Team Focus: Lack of Prolific Centre Forward Threatens to Curb Progress at Palace

Since taking over at Crystal Palace at the start of the year Alan Pardew has unshackled the club's frontline and transformed the Eagles into a menacing outfit stocked with pace out wide, while also managing to preserve the best qualities installed by Tony Pulis at the back. However, further progress at Selhurst Park could be hard to come by without a striker that can finish the chances being crafted by the abundance of talent making up the midfield positions.

Unusually, Palace find themselves in a position that their rivals would envy. While teams like Spurs, Liverpool and Bournemouth have looked heavily dependent on one or two players finding the back of the net, Palace have managed to share the goals around. In fact, only Manchester City (9) boast more unique goalscorers than Palace (6) in the Premier League this season.

Moreover, 14 individuals have shared the 35 goals Palace have scored under Pardew, which is a feat that only Chelsea and Leicester can claim to better (both 15) in the same period.

However, while the likes of Joel Ward, Scott Dann and Damien Delaney have chipped in at the other end of the pitch, they are unlikely to be able maintain any significant goalscoring form across the course of the season and it is during these moments where Pardew will surely need a striker in the mould of Harry Kane, Bafetimbi Gomis and Christian Benteke to ensure Palace keep pace with other emerging clubs like Swansea.

This isn’t to suggest that Steve Parish needs to go and lavish £32.5m on a star striker, but they do need to find a centre forward that can regularly finish the chances being forged by the creative pack in behind. The fact that Gomis was a target last season suggests that they are able to identify such a talent.

This was a feature particularly evident in their 1-0 defeat to City on Saturday, where Pardew afterwards admitted they missed Connor Wickham’s “presence” up front. Wickham, who joined the club for a staggering £8m over the summer, missed out on the visit of City due to injury and instead of turning to Dwight Gayle or Patrick Bamford, Pardew instead opted to start all three of his wingers up front.

Yannick Bolasie, who hasn’t scored a league goal at home since January 2013, spearheaded the Palace attack, with Bakary Sako and Wilfried Zaha flanking on either side. The game plan was clear from Palace: to counter attack in to the space left in behind the likes of Alexander Kolarov.

At times this was an effective ploy from the home side, but they never really looked like making Kolarov’s rampaging runs forward pay without a striker that could finish all the good work and the flair play from the likes of Bolasie and Zaha.

There was also the added consequence that this game plan would force Bolasie in to the channels and that placed a huge impetus on Jason Puncheon in the No10 role to make up the space in and around the penalty spot. Something he had little chance of doing successfully against the physicality of Vincent Kompany and Eliaquim Mangala. 

Unsurprisingly, Puncheon only had one touch in the City penalty area, with Bolasie restricted to just six of his 31 touches inside the box.  

Incredibly, despite not having a regular goalscoring centre forward in their ranks, only four teams have scored more league goals than Palace (35) since Pardew took over on January 3. In this period, no Palace player has scored more goals than Glenn Murray (7), and he is now plying his trade for Bournemouth following a £5m move late in the transfer window.

In his absence, rather oddly, stepped forward a striker that promised immense potential when he burst through the scenes at Ipswich Town, but has since only managed 11 goals in 82 top-flight appearances. Pardew’s late attempts to sign Charlie Austin – scorer of 18 Premier League goals last season – on deadline day would suggest he also has reservations over Wickham being his frontline striker.

Palace may yet rekindle their interest in Austin in January when the striker is likely to be available at a cut-price deal from Queens Park Rangers with his contract due to expire in the summer. Instead, Pardew will have to settle on a squad that posses no individual to have scored more than seven goals in a top-flight campaign.

The likes of Patrick Bamford (17) - on loan from Chelsea – and Sako (15) were prolific in the Championship last season, and while the latter may continue on his bright start that has yielded two goals in three games it would seem unlikely Bamford will be given sufficient game time to prove his worth, particularly after he was curiously absent from the squad that faced City at the weekend, despite Wickham’s injury.

The prospect of seeing Bolasie through the middle might excite fans, but his performances over the last three years in front of goal would suggest this is the wrong avenue for Pardew to pursue. In fact, since making his Premier League bow in the 2013/14 campaign, no player to have had more than 100 shots and at least a solitary goal to his name has a worse conversion rate than Bolasie (3.3%).

His measly return of four league goals in the last three years would more than suggest the 26-year-old is not yet ready to lead a Premier League attack. It is in wide positions were Bolasie has been most effective, gaining a WhoScored rating of 7.0 from 33 starting berths wide left compared to a rating of 6.7 from his three appearances up front in the last three Premier League campaigns.

In just nine months Pardew, alongside Parish, look to transformed the ambitions of Palace. Rather than keeping tabs on the sides below, the sky now seems the limit for the Eagles. And remarkably, this has all been achieved without a prolific striker.

Since Pardew's return, only Arsenal (52), City (48), Manchester United and Chelsea (both 43) have taken more points than Palace (40). It's not hard to imagine what this ambitious Palace outfit could achieve with a striker of Austin's ilk in their ranks.

Do you think Crystal Palace need to sign a top quality striker to progress to the next level? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below