It's an interesting point.Originally Posted by Rjk
Earnshaw scored well over 20 goals in 3 out of 4 seasons before being sold. He would surely have made that 4 out of 4 but injury robbed him of part of the 2001/2 season (when Andy Campbell found his best form). On flogging Earnie, Thorne became our next top scorer while we battled against relegation. Then, as you say, we had Jerome, Chopra, McCormack, Whitts and Chops in the same season and Bothroyd. The only season we didn't have a 20+ goal a season striker under Jones was our FA cup final season when we brought in Fowler and Hasselbaink and ended up relying on Paul Parry!
What is interesting is that there was more reliance under Jones for strikers (or Whitts) to find the net. Well over a third of our goals in most of his seasons came from one player. The only exception to this, other than the cup final year, was his last year in charge, when we scored 76. Scoring 73 and 76 in 2009/10 and 2010/11 haven't been bettered since, though Malky's champions scored 72 despite Helgusson only netting 9 and Warnock's runners-up (though with better points than 2012/13) scored 69. The reason both those sides won promotion was defence - 39 conceded last year and 45 in our title winning season 6 years ago. Jones' sides kept conceding in the mid 50s throughout his tenure - we got better in front of goal but kept letting them in. Surprisingly, Lennie Lawrence's 2004/05 strugglers conceded less goals in a relegation-haunted season than any season under Jones.
It should probably be added that both Warnock and Mackay like strikers and creative attacking players to put in a defensive shift, but sometimes stifles our attacking game. Jones gave his forward players more freedom, which was great in terms of some attacking play, but meant we could be caught out defensively.
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