The striker situation., We obviously need somebody......

cfloo

I haven't got involved inthe Michael Owen but it has opened up a bit of a can of worms, and thatis the issue of our strikers. Now regardless of what anybody thinks ofany of them, totally putting aside any of our opinions on theindividual players concerned, it seems to me that we desperately needto sign at least one in January.

The reason I say this? Wellfirstly nobody can be sure in the short to medium term that Torres isgoing to available on a  regular basis. My feeling is from having seensuch injuries in similar types of players before, we are going to haveto live with the fact that he is going to be injured a couple of timesEACH SEASON. Even if I'm wrong, he can't play every game anyway.

Now he is obviously a World-class striker, but if he doesn't play whatare Rafa's options? It seems to me there sre four options available tothe manager apart from Torres. He has Keane, who unlike Torres apearsunable to play up top on his own. Even if we take the view that Keaneis about to reproduce his very best form, if Torres isn't there heneeds a partner, and he can't play every game either.

We haveKuyt, who can play both as a lone striker or in a pair. These are bothundesireable options though for two reasons. Firstly he doesn'tactually score goals or look like scoring them when he plays up front,and secondly and more importantly Rafa needs him on the right.

We also have Babel, but the manager seemingly doesn't fancy him as astriker at all. Once again I urge you to put aside your own feelings,from the managers point of view Babel isn't an option as a striker. Endof, as someone once said.

That leaves Egg Nog. I don't know what to say really.

So there you go, at our absolute best and most optimistic outlook, Rafahas three strikers in Torres, Keane, Kuyt and Egg Nog as an up andcomer. One of his main three is injured, one of them is a regular inhis best team at right midfield, and one of them is currently hapless.The up and comer maybe a while coming, so in my judgement we areprobably two strikers light, never mind one.