- Oct 19, 2004
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Of course not and I certainly wouldn't advocate doing that but Ade was always going to be risky (which doesn't mean I don't think he's a great player on form) and he alone wasn't and isn't sufficient enough. Defoe is best employed as a supersub and the rest of our strikers were too junior for the job. There have been several perfectly good and affordable strikers that we could have brought in who may have made the difference. To be honest, we've never really made up the shortfall after selling Keane, Crouch and Pav. The last really decent striker partnership that we had was Keane and Berbatov. I may well be wrong, but I think it would have made a difference.
This is the trouble. Pav may have made a difference. Bent for 17m may have. But they didn't make enough of a difference.
I think we could have spent more wisely on many occasions, we all have our likes and dislikes on players, but I am pragmatic enough to accept that on balance we risk what we can financially and on balance we are doing pretty well with our strategy of sustainable consistency/growth.
We now have Adebayor and Bale. Over the last two years they have been the most productive strikers we've seen in recent years.
You can grumble about form, but not the logic that assumed Adebayor would be much more productive, and if he had, in a team that predominately plays with one striker, was sound.