Numbers of Goals

[Doomchicken]

If we want to climb higher up the league table, we need goals. Let's look at how many we've scored in past seasons.

2009/10: 67 (4th)
2010/11: 55 (5th, large margin)
2011/12: 66 (4th)
2012/13: 66 (5th, tiny margin)
2013/14: 55 (6th)
2014/15: 58 (5th, large margin)

If we want to properly challenge for the Champion's League, we're going to need seven or eight more goals next season. Where are they going to come from? Let's look at how many goals came from our top 3 scorers in past seasons.

2009/10: 30 out of 67 (45%)
2010/11: 30 out of 55 (55%)
2011/12: 39 out of 66 (59%)
2012/13: 39 out of 66 (59%)
2013/14: 23 out of 55 (42%)
2014/15: 42 out of 58 (72%)

What we can see from this is that we are massively reliant on Kane, Chadli and Eriksen for goals. They scored 72% of our premier league goals, 13% higher than the any other top 3 of recent years. Losing them three would hurt us more than it would hurt Real to lose Bale, Benzema and Ronaldo; it would hurt us more than it would hurt Bayern to lose Lewandoski, Robben and Muller; it would hurt us only slightly less than it would hurt Barca to lose Messi, Suarez and Neymar.

What makes things even worse for us is that half of our top 3's goals came from Harry Kane. Kane has only had one season in the premier league, and has looked mediocre on his numerous loans. Although I love Kane, there's no guarantee he will be any good next season. Michu went from 18 league goals to 2. I think Kane will get around least ten, but I would not expect more, though it wouldn't surprise me.

We need to increase our goals total by ten to challenge for the Champions League next season. However, we could see it drop by ten if Kane can't maintain his form, or by twenty is Kane does a Michu.

So, where do we get more goals from?

-A new striker. We're going to need a new striker to be Kane's backup. If this striker gets all of the minutes Soldado and Adebayor got last season, they should be able to amass a decent amount of goals, although probably less than ten.
-Lamela. At the end of last season, he started improving rapidly. If he can keep up that level of performance, there's no reason he can't score around five goals.
-Townsend, Pritchard, and a possible new left winger. The backups to our first choice attacking three should be able to score two or three goals each.
-Dele Alli? We have no idea if he can make the step up from League 1 to the Premiership, but Mason did. If Alli adapts quickly and earns himself a place in the team, he could get some goals.

What do all of you think? Will we score enough to make up for a drop in Kane's form? We will score enough to put up a serious fight for Champions League qualification?

 

[SandroClegane]

If we weren't gift-wrapping goals routinely last season we would have finished higher. Our defending was the biggest problem by far last year, not the scoring.

 

[tobi]

The off the ball movement, finishing and getting more players into the box has been poor for many years, even when we had van der Vaart and co it was bad.

We have (and have had in the past) players that on paper have qualities to improve us in this regard but for whatever reason it doesn't happen on the pitch. So either these players aren't as good (or intelligent) as we think they are or the coaching and player instructions are severely lacking.

Over to you Pochettino.

 

[Kingellesar]

If Lamela can find his Roma form.......

That is what we are missing, goals from the right wing. Chadli certainly stepped up last season, Eriksen chipped in and obviously Kane was beastly.

What we need is Lamela to start chipping in and for our 2nd striker to bag more. CBs at corners as well....

 

[Sweech]

I agree we could use more goals, but I don't think it's our most pressing concern. As you showed we were fifth in the league, but defensively we were far worse. It's bearing a dead horse, but with a better defensive record we could have likely finished better.

 

[Everlasting Seconds]

I think this is a hen & egg kind of thing. Do top 4 teams finish in top 4 because they score loads, or do they finish there because they have a really good team, which means that they as a side effect are able to score a lot.

For last season most specifically, we conceded about 20 goals too much. We played with high risk, and not with players who were good enough to even out that high risk simply from individual skill.

In fact, it might be that if our high risk approach becomes more successful, we could score more because we would win the ball back quicker, more often and higher up the pitch. Thus, it's good midfielders we need the most.

I don't think being reliant on 3 players to score is bad at all. In fact I'd say that's quite normal?

That being said, of course we would love more goals regardless.

 

[Blake Griffin]

what seems to be lost on a lot of fans is that it's very difficult to improve at one end of the field without it affecting the other, it's wrong to just assume that if we improve defensively we'll still score as many goals as we currently are. personally i'm of the belief that if you really want to have a crack at the big boys then the best way is to just go all out attack rather than balanced or defensive. we saw this in 13/14 when a liverpool side who for the past six years have been competing with us came within a whisker of winning the league, they had 3-4 brilliant attacking players backed up by a bunch of guys. they conceded roughly the same as what we did this past season but it didn't matter because the other end of the field far outweighed any defensive deficiencies.

 

[Led's Zeppelin]

A lot of these ideas about improving the defence v the attack are not actually in conflict at all.

A strong defence (as opposed to a defensive approach to the game) can often be the best foundation for regular and dangerous attacks. But if the defence is struggling you are going to have far fewer opportunities to attack the opposition, and you'll probably do it more cautiously, and less effectively.

 

[Everlasting Seconds]

I also think there is another aspect worth considering. We did crap vs. teams from a specific category. Mainly our matches vs. top half teams were often rather shite. (Arsenal & Chelsea as only exceptions). We were the tenth best team at points per game vs. top half, but the fourth best team at points per game vs. bottom half, & the fifth best team at points per game from middle 3rd. For instance ManUtd were best only at points per game vs. top third teams, and that alone pushed them into top 4. In addition, there were certain matches vs. bottom 3rd we really should have won, too, based on sheer difference in quality of players. There is a need for a system/approach that can be effectively adapted when facing certain teams.

