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I always find it funny the same people slating Pardew for spending £7m on Wickham, or Sako on £55k a week (allegedly) claim what we should be doing instead is spending £10m on Benick Afobe.

Of course they could do worst - despite his injuries, Wickham has 6 goals - I think it's pretty logical to assume if he had played a full season he would have at least 10 goals to his name - of the sides outside of the top 6, only Sunderland (Defoe), Everton (Lukaku), Watford (Ighalo & Deeney) and Chelsea (Costa) have strikers with over 10 goals, so this idea that we're the only club struggling with strikers is a complete myth, and a lot of clubs have spent a hell of a lot more money than us in trying to find the answer.

Bournemouth are two points better off than us and they've spent over £20m on strikers in less than 12 months - their top scorer is Josh King with 7.

Ok, you've criticised the goal tallies of our forwards, and our scouts/club for failing to find better.

Given what I've highlighted above, in that only 4 clubs of the bottom 14 have successfully found a 10+ goal a season striker - and Costa and Lukaku are hardly comparable with us - combined with the fact that most clubs have spent considerably more than us on strikers in the same time period, do you not think your criticism is lacking foundation?

You are certainly right that it is very difficult for a number of EPL clubs to find goal scoring strikers. However we do need next season to really give this a go. I think we need another potential striker as well as a midfielder who can possibly find the net, unless Cabaye is given a pop at filling this role. We are taking a huge punt on relying on Wilf, Punch, Yannick and Wickham to produce the goods. I'd like to see us getting more bodies in the box when on the attack, causing a bit more havoc and generally putting the oppo on the backfoot.

“ [T]here are known knowns; there are things we know that we know.There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that, we now know we don't know.But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know. ”
—United States Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld

I think we need another big man too, assuming Adebayor is leaving. I think it makes sense to have an understudy to Wickham; someone who would be relatively cheap.

But the main target should be one that runs in behind the defence or one that likes to pick the ball up in the hole (a la Chamakh).

Didn't we get all the way to Christmas without a single goal scored by a striker and that duck was only broken when Wickham grabbed the ball to make sure that it was him that took a penalty.

Bournemouth had a problem when their top striker suffered a long term injury straight away and had to buy a replacement which they may not have wanted to do in the normal course of events

Paper talk. A story with no real depth or conviction. If we went for him how comes he ended up at Leicester? Although now a more attractive option than us I don't think they were then. I've supported this club long enough (since 1987) to know how we operate.