Sunday, 15 January 2012

Unfancied Strikers Doing The Business

Fantasy football teams. Do you have one? Chances are that, as a football fan, you do. I'd also wager that your strike force contains names like Rooney, Adebayor, Suarez and Aguero.
Furthermore I doubt it contains names such as Morison, Graham, Holt and Fletcher but these are the names that are making headlines week in, week out in 'the greatest league in the world.'
Steven Fletcher has been fantastic for Wolves so far this season and pretty much since he signed for Wolves but he had already experienced the Premier League, albeit briefly, with Burnley.
But then we look at Swansea's Danny Graham and Norwich duo Grant Holt and Steve Morison - three strikers from the old school and who cut their respective teeth in the lower leagues and who are now proving their worth to clubs striving to survive in the Premier League.
Graham did not cut the mustard at Middlesbrough and spent a rather nomadic period travelling between loan clubs before successful spells at Carlisle and Watford.
He was signed by Brendan Rodgers at the start of the season and has proved a more-than-useful fulcrum for the free-flowing attacking Welsh side.
The 26-year-old has already scored seven league goals this campaign, including the winner against Arsenal earlier today.
Meanwhile Holt and Morison have been key to Norwich's fantastic start to the season and their goalscoring exploits have been even more remarkable given that the duo have rarely started up front together.
Holt has been a vital cog in Paul Lambert's (and Norwich's) meteoric rise over the past couple of seasons.
The former Workington striker, who also had a spell in Singapore with Sengkang Marine, joined Norwich in League One back in 2009 and has headed their goalscoring charts in the previous two seasons of promotions.
This season he has spent more time on the bench than he would have liked - and probably imagined - but his bustling style has had some of the world's best defenders. He has scored at Chelsea, Liverpool and Everton and popped up with crucial goals against Newcastle, Blackburn and QPR.
Morison's story is similar and maybe even more remarkable than Holt's.
The Wales international spent eight years at Northampton Town, Bishop's Stortford and Stevenage before moving to Millwall.
He was very successful at the New Den and newly-promoted Norwich were determined to get their man, making four bids before securing his services.
Despite it being a risk it proved to be a calculated one as he has proved adept at Premier League level and has scored eight goals, becoming a firm favourite amongst the Canary supporters.
So while multi-million pound strikers such as Fernando Torres and Andy Carroll have struggled to make an impact in recent months these supposedly old school, sometimes nomadic and clearly under-rated strikers have been notching up goals on a regular basis and have given their respective teams a good footing for Premier League survival.



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