Wanted! A Striker for Middlesbrough

Article by e-Middlesbrough Correspondent Kane Elgey

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Wanted, a cheap 25-30 goal a season striker prepared to join a mid-table Championship club with a small budget, fans who expect promotion (despite spending five seasons in the Championship), playing in a half empty stadium. Oh and all of this on a small wage please.

Despite these unrealistic demands, this is the striker we are looking for and the striker our fans expect. There are players out there who fit this bill we’ve seen them in the past; Rickie Lambert, Grant Holt, Troy Deeney, Adam le Fondre etc. We just need our scouts to find them but still this won’t appease our fans at first. For example if we signed Sam Winnall for £250,000 this summer fans would say who? Have you gone mad Aitor? In fact, Winnall was top scorer in League Two last season and at 23 years of age he is the type of player who could fit the ‘Rickie Lambert’ bill.

Boro haven’t had a good striker since relegation in 2009. In fact the last players to come close to scoring more than 20 goals a season were Yakubu and Mark Viduka who both got 19 goals in 2005/06 and 2006/07 respectively. Many strikers have tried but none have come close to filling the boots of Yakubu and Viduka. The best strikers we’ve probably had in the Championship are Scott McDonald and Marvin Emnes. In three and a half years at the club Scott McDonald had a 1 in 4 goals to games ratio but the biggest tally he got in a season was 14 in 2010/11. Marvin Emnes was the closest post relegation striker to getting 20 goals when he got 18 goals in 2011/12. Despite these two we have never had a striker who has a lot of goals in him, a striker who can guarantee you a goal, a striker who can score his way to the play off final.

Karanka said at the end of last season that a striker was his main priority although we have not been linked with many this summer. The first striker we were (and continue to be) linked with is Danny Graham. Graham spent the second half of last season on loan and finished with a respectable 6 goals from 17 appearances. He started his loan spell slowly and it was obvious he didn’t have the fitness levels that Aitor expects from his players, but once he got his first two goals against Ipswich he slowly regained his confidence and ended the season on fine form. Many fans would not be happy with Danny but I for one don’t understand why. Many of these fans think we should keep Jutkiewicz but Graham did a similar job but gave away less fouls, had a better touch, had better link up play and scored more goals. I would be delighted if we were to sign Danny Graham and if I was Aitor Karanka it would be my main priority to sign him up.

Another striker we were strongly linked with early in the summer was Lewis Grabban. Grabban scored 22 goals for Bournemouth last season and seemed exactly the type of striker we needed. He has pace, a great touch and an eye for goal. It was reported we were prepared to pay up to £3 million for the frontman and in my previous article I said I would be over the moon if we signed Grabban. However we were beaten to his signature by Norwich who came out of nowhere and signed him within a day of being linked with him.

The only other striker we have been linked with so far this summer is David Nugent. Nugent is a free agent and is yet to sign a new contract at Leicester. It was reported that Steve Gibson had offered the striker a two year contract on high wages and a guarantee of first team football. For me David Nugent would have been the transfer coup of the summer. He is exactly the striker we need, a big powerful frontman who scored 22 goals for the Champions last season. However we pulled out of contract talks as we believed we were being used to drive up his wage demands at Leicester where he is expected to sign a new contract this week.

Before we think about signing any strikers though we need to get rid of some. We currently have four strikers on the books; Lukas Jutkiewicz, Marvin Emnes, Kei Kamara and Curtis Main. If it was up to me I would get rid of all four. They have all been given a chance and have failed to succeed, it is time for them to move on. Jutkiewicz is currently been auctioned, although we need to be careful as we could lose out on money if we keep raising his price tag.

At the beginning of the summer we set a £1 million price tag for him which Derby matched but with Burnley, Wigan, Wolves, Blackburn, Sheffield Wednesday and Bolton all interested we raised his price tag to £1.5 million in order to try and get an auction going. However it is understood we turned down Derby’s offer of £1.5 million and they have decided to drop out of the race for him. This is a dangerous game to play by Boro and we may end up only getting the £1 million we originally asked for.

The Marvin Emnes to Swansea deal seems to have gone quiet and I worry that they may have lost interest in him. They have recently signed Bafetimbi Gomis from Lyon and this may end their interest in Emnes. As for Kei Kamara its best that he runs as far away from Middlesbrough as he can because he has angered many Boro fans after his Twitter tirade last week. The Sierre Leone striker claimed that during a bout of Malaria, Boro did absolutely nothing to help him and that he was lucky he was in Kansas where people loved him. He has also posted many pictures of him at Kansas City games which has left Boro fans fuming. If I was you Kei I would head back on the first plane to Kansas where people love you because you’re not wanted here anymore. Finally Curtis Main has run out of chances for me. When we first signed him as a 19 year old I felt he had a lot of promise and could have been a real star for us. Three years later and he doesn’t seem to have developed at all and he only scored one goal last season. It’s time for Curtis to drop down a league or two and fully establish himself.

If we were to sell all four of our strikers I would like to see us buy three strikers and call a striker up from our youth set up. In Karanka’s formation we only need one striker so four would be more than enough. The first striker I would like to see us sign, like I mentioned above, is Danny Graham. Graham is a natural goal scorer at this level and I think with a full pre-season behind him could be the one to lead our line next season and could finally break the 20 goals mark. The second striker I would like to see us sign would be Kike from Real Murcia. The 24 year old Spaniard scored 23 goals in the Spanish second division last season and could be available for a relatively cheap price. Hopefully with Aitor Karanka’s Spanish connections this could be a possibility. The third striker I would sign is Coventry City’s Callum Wilson. Wilson is regarded as one of the brightest prospects in the Football League at the age of 22. The striker scored 22 goals last season and could be available on the cheap due to Coventry’s financial situation. I would also call Charlie Wyke up to the first team as I think out of all the youth team strikers he is best fit to our set up with his big build. Although he hasn’t been successful in his loans yet I think he could be the next best player out of our youth system.

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