Where Have All the Striking Heroes Gone?
The steady flow of high-scoring heroes at Everton faltered and stuttered to a halt after the halcyon days of the 1980s, replaced by a cavalcade of pitiable misfits
Part One
For the longest time it seemed that legions of fledgling Evertonians were raised on fantastically stirring tales of striking greats, goal-scoring giants, warriors, wizards of the dribble, a slew of forwards whose feats had granted them legendary status amongst the Goodison faithful.
Figures like Edgar Chadwick, Dixie Dean, Tommy Lawton, Dave Hickson, Roy Vernon, Alex Young (aka ‘The Golden Vision’), Joe Royle, Bob Latchford, Graeme Sharp and Andy Gray. Men who carried the fight to the opposition and conjured up a continual feast of magic moments in front of goal that, once melded with collective memory, were passed down from generation to generation as footballing myth.
Then the steady flow of high-scoring heroes suddenly faltered and stuttered to a halt.
Perhaps there were the purchases of Gary Lineker and Peter Beardsley and, later, Wayne Rooney coming through the ranks, all of whom could have proved worthy inheritors of the mantle if they helped shoot the team to silverware, or hung around for more than a season or two.
There were, of course, those clearly a level below but possessed of enough quality to produce a much needed, if limited, lifeline of highlights to help quicken the pulse, such as Kevin Campbell, Louis Saha (when fit), Duncan Ferguson (when fit, suspension-free and suitably fired up), Yakubu (for a season), Nikica Jelevic (for 6 months) and Andy Johnson (for 6 games).
For the most part, however, the identi-kit model of an Everton forward charged with leading from the front and grabbing the goals to win games has since morphed grotesquely, from a reliably fearless figure worthy of idolatry, to a regrettably isolated eunuch with any scintilla of consistency or class subdued by the corpulent weight of expectation.
Think now of the sort of striker Goodison Park has grown used to witnessing over the years and the mind no longer leaps without pause to the aforementioned greats, but instead finds its maze of carefully constructed mental blocks crumbling under concerted assault from a cavalcade of pitiable misfits.
Mike Newell, Brett Angell, Stuart Barlow, John Spencer, Mo Johnson, Mikel Madar, Ibrahima Bakayoko, Tommy Johnson, Mark Hughes on arthritis meds, Michael Branch, Joe Max-Moore, James Beattie, Nick Chadwick, Jo, Dennis Straqualarsi, Apostolos Velios — a veritable tsunami of gozzy, goal-shy spoon-feet grossly underperforming to a soundtrack of tuts, sighs and groans.
In the Premier League era the only player to break the mould, rise above the mediocre, and make any sort of robust case for inclusion in the pantheon of greatest strikers ever to pull on the royal blue shirt, has been Romelu Lukaku.
First joining on loan from Chelsea in 2013 before being signed on a permanent deal a year later for £28m, the Belgian international fired 87 goals in 166 appearances for the club across four seasons. No player since has come close to matching Lukaku for sheer pace, power, consistency, and coolness in front of goal, or for lasciviously cavorting around in front of a full-length mirror with his plumbs tucked between his legs like Buffalo Bill from ‘Silence of the Lambs’ while pleading, “Do you wanna buy me? I’d buy me. I’d buy me so hard”.
Recently Romelu Lukaku’s name has been on Evertonian lips once more with a surprise turnaround in the fortunes of Beto leading a number of blues supporters to take to Twitter/X/Elon Musk’s echo chamber and ask if the previously nailed on flop was now fast transforming into ‘Lukaku 2.0’ and ‘the Lukaku successor we’ve long been searching for’.
Leaving premature sensationalism to one side, how is it possible that 12 years after he first signed, 8 years after he finally departed, £134m+ spent and 17 different forwards through the door in the duration, that Everton fans are still having to desperately hold out hope for something even halfway resembling a worthwhile replacement?
Have the clubs choice of forwards to compliment, cover, or eventually come in to take Lukaku’s place after he left, really been that lamentably poor?
With that, let’s take a look at every centre forward Everton have signed since Lukaku first joined on loan — from the 2013/14 season to the present day — and relive the exploits of a group of sharp-shooters whose combined contribution to the cause suggests that a good, or even half decent, striker is rapidly becoming rarer to unearth than the Ark of the Covenant, the Sankara Stones and the Holy Grail all rolled into one (alternative movie title ‘Indireneeda Goals and the Transfers of Doom’).
