Some stats for Lought.

STRIKING STATS: Current vs Targets
In all this clamour for a new striker, has anyone stopped to actually think about this, or have the "18 goals between them" statement clouded our rational thinking? Here I aim to explore the stats and draw some conclusions. If that sort of thing doesn't float your boat then look away now...

So let's just talk about the league as it's less complicated, and arguably more important. I've just taken a look at Crouch, Pav and Defoe's stats for 2011 vs 2010 season ends and what it shows is that Defoe's goals were the most sorely missed:

Player goals/apps 2010goals/apps 2011
JD 18/34 4/22
Beanpole 8/38 4/29
Pav 5/16 10/29

So, bearing in mind that Defoe was injured for a good chunk of the season, and then struggled with form, and that I think a fair few of these appearances would have been from the bench, can we forgive him? All 3 have had to adapt to a new system with the introduction of Rafa, but Crouchie's 4 in 29 is not far short of laughable! Pav seems fairly consistent at 1 in 3 - do we underrate him?

In contrast do we overrate Defoe? The problem with JD is that if you look at his earlier Spurs career as well you see he's only ever gotten himself into double figures in the league 3 times (04-05 with 13 and 10 in 06-07). Even if you factor in some squad rotation, you have to say that's poor.

What's worse is that Beanpole has only ever managed it twice - once for Liverpool and once for Portsmouth. 1 in 6 last year has actually shocked me a bit. I guess he had a fair few assists, but for me he has to be the first name out of the door. That is simply not good enough. Not to mention the negative affect his inclusion often has on our play (No Daws, please do NOT lump it up to Crouch!).

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect all your forwards to hit double figures. Just for completeness, Rafa managed 13 in 28 in his debut season. Robbie Keane managed double figures every year since 2003, right up until his "dream move" to Liverpool and Berba managed it both years he was with us.

So here's the number of league goals a few of our targets have managed over the last few years (goals/apps, again - league only):

Player 2011 2010 2009 2008
Gyan* 10/31 n/a n/a n/a
Rossi 18/36 10/34 12/30 11/27
Adebayor 6/22 14/26 10/27 24/36
Vucinic 10/28 14/33 11/27 9/33
Llorente 18/38 14/37 14/34 11/35
Falcao 16/22 25/28 13/32 11/27

* Wikipedia doesn't know more than this

http://spursclub.blogspot.com

i been through this a million times. defoe was woefull the secound hald of the season 09/10 then had a bad season last season.

take out the 5 goals aganst wigan then hes record looks not much better then crouch.

how many of defoes where pens.
pav didnt start gettin games untill 2nd half of 09/10 season and ended up top scorer that year. hes also our top scorer this season
not bad for a guy that mostley a sub

defoe nearly 30. where was hes peak. at least robbie had a peak.

at leas pav brings something to the team. defoe just likes himself

defoe scored in 2 games last season. then from march untill may of the09/10 season he played all the games and scored 1 pen