Friday, March 30, 2007

Are we in a goalscoring crisis?

I was just wondering if my fellow gooners feel that we are in a mini-crisis. I mean, where are the goals going to come from? Aliadiere is very poor, Baptista is inconsistent, a goal from the midfield comes around about once a month and we have out top two scorers injured! Just look at these stats for the Premiership - our top 5 goal scorers:

Robin Van Persie: 11 goals
Thierry Henry: 10 goals
Gilberto: 8 goals
Manu Adebayor: 6 goals
Mathieu Flamini: 3 goals

That is not good enough, remembering that Van Persie and Henry are injured. Because you look at Fabregas (0 goals), Rosicky (1 goal), Hleb (2 goals), Ljungberg (0 goals), Baptista (1 goal), Diaby (1 goal) etc. Where will the goals come from? Fabregas, Hleb and Rosicky have played brilliantly and have created chances for teammates as well as themselves but have found the Premiership net only 3 times between them. When we were expecting 5 goals+ from each at the start of the season. But then again, all of them could have 5 goals each, as they have been relatively unlucky. Then we look at Baptista. He took the Carling Cup by storm, netting 6 goals in that competition. But The Beast has only scored once in the Premiership this season, not enough when we were expecting 10+ goals from the Brazilian. But to be fair, he has had to settle in to England and very rarely do players shine in their first season (Henry, Adebayor, Drogba, Ronaldo, Hleb and Essien are all examples). But the majority of his performances have been below par, his touch is awful, his passing is not very accurate and most importantly he can't seem to score. But one positive is his workrate and attitude. He will work hard for the team and as well as being determined to play as many games as possible, he is patient and will not complain.

The problem being that Toure and Gallas have scored the same amount of league goals as Hleb, Rosicky, Fabregas, Baptista and Ljungberg put together! But this lack of goals will not be permenant as next season we will have Henry and Van Persie back from injury, Bendtner back from his loan spell and possibly another striker as well. But lets hope that the midfield can start bangining in some goals to keep us in 3rd for the remainder of the season.

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