This image I suspect was rather tongue in cheek but given that the Euros are just 6 month’s away who exactly is in the running for the England striker position? Rooney is an obvious selection but who will partner him and replace him for the two games he misses?
I thought I’d take a look at some of the stats from the season to date (up to the FA Cup weekend 7th Jan) and I asked people on Twitter who they thought was in with a chance. I came up with 7 players, Wayne Rooney, Darren Bent, Peter Crouch, Daniel Sturridge, Bobby Zamora, Danny Welbeck and Jermain Defoe. Oh, and I thought I’d include Grant Holt as well, just for a bit of fun (and as I’m a Norwich City Season ticket holder!).
I compared the players over a few key areas for a striker – goals, shots, accuracy, passing and chances created. To be as fair as possible I calculated these in terms of minutes played as obviously some players will have played more than others. So this was the result:
Some surprising results here. So, I then decided to rank the players for the areas above which are calculated per minute played. The player with the highest score I attributed 8 points, next highest 7 etc, you get the idea. The final scores based on this method were as follows:
It is no surprise that Rooney wins fairly comfortably and I’m sure we could all agree he is the best striker in the country at the moment (even Citeh fans). More interestingly however young Daniel Sturridge comes out in second place leaving Grant Holt Vs Jermain Defore fighting for 3rd place. Yes, that’s right I said Grant Holt. Remove Rooney for two games and Grant Holt could well be in the running for England. Now wouldn’t that be a dream for the player who was in the conference 8 years ago whilst fitting tyres in his day job. There is hope for us all yet, well not me, I’m a girl and can’t play football, but for you maybe…..
