Down the years Hearts have been known for having talismanic strikers who defences around the Scottish game feared. The most obvious being John Robertson who became a Hearts legend after scoring 214 goals in 512 games; perhaps more importantly 27 against Hibs. Other than Robbo we have always had people who knew how to score important goals which kept us up the top end of the table. Stephane Adam for instance who wrote his name into the Hearts history books by scoring the second and crucial goal in the cup final of 98. How we could do with someone of his ilk now. Even Mark De Vries who always had some kind of niggling injury scored goals for fun including 4 on his debut against Hibs, and a goal in Bordeaux which gave Hearts a famous European away win.

 

Who of the class of 2007/08 will be remembered as a legend? I’d have to be pessimistic and say that none of these strikers that we currently possess are good enough to clean Andy Kirk’s boots.

 

Let’s have a look at what we’ve got in the current squad; Callum Elliot, the less said the better; Christian Nade, overweight, clumsy and lazy come to mind when thinking of him; and Gary Glen, ok he’s had a good start but let’s not get carried away. He’s only young and will most likely be farmed out on loan next season when the new manager comes in. That as depressing as it sounds appears to be it. We had Velicka who was the only player who seemed capable of hiding the fact that the rest of the forwards were inept.

 

We do have other forwards of course but they can’t even get near the first team which seems ridiculous, surely Juho Makela has enough ability to dislodged Elliot who plays far more football than he should. If I could get my hands on the team Elliot would be transfer listed because there is always a team that will pick him up. No more proof is needed of this after Dunfermline took Stephen Simmons off our hands.

 

If truth be told we haven’t had a striker who has guaranteed us goals, with the exception of Velicka obviously. Even at the height of the of the Romanov regime when we split the Old Firm and won the Scottish Cup we didn’t have a 20 goal a season man. The fact that our top scorers were midfielders took the heat of the Roman Bednar (10) Edgaras Jankauskas (9) and Michael Pospisil (7) who where nowhere near as prolific as they could have been.

 

The writing is on the wall we need 2 twenty goal a season strikers for our next campaign if we have any ambition of upsetting the Old Firm and fulfilling Romanov’s promises of competing in the Champions League. Without we will simply have another dismal season and continue to  languish in the bottom half of the league.