 

[Lilbaz]

Alli, Pritchard, Lamela get his finger out. Bentaleb needs a few.

Obviously Knae, Chadli.

 

[Geyzer Soze]

You could win the league with about 20-25 goals all season technically

Not letting them in is as important & our GD has been absolutely shocking for a long while now

 

[PT]

The coaching team has identified that the defence is priority and has addressed this deficit in quality.
If we score just the one goal, it should be confidently defended for three points.
The second area is to increase goal scoring. As has been alluded, the team can't rely on Kane, Erikssen and Chadli.

 

[Dougal]

The amount of 2-1 wins we had last season showed we could do just enough on many occasions to win. I'm confident Poch is ready to up our game next season.

 

[longtimespur]

Thanks for the OP but I'm not sure it's just about scoring more goals.

If we become a team that defends and attacks as a team, and we can cut out our stupid individual errors, we will make top 4.

Last season, through various reasons, we didn't.

Some games we pressed really high up the pitch, won the ball early and got on the front foot quickly. Most games we didn't!
Errors, not always forced, were rife in our performances and cost us many, many goals and quite a few points.

Rectify these and we're in with a shout!!!

 

[talkshowhost86]

If we're looking at individuals then Lamela is the obvious one who needs to up his game. His goal contribution has been negligible, but we know he has it in him to get a hatful. Personally I still live in hope rather than expectation with him but we shall see.

We need another striker to accomodate other than Kane, and we need all of our attacking midfielders to be a proper goal threat (no...put your hand down Andros).

We also need someone in our central midfield to get the ball forwards quicker, which is something Mason struggled with last season.

Lots of little things basically, but I think with a couple of additions we could easily add 10 goals to our league tally next season.

As others have said though...that's only half the battle.

 

[youngyids]

I think our bigger problem is, was and always has been the defence.

We are conceding so many goals because of really stupid individual mistakes at the back!

Also, most of the times, our positioning has been awful, especially when there was a low cross coming in from the corner flag area.

 

[jezz]

We need a better defence.
That's the starting point.
Lamela needs a few more goals.
Plus the front need to stop being fcuking greedy in the final third.

 

[lukespurs7]

If Lamela can find his Roma form.......

That is what we are missing, goals from the right wing. Chadli certainly stepped up last season, Eriksen chipped in and obviously Kane was beastly.

What we need is Lamela to start chipping in and for our 2nd striker to bag more. CBs at corners as well....

This.+ one of the 2CM's to get 5-8. If Mason had took his chances he could've had 5 or so last year.

 

[lukespurs7]

If we want to climb higher up the league table, we need goals. Let's look at how many we've scored in past seasons.

2009/10: 67 (4th)
2010/11: 55 (5th, large margin)
2011/12: 66 (4th)
2012/13: 66 (5th, tiny margin)
2013/14: 55 (6th)
2014/15: 58 (5th, large margin)

If we want to properly challenge for the Champion's League, we're going to need seven or eight more goals next season. Where are they going to come from? Let's look at how many goals came from our top 3 scorers in past seasons.

2009/10: 30 out of 67 (45%)
2010/11: 30 out of 55 (55%)
2011/12: 39 out of 66 (59%)
2012/13: 39 out of 66 (59%)
2013/14: 23 out of 55 (42%)
2014/15: 42 out of 58 (72%)

What we can see from this is that we are massively reliant on Kane, Chadli and Eriksen for goals. They scored 72% of our premier league goals, 13% higher than the any other top 3 of recent years. Losing them three would hurt us more than it would hurt Real to lose Bale, Benzema and Ronaldo; it would hurt us more than it would hurt Bayern to lose Lewandoski, Robben and Muller; it would hurt us only slightly less than it would hurt Barca to lose Messi, Suarez and Neymar.

What makes things even worse for us is that half of our top 3's goals came from Harry Kane. Kane has only had one season in the premier league, and has looked mediocre on his numerous loans. Although I love Kane, there's no guarantee he will be any good next season. Michu went from 18 league goals to 2. I think Kane will get around least ten, but I would not expect more, though it wouldn't surprise me.

We need to increase our goals total by ten to challenge for the Champions League next season. However, we could see it drop by ten if Kane can't maintain his form, or by twenty is Kane does a Michu.

So, where do we get more goals from?

-A new striker. We're going to need a new striker to be Kane's backup. If this striker gets all of the minutes Soldado and Adebayor got last season, they should be able to amass a decent amount of goals, although probably less than ten.
-Lamela. At the end of last season, he started improving rapidly. If he can keep up that level of performance, there's no reason he can't score around five goals.
-Townsend, Pritchard, and a possible new left winger. The backups to our first choice attacking three should be able to score two or three goals each.
-Dele Alli? We have no idea if he can make the step up from League 1 to the Premiership, but Mason did. If Alli adapts quickly and earns himself a place in the team, he could get some goals.

What do all of you think? Will we score enough to make up for a drop in Kane's form? We will score enough to put up a serious fight for Champions League qualification?

Nice post and something I've been thinking about.

I think the following:
-A back-up to Kane who can take some of the weight of goals from him.
-Lamela/New RWF to score 8-10.
-Chadli & Eriksen to replicate last seasons form/contribution + Prichard/Townsend etc to chip in with a few in their absence.
-CM's to get 5-8 between them(No reason why they can't, Bentaleb has Tekkera and Mason makes great runs just needs to finish his dinner.
-CB's to get 5+ between them.

All this + better play and defending will lead to more chances and goals.

Tough ask but possible and dependent on signings and how Potch develops the team.

Kane:15
Chadli :10
Eriksen :10
Lamela/New RWF: 6-8
CM's:5+
CB's:5+
Back-up ST: 6-8
Others: 5

Total= 64
+ a much better defence and that should be enough to get 4th and a trophy

Simples

COYS!