Sunderland have now failed to win both of their first two games of 2023-24, and it’s pretty obvious where the deficiency is. We don’t have a man up top who’s experienced enough, or enough depth at the moment to adequately give Luis Hemir the chance to gradually implement himself into the squad more throughout the season.
Hemir is a good player, we saw what he could do in pre-season, his abilities in the box (particularly aerially) were something we’ve sorely missed for large parts of the last year or so. But he’s only 19 and you could see that he’s not the oven ready Championship striker we needed on Sunday. There was a chance in the second half that highlighted this where he took a few moments too many to square up to take a shot and by that point it was too late. But it would be unfair to expect him to be the complete package, we are doing him a disservice by not having an experienced centre-forward (or two) who we can rely on whilst Hemir integrates himself more into the squad as the season goes on. This isn’t a dig at Hemir, he’s going to be a much better player, and it often felt like on Sunday we weren’t playing to his strengths. Jack Clarke making runs into the box rather than crossing into him for example.
In fairness we do have Ross Stewart, much more experienced and definitely a solid Championship goal scorer (and that’s an understatement) but he might leave in the near future. Whether that’s now (probably unlikely because of his injuries) or in January, he will still leave us with a massive gap in the squad to plug. He’s also not available due to the said injury, and he won’t be available for another few weeks so we need a solution both in the short and long term to adequately replace him. Of course he could always sign a new contract, but I find that unlikely.
Mayenda is also injured and even younger than Hemir, so we surely can’t be expecting him to be a twenty goal a season striker this season, and that’s what we need ultimately, someone who can come in and score lots of goals now. There’s a place for Hemir and Mayenda, building for the future isn’t a bad thing, but we can’t rely on them now. The club say they are working hard to bring in striker reinforcements but we’ve heard that before. Notably in January, we did get Gelhardt in but after Ross Stewart got injured he wasn’t the type of player we needed to play as a solo striker. Everyone could see we needed two strikers, and in fairness signing a striker in January is possibly the most difficult transfer business to do. It’s summer now so what’s the excuse? We need someone in, if we have to pay a premium, do it. Yes there’s the Will Grigg transfer where we did exactly that, but our scouting network has improved greatly since then. If Speakman and his scouting team find someone who might cost a bit to bring in we should be doing it. Within reason of course, but every other club in the Championship seems to be able to sign ready-made strikers so why can’t we? There’s the FFP argument (or whatever they call it now) that we can’t spend and spend, that’s true but we’ve just sold Lihadji for reportedly a big fee. That money needs to be reinvested now.
Don’t get me wrong we need other positions strengthening, a central midfielder and another winger would do us the world of good. Amad Diallo has also left a massive gap in the squad, you could see we missed his ability to create something from nothing on Sunday. But priority number one is getting that striker in. We can always get a midfielder and winger in on loan towards the end of the window.
Mowbray is obviously frustrated that we haven’t brought a centre-forward in and can you blame him? This is the third window where it feels like we’ve left ourselves short in that position since we came up, of course it’s still on going but his fear that we’ll be left short come September 1st is understandable. It definitely cost us promotion last season, which to be fair was never our goal, but still. Speakman’s model has worked wonders, we’ve unearthed many gems since he’s came in. But at the same time that will only carry you so far, the model can’t be set in stone. It has to be broken occasionally. We can’t rely on what is an U23 squad in the Championship long term, especially when there’s tangible expectation moving into this campaign. We addressed the height issue, we’ve brought in reinforcements at the back and in the middle, now we need a striker. An experienced striker.
