Manchester City’s defeat to Tottenham over the weekend has reignited the debate over whether they should have signed a number nine in the summer.
The contrast of Harry Kane scoring two goals as City struggled to create has the punditocracy once again mourning the death of the number nine.
City did try to find a striker, going for both Harry Kane and Cristiano Ronaldo. However, there was never a sense they needed either desperately. Pep Guardiola has his team playing incredible football without a traditional striker.
As well as that, Harry Kane didn’t play as a striker against them, he just played incredibly, incredibly well. Kane has played a hybrid role for a few years now. It’s been a while since he was just a center forward, and it’s been a while since center forwards have thrived in the Premier League.
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If City somehow slip up and don’t win the league, the inevitable narrative will be that they missed a striker. However if they don’t win the league, that would mean Liverpool did, and they don’t have one either. Overwhelmingly, wide forwards are a team’s biggest source of goals these days.
Just look at Chelsea, who spent £90 million on one of the best center forwards in the game, and haven’t been able to sustain a challenge on Liverpool and Manchester City.
Even Romelu Lukaku, fine striker that he is, is considered to be more devastating when he has a dual role and can operate in the wide areas as well.
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Even at Arsenal, the fans can’t quite let go of the idea of a mythical center forward. They have four young, exciting attackers in Martinelli, Saka, Smith-Rowe and Odegaard. The progress of this young group has fans calling for all of them to start and Alexandre Lacazette to be dropped.
Lacazette doesn’t score as many goals as he used to, but he’s the reason the players around him are performing so well.
Unless a team can tempt Erling Haaland to play for them, they’d do well to forget about their dreams of a number nine.
