St. Johnstone v Inverness Caledonian Thistle

[alsy]

One of the key changes since Hughes took over was that we don't always have to rely on one player to score all our goals, last season there was a good spread of goals throughout the team. Problem is that when you have one or two focuses that the team rely on for goals they nowadays are easy to contain by decent defending, certainly McKay was sussed out by many teams easily at least until our other attacking options started causing problems and their focus would turn away from McKay which gave him more clear opportunities.

Its difficult to say about Lopez, I don't know if Hughes is giving him an opportunity because of our injury situation, he might get 2 or 3 months to prove himself. Once the majority of our injured players return it could be different and it could come down to picking one of either Lopez or Mutombo to start games. Who knows once either Foran or Vincent are back Hughes might have other ideas on who to put up front.

I agree with this, but having at least one player in the side who is an out-and-out striker will always make a difference, imo - we saw this last season with Ofere who, despite being nothing like Mckay and being capable of doing almost nothing of note for a large part of games, was still able to make crucial interventions. At the moment I think we lack enough of a threat, despite the talent of Christie. As you say, though, perhaps Lopez or Mutombo will start to present that threat - Lopez certainly deserves more opportunities, and I find it frustrating that people on CTO were calling for him to be got rid of after three games, when it's clear that Hughes had been interested in him for some time.

[Ramagamma]

Cummings looks a find, I was a little too worried he'd be this years Craig Beattie

[CityDave]

I agree with this, but having at least one player in the side who is an out-and-out striker will always make a difference, imo - we saw this last season with Ofere who, despite being nothing like Mckay and being capable of doing almost nothing of note for a large part of games, was still able to make crucial interventions. At the moment I think we lack enough of a threat, despite the talent of Christie. As you say, though, perhaps Lopez or Mutombo will start to present that threat - Lopez certainly deserves more opportunities, and I find it frustrating that people on CTO were calling for him to be got rid of after three games, when it's clear that Hughes had been interested in him for some time.

Ofere had the good habit of being in the right place at the right time to score goals, I wish he had stayed I think he could have made a good name for himself here. He just seems like one of these players who never settle at one team, I'm surprised at his wage demands though, but it maybe shows we struggle to compete for decent to average players in a global market and it is very much a global market now where we can only tempt players to the club just because we are playing in the top division rather than Inverness being simply a nice place to live. It looks like he has signed for Turkish second tier outfit Boluspor.