Everton's search for their dream striker

It's very detailed, the graphics and tables tell a compelling and pretty horrible story of abject failure... with a few 'almost' exceptions.

At the present time, we are getting a few from those other departments, and basically naff-all from those paid (handsomely) to produce them.

I was in tears last night, after yet another defeat for the RS, but they were of unbridled joy, laughter and pure schadenfreude. Long may it continue!

That's official.

Two things that scream out.

1. Why?

2. Managers have consistently failed to play to what little strength those strikers had (Ancelotti being the exception).

Going back to when I first saw Everton with Joe Royle, there was always a foil. Plus fast tricky wingers, who could put it on a sixpence. Tough midfielders.

When Everton failed to recover post-Heysel, we dropped to a lone attacker with no support. Hoofing it to them expecting them to win it, win their own flick-on, beat the opposition and score. A failure which has been on wash spin repeat for 4 decades.

After selling to a picnic man who got rid of us pronto to the biggest crook who was never arrested, the shit-show was sealed.

Our scouting system has always failed. But it's not just that. Scouts bring forward players. The owner, board, chairman or DoF are the ones who say Yay or Nay.

When you choose Ramirez over Haaland because you are in the pocket of the agent, that sums it all up. But it's historic. The prolific strikers we snubbed in favour of someone awful reads like a who's who of Beatles rejection.

Playing lone striker is Moyes's way. Generally with no support and not playing to their strength. He admits it.

I don't consider all of the summer signings successful: 3 keepers, a left-back not good enough, a striker that non-league would baulk at, and an 18-year-old with vast potential but has so far choked with the little time he's had.

I don't believe we will sign a striker. Moyes is looking for a centre-back as a priority, by all accounts.

Even if we did get one half-decent end-of-career front-man, Moyes would not care to support the guy in a tactical manner.

The huge bonus we have is the attraction factor of Grealish and, to a lesser degree, Ndiaye. Plus the awesome stadium.

All in all, it's a conundrum.

I have no illusions that Niasse was a quality striker, but he was a trier, much better than the donkeys we recruited over the years.

And the shitshow at the management level since Moshiri took over meant that Everton ruined many young strikers' careers:- Mose Kean, Chermiti, Onyekuru, etc. Let us hope that we don't let Barry go that way.

He will need patience and a gradual adjustment to the league. If we do that, there is a chance that he will score goals for us probably next season.

In the meantime, Beto should have been the striker to shoulder most of the scoring burden, but unfortunately for us and him, it is not working out for him. Maybe best to cut our losses on Beto, sell him and get in an experienced striker like Gabriel Jesus or Ivan Toney, even if it is for the short term.

This season's going faster than I thought!

Lukaku had Barkley and Deulofeu. In his best season, Calvert-Lewin has Rodriguez and Sigurdsson.

We have full-backs that don't have quality, we have wingers that don't cross the ball, so we play narrow. In this system, we need Dewsbury-Hall to get close to the Number 10 and Ndiaye to be our top goalscorer again as the others don't score enough. I would play Ndiaye as a striker and get Alcaraz and Dibling more involved.

On paper, this team has better technical footballers than last season but probably less goals as Doucoure has gone and Alcaraz isn't rated to start games. Moyes has to get the team creating more chances.

Dennis, don't doubt yourself: Niasse was awful.

Yakubu too comes to mind; he was pretty good. It's tricky because we've always been hard up for cash and then, when we got some, seemed to spend most of it on indifferent midfielders.

Hopefully, Barry can come good, or the scouts can do a better job in this regard than they have done for some time.

He scored 7 goals in 55 appearances.

Everton are the worst in Premier League history.
That's official.

We are still in the top flight and have been through quite a bit of change and, at the risk of getting Don involved, we had a man in charge who loved his train set. We did however buy some new lawnmowers.

Alcaraz got 4 goals in 18 appearances for the worst side in the league when he first arrived in the country and can't get a game unless it's out wide where he's useless.

Beto's xG is only 3.15. People are talking like he should be on 10 plus goals already this season. Take away his great chance against Palace and he's feeding on scraps with how we set up and play.

Virtually all of them!

It's an event when any of our players score -- never mind the two centre-forwards. We need to get the ball into the box a lot more often, anything can happen as with the long throws in other games yesterday.

