them options to pass to, even if it means dropping everyone deep into midfield apart from the centre forward and building from our own 18 yard line, so be it. It just takes composed decision making, if it’s not on, ok go long to the centre forward or behind their defence into space. But the majority of times we will be and are capable of playing out. 

Edited June 16, 2022 by Scot1