Bobby Zamora - England's Number Ten

Well, here I am, presiding over my own blog...I shall try to not let the power get to my head. And now I’m hit with a new problem...what to write about. Well folks, I thought I would begin by answering one of history’s age old questions, one which has caused much debate and argument over the past centuries...or at least the past four months. Many ill informed, glory hunting football fans have taken the somewhat delusional view that, despite only scoring one goal of any note since 2004, in the Manchester derby, that the once great Michael Owen should still go the World Cup. For those of you who know me well, you fully know that I somewhat disagree with this view.

Now why, pray tell, should we take a man whose best skill at the moment is keeping the Manchester United bench nice and warm for the rest of the squad when say, oh I don’t know....players like the younger, fitter Robert Lester Zamora, or Fulham striker Bobby Zamora, to you and I, are scoring weekend after weekend after weekend, but are being overlooked simply because they don’t play for a glamorous enough club. It’s about time egos and reputation stepped aside to let the form players in the Premier League stand a chance.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Michael Owen was once one of the greatest strikers to ever grace the Premier League, yet the only running he does these days is down to the bottom of his drive to collect the newspaper. At the time of writing, he hasn’t started a first team match for Manchester United in four weeks and when brought off the bench at the weekend, couldn’t even score against League One Leeds United, a team two divisions below United in the football Pyramid. Meanwhile, 24 hours earlier, Bobby Zamora was busy scoring the winning goal for Fulham against Swindon Town, also of League One.

Fear not statistics lovers, for I am about to pitch at you some match winning stats. Bobby Zamora has outscored Michael Owen in every domestic competition the same two players have played in so far this season. Even in Europe, Zamora has scored the same amount of goals as Owen; they both have four each. Overall, Zamora is already into double figures in the Premier League on 11, while has been Owen lingers behind on a measly 2. Naturally, Owens overall goal scoring figures have to be considered, but he has significantly tailed off in the last few years, while this season especially, players like Zamora, Darren Bent and Jermain Defoe have begun to prosper. Any England team of the next 5 years onward is going to be Rooney plus one. Of course, this leads to the argument, which strikers should we take to the World Cup...and another teaser....how many? Many have suggested that four would be enough, but the Theo Walcott debacle of 2006 proved that four strikers simply aren’t enough. It is my personal view that we should take Rooney, Crouch, Defoe, Bent and Zamora.

However, I am not deaf and I hear many heckles from you Owen fans out there, no doubt politely questioning my reasoning and sanity with these choices. Well, just in case I haven’t provided enough pro Zamora stats and facts for you, I shall continue. Michael Owen has been about for a long time and teams have worked out how to play against him. Now he has lost his blistering pace of old, he is very much a 6 yard box predator. Simple enough hey? Not only is Owen slow, he is also short at 5 foot 9 and also not too strong. We don’t need our striker being marked out of the game every time just by a bit of simple man marking in and around the box in the World Cup quarter finals do we? Essentially, it would be like playing with 10 men. Now, same scenario, yet the England shirt read’s ‘Zamora 10’ on the back. Now we have our wild, creative animal in Rooney, being paired with a man who is equally strong, fast, inventive and passionate. It would be far more difficult to man mark the much stronger Zamora and at 6 foot exactly, he would give us much more presence in the box, at corners especially. Furthermore, given that he is new to the international scene, teams wouldn’t know how to play against him, thus giving us the surprise factor too. By the time they have worked out how to stop Zamora, the World Cup will be locked up safely in the FA headquarters in Soho Square.

But hey, these are just my own thoughts and I want England to win the World Cup just as much as the next guy, but I truly believe that the inclusion of Zamora over Owen would have more pro’s than con’s and would truly benefit England in South Africa. We should be picking players on current form and not because of past glory and reputation. Hope you enjoyed reading this Mr Capello...