Arouna Kone
Fee: £6m
Starts: 29
Sub: 24
Goals: 8
Following a ropy pre-season, during which the new recruit from Wigan was required to fast for Ramadan, Kone got off to a decidedly unspectacular start in an Everton shirt.
“We have to remember that Arouna has had a few niggles that have stopped him from being himself," said a reliably optimistic Roberto Martinez early in the October of his first season, just before a knee cartilage injury crocked the Ivorian for the remainder of the campaign.
His first goal for the club eventually came in December 2014, a mere 17 months after signing.
The rest of his three year stay with the blues basically amounted to spasmodic big words from Arouna expressing his eagerness to return ‘better than ever’, a surprising hat-trick in a 6-2 win over Sunderland in November 2015, and then spending all his spare time at the club being carried around in bits strapped tightly to Chewbacca's back.
MISS
Lacina Traorè
Fee: Loan
Starts: 1
Sub: 1
Goals: 1
6 foot 8, highly aggressive, and sporting an eye-catching blonde mohawk, there was great anticipation amongst Evertonians that they might just have managed to pull off the impossible and bagged themselves a goalscoring Grace Jones.
Here, it was hoped, was a front-man who could not only go on to replicate the form he had shown in Russia, slotting 32 times in 67 appearances across spells with both Krasnodor and Anzhi Makhachkala, but also net against the Red Shite like he’d already done in the Europa League a year earlier, with a beautiful lobbed finish over Brad Jones.
Four minutes into his debut, dreams were coming true, as a cute back heeled finish from the ‘Conan the Destroyer’ star saw Everton take the lead over Swansea in the FA Cup. Set to start a second successive game against Chelsea, things swiftly turned more ‘A View To A Kill’, as a freak hamstring injury suffered in the pre-match warm-up at Stamford Bridge meant a vexed Traorè would spend the rest of the season sat watching on, with any hopes of securing a permanent move to the Premier League well and truly vanquished.
MISS
Samuel Eto’o
Fee: Free
Starts: 12
Sub: 8
Goals: 4
A three-time Champions League winner and widely considered one of the greatest African footballers of all time, the signing of Samuel Eto’o on a free, in the summer of 2014, was initially seen as something of a coup for the club.
However, although the last vestiges of lingering class may still have been (barely) visible within the confines of a by now creaking body, his effect on the side didn’t ever really venture beyond the negligible.
When his stellar reputation was taken out of the equation, the ex-Barca rocket’s good standing with Evertonians seemed to be based solely on a couple of strikes against a dire Sean Dyche side. The rest of his time on the pitch consisted, primarily, of plodding back to the halfway line to collect the ball, only to give it away, before doing the exact same thing again…and again.
Talk about living off your past achievements.
It was almost as though people were desperate to lavish praise on Eto’o before he’d even produced anything of note in a blue shirt, because a once world class name turning up at Everton lent some legitimacy to their claims that we still deserved to be considered a ‘big club’.
Yet, he had already demonstrated previously at Chelsea that he couldn’t really cut it in the Premier League, beyond a couple of brief cameos, and surely lost any serious claim to being a top player once his primary weapon of searing pace said toodle-oo Eto’o.
Rumours of the Cameroonian proving a disruptive influence upon the dressing room and a subsequent rift with Roberto Martinez (after apparently refusing to rise from the bench to warm up, while reciting the factually correct yet flagrantly cockish mantra, “I am Eto’o. I am Eto’o”, and later telling Romelu Lukaku he should leave the club) saw Samuel Eto’o exit Goodison in January 2016, with his legs rotating at a speed not reached since that time he regained consciousness following the chairman of Anzhi Makhachkala asking if he’d consider tossing it off in Russia for €20m a season, after tax.
MISS
Leandro Rodriguez
Fee: £500,000
Starts: 0
Sub: 1
Goals: 0
Roped in from River Plate for £500,000 in August 2015, then manager Roberto Martinez seemingly misconstrued the expression ‘manners maketh the man’ and revealed upon his arrival that the raw 22 year old recruit would likely be ready to go straight into the first-team squad, mainly because his previous stomping ground had been the ‘manor’ of Montevideo.
