Not necessarily needed imo. Although it would be ideal as a plan B to lump it up and give us a different dimension, just a decent striker can be enough. In 16/17 we were fantastic up until the January window where we sold our souls. Up top that season we had Winnall, Armstrong, Bradshaw, Payne and Watkins occasionally. We were fantastic to watch that first half of season. Not a 6ft 3” target man in sight. Play to our strengths and with a decent striker or two added we will be ok.
Not a target man, but I do think we're missing somebody who can hold it up and play with their back to goal. Woodrow struggled a bit in that role towards the back end of last season.
Agree, the strike force mentioned in the OP doesn't have a target man but it had more flexibility to it. Watkins was excellent and offered something different. The example I always think of is Jon Macken.
We need someone who's able to hold the ball up. As you say, not necessarily a target man, but someone who's comfortable with the ball at their feet, so we can retain possession if we have to play a long ball. It's not something we do often, but when we're holding onto a lead, it's something that's often necessary. Some are mislead into thinking though what we need is a 6ft 2in brick **** house. And we don't really.
And yet Fowler couldn’t get in the team over Emile Heskey... We don’t necessarily need a big lad up top but that wasnt a great example!!!
John Hendrie although not six foot plus could always hold the ball up and make it stick and link play up and that’s the type we need whether he’s 6 ft 5 or 5 ft 6 is irrelevant.
We need more height in the team and if we could get someone who can hold the ball up and give us a bit of extra height at set pieces then all well and good.
I want whoever it is to be tall, physically imposing, and be able to hold the ball well, win headers, and get his share of goals . We don't necessarily have to call him a target man if it's too distressing to use such an outdated expression. We can just go with "big lad up top".
It's a nice idea, but the expression doesn't exist anymore. It was removed from the Oxford English Dictionary in 2014 due to lack of use.
Whatever we do, if we don’t get a target man and Halme int up front. Stop chuffing pumping high balls in from open play. They very rarely work from set pieces ( not that we seem to have any. Except cross it and hope some bugger gets on end on it by fluke) ne’er mind open play.
Arrrr but. Us that have watched football for a while have an affection for that term - Centre Forward. I never saw Tommy Taylor and I was talking to this owd lad that had seen him play. I asked him what he was like. And he said this ........ he was beautiful to watch, a proper centre forward.
Me too. Along with Inside Right and Inside Left. Even the wide men are going out of fashion... these days it feels like you can only use the expressions Right Winger or Left Winger in political threads.
I think point he was making that at 5 ft 8 &9, they weren’t particularly big but still managed to score a lot of goals together and won 3 trophies in one season(before Heskey).
