Blueband Brother said:
What about the prospect of having only two strikers if tevez goes: Aguero and Dzeko , with Gudeitti hopefully becoming fit enough to play next season. I have always been a big advocate for not looking at the grass on the other side of the fence but I have to say that teams like Bayern, Madrid and even Barcelona only have 2 main strikers and manage to do well.
Also consider the fact that we will have so many attacking goal scoring midfielders like Yaya, Silva, Nasri, Isco, Milner and Navas. Yaya, Silva, Nasri and Isco can all play as a supporting striker and Yaya and perhaps Silva can also play as a striker.
This suggestion can be vindicated if we are going to apply a more flexible 4231 formation as in that case we will be playing with only one striker most of the time and as I said, the attacking midfielders can always chip in when the strikers gets injured.
e.g ...Fernandinho........Yaya.....
Nasri.............Silva..............Isco
.............. Dzeko/Aguero..................
.......Fernandinho.......Rodwell/Milner
Nasri/Isco..........Yaya.................Silva/Milner
.................. Dzeko/Aguero................
or 4-3-3
Fernandinho.............Yaya............Rodwell/Milner
Navas/Isco..........Dzeko/Aguero...........Silva/Nasri
So I can see us being effective with only 2 main strikers if tevez goes
(This is just a suggestion so don't eat me alive)
I will be more concerned about getting a Center back in there for next season as I see Micah as more of a right back.
We might be able to survive with just 2 main strikers, depending on the system, but we'd still need another backup striker. Probably a younger or relatively unproven striker. Bit it'd put a lot of pressure on our midfielders to score a lot more than they have so far. Let's have a look at how they've done so far:
Silva: only managed double figures once in Spain, got 8 in our title-winning season, but 6 and 5 in the other years.
Navas: once got 10, but otherwise never managed more than 5.
Toure: reliably gets 9 or 10 a season.
Fernandinho: 5 goals in the last 3 seasons (total).
Milner: got 12 for Villa once (when he played centrally). Otherwise only managed more than 4 once in his career.
Barry: 3 is his record for us.
Rodwell: Never scored more than 2 in the league, but looks promising.
Nasri: once got 15 for Arsenal, but has averaged 6 in every other season in English football. The 15 was in the season he was playing as a CM though.
Garcia: doesn't score, basically.
Sinclair: Got 8 for Swansea once.
It's probably easier to play with one striker when your winger's scoring 60 a season. And Bayern have Robben (roughly a 1 in 2 player), Muller (roughly 20 a season) and Ribery (1 in 3 to 1 in 4 player who also contributes an insane number of assists).