“He probably won't need time with the Under-21s because he has played enough games with his first team in Uruguay. If you look at the amount of strikers that come through those environments, you don't get surprised about the quality of these players”, waxed the little Catalan, while staring off dreamingly into the cloud-free distance.
“Leandro is one of those elite, talented youngsters who we like to bring in”, Martinez maintained, “He is a player we can be very much excited about in the future.”
CUT TO
THE FUTURE… AUGUST 2017
• ‘The Running Man’ episode revolving around the ‘Butcher of Bakersfield’ sadly fails to become reality as promised, and seriously pissed off tv viewers are forced instead to put up with another instalment of ‘The Great British Bake Off An Extra Slice’.
• ‘His Royal Highness Prince Philip simultaneously retires from making any further public appearances and casually racist remarks.
• A giant inflatable chicken resembling Donald Trump is dumped outside the White House in some weird, poultry-loving, political protest.
• Ronald Koeman and Farhad Moshiri take turns 77 and 78 in Steve Walsh’s notoriously tricky new brain teaser, ‘Guess who I bid £45m for now?’.
And….
•The president of Danubio FC claims of his club’s new free signing during these dystopian dark days
“Leandro Rodriguez probably won’t go straight into our first-team, having only made one substitute appearance for Everton in the entire time he spent there. If you look at the number of forwards who flop at that particular club, the best you can realistically hope for is that the boy hasn’t got one foot made out of focaccia bread”.
MISS
Oumar Niasse
Fee: £13.5m
Starts: 13
Sub: 29
Goals: 9
Signed for a fee of £13.5m from Locomotiv Moscow, Oumar Niasse was, at the time, the third most expensive signing in Everton’s history.
“We're delighted as Oumar is a player we've been following for a long time”, said Roberto Martinez of the (supposed) reigning Russian Player of the Year. There then followed a severe lack of minutes, a mysterious wrist injury, and rumours of widespread disbelief (combined with complex PTSD) amongst the playing staff after witnessing first-hand the new signings woeful skill-set during training sessions.
Alarm bells soon began blaring for supporters after a worrisome sub appearance against West Ham, in which the Senegal striker slipped, slid and stumbled around the pitch, with the ball repeatedly spinning away from him like his boots had been lavishly smothered in Liquid Silk lube.
Following the dismissal of Roberto Martinez, his successsor as Everton boss, Ronald Koeman, sought to ship Niasse out at the earliest opportunity. When no move from Goodison materialised, the famed master of man-management opted for good old-fashioned ostracism. Stripped of a locker and a squad number and sent to train with the under 23’s, Niasse was told that if he liked playing football then he needed to leave Everton as soon as possible because Koeman would never pick him, even if they were kids in a playground and the only other choice was a tatty old traffic cone.
Remarkably, 15 months later, following a loan spell at Hull, a mooted move to Crystal Palace that collapsed at the last minute, and mounting struggles in front of goal for a blues side that had gone six and half hours without scoring, Niasse found himself coming off the bench to fire a Premier League brace against Bournemouth.
Even more remarkably, despite having a sticker slapped on his chest saying ‘Permanently For Sale, But Proper Shite’ ever since his first pre-season, Niasse somehow managed to not only outlast Ronald Koeman at Everton, but survive and stick around long enough to play under six different managers for the club.
MISS
Enner Valencia
Fee: Loan
Starts: 7
Sub: 16
Goals: 3
Signed on a season long loan in the summer of 2017, with an option to make the move permanent for £14.5m, it quickly became apparent a longer stay was never on the agenda.
Used mainly from the bench and loved to do that Beattie like bit where you burn about like a complete loon for a couple of minutes after first coming on, but then contribute very little beyond being another lukewarm body.
MISS
Dominic Calvert-Lewin
Fee: £1.8m
Starts: 204
Sub: 65
Goals: 71
A player long coveted by former academy director David Unsworth, who first spotted the clearly bored 15 year old furiously performing a series of kangaroo-like squat jumps onto a stack of wooden crates piled dangerously high in the Sheffield United gym, Dominic Calvert-Lewin was snapped up by Everton four years later for an undisclosed fee (thought to be in the region of £1.5m, or roughly the equivalent of Yannick Bolasie’s big toe).
