Should Harry Buy The Best Player By A Mile In The Championship?

Hang on lads, I’ve had an idea…

As the Interlull looms ever over us, my ability to summon up even the vaguest interest in whether Defoe will play or score or reveal that he’s had the Ghostbusters logo shaved into his head ebbs into complete inertia.

But I have been – yet again – dwelling on our own overriding striker problem. If Defoe were to get a hattrick against Ghana, what effect would this actually have on us come say our next game against Wigan? Will it just delay the call for us to buy some crazy Carlos Kickaball in the hope that we don’t finish this campaign with a defender as our top goal scorer.

This season, perhaps more so than many has been marked (in the negative) as one where our strikers didn’t so much misfire as submit requests to be fired. Blackpool anyone? It is this inability to mix it up with these so called lesser sides that has failed us. We aren’t on a par with or worse than Blackpool –  we might have carried on playing until four in the morning and failed to have got anywhere, but that wasn’t a unique outcome against ‘lesser’ sides, is it?

Here’s my answer: Adel Taarabt. And here also my three reasons why he’d be just the ticket.

He’ll break up play. And by this I mean for the team he’s playing for. You give him the ball and all predictability goes out the window. I’m not saying he’s unplayable, but I am saying he’s a curve-ball and frankly we lack one.

Self belief. Of all the footballers I’ve gawped at week in, week out, here is one guy that doesn’t suffer from the sort of fragile ego that permeates the Premiership. He’s insanely motivated and like Felix The Cat always comes complete with a bag of tricks. You send him out, he impacts.

And Arry Redschnapps could manage him. Yes he’s a head case (Adel), but if Neil Warnock can get him right then there really aren’t any excuses as to why Arry can’t. I’m sceptical he’ll ever be encouraged to be less selfish, but he can be told his place and deployed primarily when our more sophisticated options aren’t working.