Premier League Strikers Who Don't Score Must Be Given the Boot

Scoring goals has always been seen as one of the most vital components in success, whether that success may be getting promoted from the Championship, fighting off relegation or winning the Champions League. And it is the striker who shoulders most of that responsibility. Strikers, like puppies and medium sized hoodies at Primark, come in all shapes and sizes. There are big ones, like Crouch, little ones, like Tevez, and ones that look like they would be more at home in a Star Wars fans convention, like Jon Parkin.

However, not all of them actually fulfill this role very well. It has always been a total mystery to me why managers tolerate strikers who don’t actually score goals. Whenever this happens on Football Manager they always feel the force of my wrath. They find themselves swiftly transfer listed and marked as not needed.

Take a player like Shola Ameobi for example. A Premier league striker for 10 years, and the most goals he has ever scored in a single season is 10, and that was in the Championship. He has a goal return of 70 in 303 appearances. 

Add to that the basic ball control of a fawn and a first touch that makes him look like he has club foot, and it just is mind-blowing that he is still in employment. Anyone else who did their job that badly for 10 years would have been fired. Only a footballer could do his job consistently badly and still be taking home a pay cheque every month. That would be like math teachers telling their students that 2+2=5 for 10 years, and still keeping his/her job.

Even more confounding is how a national side, with all the talent in a country, could choose a player like Emile Heskey to lead an attack.

The sheer injustice of this makes me apoplectic with rage. This is a player that has made 67 national appearances, but only managed seven goals. Lampard has a much better strike rate than this, with 22 goals for his country. It’s not even as if Heskey has suffered a dip in form, as he has only managed 150 goals in over 650 games in his whole career.

Emile Heskey being rewarded for his astounding mediocrity is similar to a pub band opening at Glastonbury. It just wouldn’t and shouldn’t happen in normal life. Compare this to a player like Peter Crouch, who simply cannot get a game for England for love or money, despite having the best goal scoring record for England out of the current crop of strikers, 22 goals in 42 appearances. While his career tally of 99 goals in 362 appearances isn’t world class, it is certainly much better then Heskey.

The long and short of it is that strikers like Ameobi and Heskey shouldn’t be considered to be worth the price of the paper that they signed their contract on. It would be better to convert them to centre backs, at least they can head the ball and out-muscle some other non-scoring striker riding the gravy train that is professional football.