We pay anywhere from £12m to £25m+ for a striker, therefore to break the hierachy here as a striker you have to be absolutely exceptional to compete with the purchases we have here.
You can't have a servicable striker, they are too important, they more often then not have the power to decide the majority of games we play during a season. You can't do a Fletcher or O'Shea and play them for over a 100 games of moderate performance, they have to be top notch. Therein lies the difference between blooding players with obvious defeciencies like Fletcher, Richardson and O'Shea have, and doing the same with a striker.
Giuseppe Rossi is a perfect example of how superior a forward has to be to even be considered here. At any club outside the top 5, Rossi would be in serious consideration for the starting xi. Here he might not even make the cut for next season and get loaned out. It's that simple really. Strikers of a level we require rarely come out of any academy in England and in this regard we're no different. If we could breed our own strikers the club would save at least 12million quid a debutant. No top club in Europe has a success rate in blooding their own strikers. It's too risky and important a position to gamble with.
Having said all that, Frazier Campbell is a promising prospect. He has looked brilliant so far. If he continues to develop like he has so far in his short rise to the reserves, he has a decent shot at it.
