TIME TO STAND UP FOR THE TARGET MAN
EVERY kid in the playground wants to be a No 10, while Liverpool have sold Christian Benteke and Wilfried Bony is finished at Manchester City, but why is a target man so out of fashion?
We hear so much about “style of play” – philosophy, identity, false No 9s, playing through the lines, the sweeper-keeper, but football is about winning and so many teams are missing a trick.
This is the most competitive Premier League of all time in an age of limitless pots of money, so why not keep a big striker to give you some variety?
We all appreciate pretty football, but what about when that doesn’t work?
Liverpool lose 2-0 to Burnley and can’t change up the way they play, because they no longer have that option. There is a snobbery about playing with a target man and surely it is the responsibility of supremely paid managers to have more than one trick.
I am a fan of Jurgen Klopp and I hope Liverpool do really well this season, but opponents will know what is coming from them. They had 81 percent of the ball at Burnley, but still couldn’t mix it up.
There are still examples of teams having the option. You might recall West Ham trailing Everton 2-0 at Goodison Park last season, when they took off their promising teenage defender, Reece Oxford, and replaced him with Andy Carroll. They went two up front, launched it and won 3-2.
There is a lot of talk of Slaven Bilic playing “the West Ham Way”, but that day he played “the winning way”; it was brilliant management. He wasn’t afraid to go long and he had the weapons to play that way.
Southampton under Ronald Koeman in the past couple of seasons used the strengths of Graziano Pelle to lead the line.
Romelu Lukaku should benefit from such an approach this season now that Koeman is Everton’s manager.
My view is that the art of the target man is vastly undervalued, although there are some realists who are smart enough to see that there is nothing wrong with it. Manchester United with Zlatan Ibrahimovic are one such team.
If they get the service from him as they have in the first two games with exact and accurate crossing, he will smash defenders. He can play too, but don’t doubt his power.
I played against him when he was a boy and he was a monster then. He might be 34 now, but he is a breath of fresh air in the Premier League – Liverpool and Manchester City do not have that type of player.
Ibrahimovic won’t run in behind, but if he has pace alongside him – Marcus Rashford springs to mind – then who do you see controlling him physically? He will hurt teams on the ground and in the air. Of course, there are other big men around in the top flight. Arsenal have Olivier Giroud, there is Harry Kane at Spurs who can play as an all-rounder, as can Chelsea’s Diego Costa.
There are others – Alvaro Negredo (Middlesbrough), Salomon Rondon (West Brom), Sam Vokes (Burnley) and Troy Deeney (Watford).
I am not talking about long-ball football all of the time, but using it when it’s needed.
There is no target man like the former Chelsea man Didier Drogba, who is the best I have seen because he had it all: he had pace and power, could bully a defender with force and could finish.
Lukaku is the closest we have to Drogba in today’s Premier League.
When I played, teams relied on the physicality of a target man. I mean players like Les Ferdinand, Alan Shearer – and Teddy Sheringham, who could also play that way.
Our best work was done with a partner. Shearer and Sheringham with England, John Hartson and Ian Wright at Arsenal, Sheringham and Jurgen Klinsmann with Spurs.
When I played as the target man, I had Shearer at Blackburn, Henrik Larsson at Celtic and Kevin Gallacher in the season when I won the Golden Boot with Rovers at Ewood Park (1997-98) playing off me.
The principle of the target man was to allow the team to hit the front with a long ball and then get up the pitch in support. It worked then and I’m convinced it would still work now when it’s needed.
It’s certainly better than the predictability of some of the tippy-tappy football out from the back which we see, especially when you’re behind and chasing the game.
If you can’t play out, there is no harm in fighting your way out, but you can’t do that if you haven’t got the tools.
Too many teams are too quick to dismiss the impact a target man can have in today’s game. – Daily Mail