I'm repeating myself again but one is 6'-3" and the other 6'-5"... get crosses into the box, nothing else is working.

At a corner, Distin actually turned around and motioned to them 'Calm down' in that French way of his, to no avail of course, they were electrified by the acknowledgement. 'Don't you tell me to calm down, Sylvan Distin, don't you dare.' and on it went.

It's a bit like that in here on strikers.

What I would say, though, is we should not be too critical of some of the previous strikers as the quality behind them and the way we played didn't exactly help.

How often, for example, was Calvert-Lewin expected to win an aerial challenge then chase the second ball or Richarlison to chase the long punt forward?

Realistically, the midfield is probably the most creative we have had for years, so let's hope we can find that forward to take advantage.

It must be quite soul destroying for the likes of Ndiaye and Grealish knowing they have crafted and created some wonderful openings this season but the lack of quality from our forward has fundamentally let us down.

Yes, Lukaku had Barkley, Mirallas, Deulofeu supplying ammunition but, when we signed Lukaku in 2013, you could feel almost instantly that this was a massive upgrade on Denis Stracqalursi and Jelavic too.

He had power, pace, could striker the ball cleanly with both feet, he could head a ball, many said he was lazy but he came to life in and around the penalty box, that's what a striker should do really.

We've had so much money over the past 8 years, I'm sure Everton Football Club would have been a more than attractive proposal playing in the most watched league in the world, to have signed even one top class striker.

As fans, we've been too passive and too patient with this misconception they won't come to Everton... bollocks, they will, money talks and the chance to showcase yourself in the Premier League is an elite opportunity.

We've just pissed the money up the wall on shite and made excuses for it.

● They are cheap. In the Premier League era we have generally been poor and have only ever bought a few reasonably expensive strikers and they are Ferguson, Beattie, Johnson, Yakubu and Lukaku. That's it. The Lukaku we bought would cost £70M to £90M in today's market.

● They are isolated. As is the case now, we often play deep and conservative, leaving the striker much more isolated than teams scoring lots of goals. This is often (as now) because we have slow centre-back pairings dragging the team back into a deep defensive position. We also lack pace and width which hinders our ability to counter-attack from this deep position.

In the Moshiri era, which strikers did we actually buy apart from for absolute peanuts?

● Tosun: idiotic purchase of a player completely unsuited to the Premier League and playing as a lone frontman.

● Kean: arrived at an absolute shambles of a club and has gone on to demonstrate at clubs like PSG and Fiorentina that there was nothing wrong with him particularly.

● Beto: bought out of necessity because of Calvert-Lewin's ongoing injury problems. And the zero cost in year one meant he was probably just about the only viable option.

So, the lesson learned is that, if you want big scoring strikers, you need to:

● Assemble a team around them which is capable of supporting a front man.

● Pay a big fee for the striker, or show patience with a player of talent.

There was a lot wrong with Moise Kean's attitude however, and what you fail to point out is he has done it in weaker leagues, not the Premier League.

Also, at Everton we are not a club nor a fanbase that can afford to be patient any longer.

We've been patient for 30 years just to keep getting told to be patient.

How long do we await for a player to fulfill potential?

Did Tom Davies ever become what some told us he would be back in 2018?

Did DCL ever become that "next Lukaku" many convinced us we had on our books?

We need to shell out big money and somehow try our best to coax the real deal at some stage.

Our scouting is pretty pathetic and has a terrible track record looking for strikers or even developing them.

Most if not all teams in the prem have better strikers than ours, why is that?

Bad scouting, bad coaching and lack of funds though saying that I wouldnt trust anyone at the club to spend big money even if we had it.

Robert 20.

Slow CBS playing a low block doesn't mean we can't score goals. Leicester won the league with a low block. Arsenal had years of slow CBS and won stuff.
Forrest last season played deep and scored goals.

In this league you need Pace as a bare minimum all over the pitch. Pointless having 2 road runner fast CBS when the midfield don't have any pace. We haven't got any pace in the entire team.

Other teams have goal scoring midfielders, we have Ndiaye.

Lacks of goals will see Moyes losing his job and us struggle in the league. This year I think 2 of the promoted teams will go down which leaves places for a couple of poor teams that don't score goals.

I agree that our best chance of finding a striker is by paying a big fee - £70m(+). So if we don't do that then we are going to have to be patient whether you like it or not.

