Goals and where to find them in the transfer market

Cardiff need more goals in their team, but who doesn’t. Kieffer Moore was and will forever remain the silver bullet, but in the likelihood that ship has now finally sailed, what needs to happen now?

Goals are the most expensive commodity in the game. A term you often hear is that the manager needs to be “backed,” but what that looks and feels like depends on the individual. Bear in mind that we’re talking about a club that still bear the scars of shelling out for Andreas Cornelius and Gary Madine.

Mehmet Dalman pulled the plug on January moves for Andrej Ilic and Anastasios Bakasetas due to the sums involved in the potential deals and I can’t say I blame him. Withstanding the burden of hefty salaries after relegation from the Premier League is one thing, but taking them on while in the second tier is a risk that is hard to justify.

The reality is that it’s very difficult to buy a goal scorer these days, you have to nurture one.

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In fairness, this is what Cardiff did with Sory Kaba. You have to look beyond the numbers, identify potential and hope for the best. Kaba exceeded expectations by hitting the ground running and scored the goals Cardiff needed to ensure their Championship status. Had Sabri Lamouchi remained in charge, Cardiff may have kept him and avoided two windows where they’ve tried and failed to replace him. In the end, he moved to Las Palmas for about £1.5m and has been a fringe player there this season.

If you look at the top five scorers in the division, it tells an interesting story.

Sammie Szmodics leads the way and he’s an anomaly in every sense. As much a midfielder as a striker, he’s having by far his best-ever season, at the age of 28. It didn’t quite happen for him at Bristol City, Peterborough bought him for about £1m, before Blackburn paid double that last season. He currently has 23 goals and has just made his international debut for Ireland. They stand to make a substantial profit on him in the summer.

Adam Armstrong is second and was a significant investment for Southampton, but before that Blackburn, who evidently have an eye for a bargain, paid around £1.5m to sign him from Newcastle’s reserves in 2018. Morgan Whittaker never quite made the grade at Swansea, but has been a revelation since his £1m switch to Plymouth and was linked with Lazio in January. Crysencio Summerville was signed as a youngster from Feyenoord and graduated from the Leeds reserves, while Jack Clarke had four loan spells ahead of a cut price move to Sunderland.

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As the above shows, there is no particular, fool-proof recipe for goals. Most of the above are not even conventional strikers. Sometimes, everything looks foolproof on paper, but just doesn’t work in practice. Alternatively, you can instead be pleasantly surprised by a player with low expectations, thriving under the right conditions.

Cardiff have benefitted from this a couple of times in recent years. Rudy Gestede was a shot in the dark, who exceeded all expectations before truly fulfilling his potential at Blackburn (them again). Kenneth Zohore was also a huge success, from the brink of failure. He then went on to tank at West Brom and most recently played for Slask Wroclaw in Poland. In general though, signing strikers has become a bit of a blind spot for the club.

Looking ahead, the challenge remains a tough one. Were you to play the long game and look to entrust youth, Sheffield United’s Daniel Jebbison and QPR’s Sinclair Armstrong, both 20, are heading out of contract shortly and are sure to attract plenty of interest. Tyrese Campbell’s development has been hampered by injuries, but he’ll soon be looking for a fresh start when his Stoke contract expires and Chris Willock has a great record from the QPR wing. I still think that Kion Etete has all the attributes to succeed at Championship level, he just needs opportunities and more luck with injuries.

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I also personally think Sam Gallagher is tailor made for Cardiff’s needs. His contract is also expiring, but Blackburn will activate an additional year to protect their investment. He was linked with a £2m move to Ipswich in January, before they eventually signed Moore. Three years Moore’s junior, Gallagher has been linked with Cardiff before and is the kind of workhorse, attacking focal point they need for the team to fully function. He’s not recorded double figures for goals since 2017, but he is very capable of matching and surpassing that. Target Tyrhys Dolan, another with a dwindling deal, too and those chances only multiply.

Everyone is looking for the next Viktor Gyokeres, a Brighton find that was snapped up by Coventry for £1m, sold for £20m two years later and is now worth closer to £100m after a remarkable season at Sporting Lisbon. It’s like searching for a needle in a haystack, but fortune sometimes favours those that ignore the numbers and trust their intuition. Cardiff need to invest wisely because the right striker can make this team truly sing.