Target for Boro pair is reasonable but rare
NEIL Warnock will have his own ideas about what he wants to see from the Boro attack this season.
It would be good to think that the manager feels that he can operate on a regular basis with two orthodox strikers in the line-up.
From the fans’ point of view it’s much more entertaining to watch two men combining and testing opposition defenders than waiting for one lone striker to be given the ball.
At the moment Boro’s main two strikers Britt Assombalonga and Ashley Fletcher are arguably sitting in the driving seat.
It will be interesting to see whether the duo are still there when the transfer window closes in mid-october.
If Warnock offers Assombalonga and Fletcher the chance to prove themselves all over again, they should have little problem forming an understanding from the opening kick.
Having spent much of the two previous seasons together at the club, and training together regularly, they should know how each other operates by now.
The duo scored a combined total of 24 goals last season, which isn’t bad in the modern era.
This tally clearly would have been greater had not Assombalonga missed a large slice of the campaign due to injury.
If Warnock operates with two orthodox strikers on a match-by-match basis he will be looking for them to score at least 30 goals between them if Boro are to become upwardly mobile.
Sounds pretty reasonable, doesn’t it? Yet it’s amazing how rarely Boro’s top two forwards have managed to score 30 goals between them. In fact this achievement has been recorded just once since Boro were relegated from the Premier League in 2009.
The season in question was 201415, when Patrick Bamford and Kike scored exactly 30 as a combined total. Bamford top scored with 19 in all competitions.
This was the season when Aitor Karanka got Boro into gear again and the team went all the way to the Championship play-offs.
In the event Boro failed to perform in the final against Norwich City though Bamford was not 100% because he was carrying an ankle injury, as he had done in the closing league games.
Bamford had already paid his dues. He was an inspirational loan signing from Chelsea, which is a pointer to Warnock over what can be achieved in this area with a bit of homework.
It did help, of course, that Karanka and Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho were good mates. It pays to have friends in high places.
In Karanka’s first season on Teesside, his orthodox forwards scored very few goals between them.
Naturally there was only one them in the side at any given time.
In fact in 2013-14 Boro’s top two scorers were both wingers. Albert Adomah netted 12 times and Mustapha Carayol weighed in with eight.
Danny Graham, who was back at the Boro on loan from Sunderland, was the top scoring orthodox striker with six goals.
All of which goes to show that there are no guarantees in the goalscoring stakes. Putting the ball in the net at this level is an art form and you’ve either got it or you haven’t.
It’s even tougher in the Premier League of course. However if you’ve
of got the right men in place then you can keep the goal tally ticking over.
There was a time when Boro boss Steve Mcclaren could select any two from Yakubu, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Mark Viduka. Or all three if he wanted.
Even so, pick any two members of this illustrious threesome and they never scored 30 Premier League goals between them for the Boro.
On the other hand the goals kept a-coming because the three strikers took full advantage of Boro’s magnificent runs in the UEFA Cup and the FA Cup.
In 2005-06 Yakubu top scored with 19 goals in all competitions, Hasselbaink was just behind on 18 and Viduka amassed 16.
It was an awesome strike threat. No wonder that Boro went all the way to the UEFA final at Eindhoven and narrowly failed to reach the FA Cup Final.
We can only dream that one day Boro will be able to call upon similar talents up front.
The best attacking options which Boro have enjoyed in the second tier was in 1997-98 when Bryan Robson finished the campaign with the likes of Paul Merson, Mikkel Beck, Marco Branca and Alun Armstrong on the pay-roll.
That’s in addition to attacking midfielder/winger
Craig Hignett who was always guaranteed to weigh in with his fair share of goals.
Merson and Beck led the early part of the promotion challenge that season and finished up with 16 and 15 league goals respectively, giving them 30-plus.
Branca and Armstrong arrived after the turn of the year and Branca in particular was a regular, scoring eight times and forming an immediate understanding up front with Merson.
Armstrong scored seven times while Hignett was third top scorer with 11.
By far the most productive Boro “partnership” was formed in the previous season when Fabrizio Ravanelli and Juninho ruled the roost.
They were not officially a striking partnership as such because Juninho tended to operate in the No 10 role.
However the duo combined so well together that the goals literally flowed. Rav scored a massive 31 goals in the 1996-97 campaign, with Juninho adding another 15.
This tally is by far the best combined total from Boro’s top two goalscorers in modern times.
Naturally Ravanelli did benefit from the fact that Boro met some mediocre opponents in both the League Cup and the FA Cup.
He scored four goals alone in the first leg of a League Cup clash at home to Hereford United.
Ravanelli clearly enjoyed cup football. He scored in every round but one of the FA Cup leading up to the final, and every round but one in the League Cup, including the final.
He was pretty hot in the Premier League too, having started as he meant to go on by grabbing a hat trick in the opening game against Liverpool. A feat not to be sniffed at.
Even so, Ravanelli and Juninho did not manage to score 30 goals between them in the league. They finished with a combined tally of 28 in 1996-97 and, amazingly, Boro somehow managed to get themselves relegated.
In Robson’s first season of 1994-95 he made sure that he was able to spread the attacking load, just as he did in the Merson season.
John Hendrie, brilliantly converted from a winger, top scored with 17 goals while Uwe Fuchs, Hignett and Paul Wilkinson all weighed in with nine apiece.
All of which helped to guide Boro comfortably to promotion to the top flight to coincide nicely with the move from Ayresome Park to the Riverside.
While Wilkinson had to play second fiddle to Fuchs for much of the promotion campaign, he still made a dramatic impact upon his arrival from Watford in 1991.
In his first season on Teesside he top scored with 22 goals in all competitions as Lennie Lawrence’s team won promotion at the first attempt.
Goal king Bernie Slaven added another 17 and his combined tally of 39 with Wilko ranks as the second best two-man effort in the modern era.
It would be wonderful to think that Boro’s top two goalscorers this season can come close to grabbing 39 goals between them.