Initially recruited to spearhead the club’s Under 23 side, it wasn’t long before Calvert-Lewin’s leap from League One saw him continue to soar and land, far ahead of schedule, in amongst Ronald Koeman’s first-team squad.
Although nominated for the 2017 ‘Golden Boy’ award after netting the winner for England in the under 20’s World Cup final, Koeman initially used the youngster as something of an ‘odd job’ man, playing him out wide and even as a right wing back against Stoke City in the opening game of the 2017/18 season.
Finally featuring more as a central striker once the likes of Sandro, Wayne Rooney and Cenk Tosun had moved aside after failing to successfully fill the shoes of the recently departed Romelu Lukaku, Calvert-Lewin has since gone on to make over 200 appearances for the club and currently sits joint second with Duncan Ferguson in the list of Everton’s all time Premier League goal scorers. However, despite such a lofty sounding position, he is a player who has consistently found his productivity and finishing ability called into question by both pundits and fans alike.
Possessed of energy, pace, a great leap granting him dominance in the air, and the physicality to hold onto the ball with defenders harrying and hanging off his back, Calvert-Lewin is very much a player equipped to perform a pivotal role in a particular system of play and, as such, has been a key component for multiple managers, with no other Everton player of recent times seemingly capable of providing a similar presence.
However, things quickly hit a snag when you take into consideration that a glaring lack of composure when clean through on goal, genteel power in either foot, along with often limited anticipation and movement, invariably leads to multiple goal scoring chances going begging and the merits of his overall contribution being weighed up against the many blanks. When your regular starting striker routinely suffers barren droughts that stretch on longer than the Dust Bowl then doubts are understandably going to be raised.
At one point in time, under the managerial tutelage of Carlo Ancelotti, it did look like Dominic Calvert-Levin might be on the cusp of metamorphosing into the complete number 9, maintaining - for five to six months, at least - a much improved strike rate that pushed him right near the very top of the goal scoring charts.
During the 20/21 season, he scored 16 league goals and 21 in all competitions.
However, given that such form has never come near to being replicated in the four seasons since, it can only be viewed as something of a prolonged purple patch, standing out as it now does amongst more middling numbers marking DCL out as a striker consistently operating at a much less effective level.
True, recurrent spells on the sidelines and restrictive tactics from those selecting the team should probably be taken into account as part mitigation, but since the sudden meteoric surge in goalscoring that rightly earned him a spot in the England squad, Calvert-Lewin has notched 5, 2, 8 and 3 respectively, in all competitions, meaning he has finished with more than 8 goals only twice in 9 full seasons at the club.
That is simply not good enough for a man continually tasked with carrying the majority of the team’s goal scoring threat, time and time again.
Taking into consideration the unsigned new contract offer, rumours of discontent, fluctuating form, persistent injuries, and an xG more embarrassing than Snoop Dogg doing the Crip walk while waffling on about chicken kebabs and crispy wan tons in a wank commercial, it would seem circumstances are definitely right for Calvert-Lewin and the club to part ways this summer.
He should rightfully walk away with thanks, but with very little reason at all for fans left in his wake to fear his waning output cannot be adequately replaced.
GOAL!
Sandro Ramirez
Fee: £5.3m
Starts: 7
Sub: 8
Goals: 1
A product of Barcelona’s famed La Masia youth academy before making his name at Málaga, Sandro signed a four year deal with Everton to become their fourth signing of the summer 2017 transfer window.
Fresh out of the Under-21’s European Championship in Poland, in which he plundered a goal against Portugal after linking up with Gerard Deulofeu, and arriving as he did for a modest fee, Sandro was at first touted as a shrewd, if tight-fisted, replacement for the recently departed Romelu Lukaku. Some pundits, as per usual, immediately soared past optimism straight to over the top hype, with Mike Parry hilariously declaring that “Everton signing Sandro Ramirez will be a sensation this season”.
He certainly was…for five minutes, in his first game at Goodison in which he scored against Seville…but that was pre-season, and once the real action kicked off the hapless Spaniard with the horrendous Steve McDonald hairline was quickly shown to be seriously out of his depth.
Such ‘a sensation’ it took three separate loan moves to shift him.
