The 'striker crisis'

News that Benjani will be out for some time, coupled with Jo's Olympian absence means that we are now facing a 'striker crisis'.

I'm not sure how true this is. Presuming that Corradi is on his way out, we still have Bianchi, Bozhinov, Vassell, Evans, Sturridge and Caicedo; whilst Elano, Ireland and Castillo can all play as a second striker. There has been talk that those first two names, the Eriksson buys who cost over £14million between them and scored four goals, are on their way out. But Hughes has suggested that Bianchi will stay, and Bozhinov himself has pledged his future to City.

Amongst the youngsters, Evans played at EB/Streymur, whilst Sturridge played three games and scored once in the European U19 Championships. And there is still Vassell.

Bearing in mind that we have three and a half weeks before the trip to Villa Park for Bianchi and Bozhinov to retain full fitness, I'm not sure we really need a new centre forward.

But the media have decided that we do, and so today we've been linked with Djibril Cisse, Roque Santa Cruz and Craig Bellamy.

The Bellamy rumour is in The Independent, The Telegraph and The Daily Mail, Santa Cruz in The Sun and The Daily Mail, whilst the one (seemingly well informed) Djibril Cisse piece is in The Mirror.

In so far as I have an order of preference, it goes Santa Cruz, Cisse and Bellamy. Santa Cruz's record last year was very impressive (19 in 36 in the league, 23 in 42 in all competitions), although I'd rather see £15million spent elsewhere. Djibril Cisse's record is not as bad as his reputation suggests: 94 in 184 French league games, even if he didn't quite make it at Liverpool. I'd certainly rather have him than Bellamy, who has scored 88 in 273 in English league football, or 56 in 189 in the Premier League. These numbers are just about ok, but the damage he'd do to team morale (read his wikipedia entry), would make him net a bad thing I think.

Given that the problems are inherently short term (Jo back in September, Benjani some time later), can't we just get someone on loan?

UPDATE (15.11) I have just inserted a crucial 'not' into the fourth paragraph. Hope it makes more sense now.