Strikers from the Academy

[thehumblegringo]

I'm researching the 1970/71 season currently and was reminded a couple of days ago of John Parsons who played just over eighty games in a career which took him from us to Bournemouth and, finally, Newport. Despite an awful lot of those appearances being off the bench, he scored a more than respectable thirty goals in that time, but I always thought of him as someone who did little else but score goals. On the one hand, that sounds an idiotic view when you consider how much we'd pay now for a striker with a better than one in three scoring rate, but it applies even more today - your use of Jordan Rhodes is a good example because the latter half of his career has offered concrete proof that merely sticking the ball in the net is no longer enough in the modern game.

I'd say Sergio Aguero could be classed as an out and out striker, but he's had to adopt a more of a team ethic and up his work rate under Guardiola and the only one I can think of coming through as a young player at the top level now is Tammy Abraham.

This trend can be seen in action at the Academy where the two best strikers we have in my view (Dan Griffiths and Isaak Davies) have both played in wide positions for the under 18s on quite a few occasions - the last player at Academy level who was a goalscorer first and foremost was Eli Phipps who left us a few years ago for Colchester but never played a game for them and I'm struggling to think of another before him in all of the years the Academy has been going.

Cameron Jerome joined us at about the same time as our Academy started up (autumn 2004) and would have played no more than four or five matches at that level before he broke into the first team.

Aguero is a good illustration Bob. There is no doubt Guardiola didn't really fancy him when he first came due possibly to Aguero's single mindedness as a player.

Fortunately for Aguero he had the ability to adapt where others haven't.

If you look at our club we've already fallen behind the current trend when we look for a striker.

We are being linked to John Hartson type players who are not so mobile, don't score many goals but are like static lumps aka Madine and co however the recent trend requires a striker not only to provide a bit of focal point but also to be a bit of a false 9 if required.

Barcelona fans often bemoan that Suarez is holding the team back!

Even players like Higuain and Morata often look pedestrian to the demands of the modern game.

I think early specialisation of kids can be dangerous for this very reason. It will be harder for someone like Dan Griffiths to adapt now having played up top all his career when the requirements for a centre forward were so different.

[Loramski]

Aguero is a good illustration Bob. There is no doubt Guardiola didn't really fancy him when he first came due possibly to Aguero's single mindedness as a player.

Fortunately for Aguero he had the ability to adapt where others haven't.

If you look at our club we've already fallen behind the current trend when we look for a striker.

We are being linked to John Hartson type players who are not so mobile, don't score many goals but are like static lumps aka Madine and co however the recent trend requires a striker not only to provide a bit of focal point but also to be a bit of a false 9 if required.

Barcelona fans often bemoan that Suarez is holding the team back!

Even players like Higuain and Morata often look pedestrian to the demands of the modern game.

I think early specialisation of kids can be dangerous for this very reason. It will be harder for someone like Dan Griffiths to adapt now having played up top all his career when the requirements for a centre forward were so different.

Interesting posts from you and TOBW here. It wasn't that long ago that everyone wanted an Owen, Fowler, Wright type player but the game's moved on now. We seemed to cotton onto this later than most as we brought in Miller, Earnie, Velikonja, Healey, Johnson, Maynard, Le Fondre, Macheda, Doyle and probably others I've forgotten for managers who didn't have a clue what to do with them.

In the cases of Griffiths and Davies there does seem to be some forward thinking, as TOBW suggests. Bellamy talked about having to work hard to get the two of them to play together, they were so used to playing up top on their own. Griffiths seemed to be the one who'd drop off more in that set up, he looked comfortable doing it too. Davies has the pace to play out wide and he's been effective when I've seen him there this season. One slight worry is that he seems to have lost his edge a bit when he does get in front of goal now (only 3 league goals this season), hopefully it's just a temporary blip. I guess that's the key issue, developing a player's all round game without taking away from the thing that made them stand out in the first place.