Rob # 22, you are right that you can still counter attack effectively from a lock block as per Leicester and Forest. However, both these teams had pace and width in the full-back and wing positions. We don't. Any team will struggle to score goals if they are slow / low block at CB and also narrow / slow in attack. This doesn't change unless (a) we buy a RB and move O'Brien inside or (b) Branthwaite returns from injury.

The point is, we aren't in a position to shop at the top of the market for a proven striker, and haven't been for a long time. We have to take chances on promising young players or ones with a track record in a smaller league, and hope they turn into a Lukaku. Most of them won't, but that's the chance we have to take.

Beto is very limited but has value as a squad player. Barry might develop into something great, or might not. If not, we try again with someone else.

Since Lukaku's sale in the summer of 2017, the Blues have scored 357 Premier League goals - the fewest of any ever-present club.

Leicester City have scored 388 goals - 31 more than the Toffees during the same period - despite spending two seasons in the second tier.

Despite having signed 17 strikers in that time, Everton are yet to find a reliable long-term option - and selection problems persist to this day.

Player. Goals. Games. Min/goal
Lukaku 68. 141. 175
Cambell 45. 145. 248
Ferguson 60. 239. 263
Richarlison 43. 135. 259.
Cahill 56. 226. 322
Calvert-Lewin 57. 239. 276
Beto. 12. 48. 247

Does that mean that Beto is the second most prolific goal at Everton in recent times after Lukaku?

Do stats lie?

The graphic missing from the BBC piece is how our spending on strikers compares within that group. I suspect £160M is at the lower end.

We have survived as a Premier League club by prioritising defensive organisation over scoring goals. An upgrade on our full-backs would make a huge difference to our attacking potency.

With that statistic in mind, further down that list is Niasse at 163 minutes per goal. 35 games and 8 scored. Thus enshrining him as our best striker since 2017 and better than Lukaku.

So that puts Beto 3rd I guess.

Frightening, yet true.

I saw that too but thought I would be laughed out of it if I included that statistic!

It's a conundrum alright... but one we've failed to solve for years. Mind you, any top striker will struggle given the way we set up.

Eli Junior Kroupi for £12M, Wilson Isidor £6M, Antoine Semenyo £10.5M, Jean‑Philippe Mateta £15M, Danny Welbeck £0.

I think we could have done better for our £30M than Thierno Barry, same fee as Igor Thiago.

Chermiti has just scored for Rangers, is Barry better than him?

More importantly, these stats on goals per game are so misleading. We made the Champions League places with Marcus Bent leading the line and contributing only 6 league goals.

It's about all-around contribution as well as goals. Obviously you want both but, if your striker's play is supporting others to score, it works. You're seeing that with Arsenal right now.

The big issue right now with both Beto and Barry is not that they're not scoring goals. Or not mainly that anyway. It's that their all-round play is so frustrating. When Beto was scoring goals, you could just barely accept the weakness of the rest of his game. Right now, he's a tough watch.

I don't know what the answer is, but I do wonder about trying Ndiaye up front.

Mateta and Semenyo both took a while to produce.

Beto -- I've never rated. He's terrible.

His goals per minutes would be very high. Beto has struggled this season and his first but really excelled scoring over half his goals under a new manager bounce. The fact his performances are so poor means that he gets hooked early or comes on with a point to prove when the team are all pushing for a goal (unlike say when Dominic starts under Dyche).

I think by that Metric maybe Solskjær was a better striker than Haaland possibly? Mind you that hypothetical might even be false as Haalands numbers are so insane, but you get the point.

I think you look at the clubs those players represent and the common denominator is that they each have a clear football identity that players are bought and groomed to fit into.

With good scouting and such a pholosophy in place they prove that big money strikers are not the only solution. We seem to lack both elements.

What sort of football team are Everton trying to be? There is no clear rationale behind how Moyes is setting up his teams, and especially not in his transfer dealings.

It makes it very hard for young players like Chermiti and now Barry to adapt and be succesful.

And also Josh @48, there is a big misdirection in the media, underplaying just how much money drives outcomes. It suits the game to hold managers totally responsible because it allows some fans to dream that they are just waiting to finally get a decent manager, when really it is more about money; either lots of it or at the very least a competitive budget sensibly spent.