MISS
Part 2 will cover Wayne Rooney, Cenk Tosun, Moise Kean, Josh King, Salomón Rondon, Warwick Davis, Youssef Chermiti, Beto and Armando Broja
Reader Responses
Selected thoughts from readers12/03/2025 12:18:39
I remember from the late eighties on there was a saying going around:
How do you stop a striker from scoring?
sell him to Everton.
12/03/2025 13:23:09
There are some names to remember and many to forget in that piece John. In fact many I'd forgotten played for Everton.
I'll pick a few out and give my opinion.
Andy Gray didn't just help galvanise Everton on the pitch, he provided a presence and character off it and in the dressing room when it was needed. At the time, many thought him and Sharp couldn't be played together. Well, the Scottish duo put to bed to that argument and won trophies together.
No mention of Adrian Heath. I always wonder what he would have become had it not been for that injury sustained courtesy of Marwood.
James Beattie joined as a high profile signing, but seemed to go on a KFC diet as he put a fair bit of "timber" on.
I felt for Jelavic, and to some extent Andy Johnson. The Croatian was on fire when he first joined as he was in the box, with his trademark sweeping of low crosses into the corner. But then he became victim of Moyes (as was then - I don't want to turn this into something else), seeming obsession with moulding strikers into Marcus Bent, chasing corner flags in the channels.
Duncan disappointed me. Barring a few moments, he never lived up to the hype or potential. The reluctant footballer as I used to refer to him.
I did read at the time, that apparently, Saha wouldn't play unless he was 100% fit?
A lot used to complain about Lukaku's touch and control, but that didn't bother me. You want your strikers to score goals regularly. And he did.
Right now, let's see how our new addition Charly Alcaraz does. Hopefully, we take up the option to sign permanently and he continues to excite. He's maybe not an out and out striker, more of a supporting one. Some would say a number 10.
12/03/2025 17:38:07
Good article,
However the omission of Tony Cottee, who if I recall rightly bagged 99 goals in all comps for the blues is strange.
12/03/2025 21:37:07
There's a very, very simple pattern with all of these strikers. They cost peanuts. Anything below £40m these days is peanuts for a striker.
Third tier Birmingham spent £15m on striker Jay Stansfield last summer.
Brentford spent £30m on Thiago. Bournemouth spent £37m on Evanilson.
Delap, 10 in 27 for Ipswich, will cost at least £45m now I would have thought. Competition could push the price much higher.
Ferguson, 1 goal in 16 this season, could cost £35m.
The more reliable goalscorers start at £65m and even then are hit and miss.
The 20 year old Lukaku we bought for £28m would now cost £70m at least.
There are 3 ways to find a striker who scores lots of goals:
1. Spend a fortune on him and the players around him
2. Show patience in developing him and the players around him
3. Get incredibly lucky
Unfortunately we haven't ever really done any of these things for the past 35 years. Hence only Yakubu and Lukaku - two of our most expensive ever signings (but still miles off top transfer fees at the time) are our biggest scoring strikers.
14/03/2025 18:05:52
A great post John with sprinklings of your usual humour highlighting the real deficiency in the squad.
For years I have said that we need to spread the load by buying players who can score goals and always hoped that DCL would come good in that respect.
Only Doucoure and Richy have met that criterion in recent years but hopefully Ndiaye and Alcaraz will deliver.
Its a great shame that Gordon extracted a move as he would have been ideal for us just now but hopefully he will sink with the skunks.
There is always a Jamie Vardy or Gyokures out there but finding them is a matter of luck and circumstance.
19/03/2025 09:57:43
We also need to have those players like Dave Thomas and Trevor Steven who provide those opportunities and crosses for the striker to feed off
What I pray for is another Johnny Morrisey, Trevor, Dave or Kevin Sheedy.
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12/03/2025 11:03:39
I remember when we signed Lukaku. I thought at the time it was huge money for us to pay for any player. Now, for Lukaku at the same stage of his career, it would be at least double the amount.
The only way you can get so much potential on the cheap now is if the likes of Chelsea or Man City have a clear out or a fire sale. Even then there's no guarantee.
The alternative is to strike it lucky with the right match of player and coach. Ancelotti got a relatively huge return out of DCL that no other coach or manager has before or since.