Now that the transfer window has closed, the never-ending saga of Sunderland’s striking options has finally reached its conclusion, however, the search for a striker is nothing new to us.

Although our last two years of attempting (apparently) to bring in back-up, competition or literally anyone of legal drinking age to play up front has really shone a light on just how bad our record is, I thought it’d be interesting to take a look back over the last decade or so to see just how awful it’s actually been.

So, if we set a timeframe of 12 years, that takes us back to the start of the Ellis Short era, meaning we’re dealing with a period where we’ve both had money to spend, and we’ve also been trading in library cards and Curly Wurlies.

Additionally, I’m only looking at players we have signed who are 18+, and none of our academy graduates will be included, nor are loan players included, we’re just considering players actively brought to the club with the idea of at least bolstering the first team, on a permanent basis.

In that 12 year period we have signed 22 strikers (25 if you count two of them coming back when they really shouldn’t have), officially speaking, we have spent at least £54.5m on those players, although five of them are listed as undisclosed, so it’s likely higher than that.

Hilariously, of that £54.5m+, we have only seen a return in pure monetary value of £19.7m+ (with three undisclosed thrown in for good measure), and £10m of that has just been pocketed thanks to the sale of Ross Stewart. Before you even look into their record, this is already somewhat alarming.

Before we dig into it then, here’s the full list:

Nazariy Rusyn
Hemir
Eliezer Mayenda
Max Thompson
Jermain Defoe (x2)
Will Harris
Danny Graham (x2)
Mitchell Curry
Ross Stewart
Kyle Lafferty
Will Grigg
Charlie Wyke
James Vaughan
Victor Anichebe
Fabio Borini
Jozy Altidore
Ignacio Scocco
Louis Saha
Steven Fletcher
James McFadden
Connor Wickham
Ji Dong-won

First off, the key stat to judge them all from; goals. Depressingly, there are only five on the list who reached double figures:

No real arguments there, though it is somewhat mind-bending to note that Jermain Defoe and Charlie Wyke scored the same number of (league) goals for Sunderland.

Conversely there’s 9 on the list with zero goals, although it’s a little harsh to include Rusyn, Hemir, Mayenda, Thompson, Harris and Curry, given their limited/non-existent time on the pitch.

However, much frowning can be cast on McFadden, Saha and Scocco for their empty returns. Scocco is the only of these we paid a fee for, so £3.1m for six games, no goals is clearly awful business, but we did somehow manage to recoup £2.7m for him, so while still terrible, it could have been much worse.

So if we’re judging them on £ per goal (removing the Undisclosed transfers), that means that Charlie Wyke is officially the best value for money, costing the club £900k, scoring 34 times, working out at just shy of £26.4k per goal.

Of course, we even managed to knacker that up by failing to get promoted in his one excellent season, then let him leave on a free at the end of his contract. It’s worth noting however, that Stewart’s fee was widely thought to be in the region of £300k, which would put him streets ahead in value, at £8.3k per each of his 36 goals.

The worst value is Jozy Altidore, as his £6m fee brought just the one goal; although the debate is out as to whether he’d have scored more in League One than Will Grigg. A notable mentioned too for Danny Graham, whose solitary goal cost us £5m. Grigg is way out in front in the post-Premier League era, with each of his five goals costing Sunderland £600k in the third tier.

The average age of the strikers we sign is 25.5 years, however, that’s skewed by the catastrophic second spells of Defoe and Graham, without which, the average would drop to 24.5. Our approach since 2020 has been a bit scattergun too, as you have the extremes of Defoe (39), Graham (35) and Lafferty (32), to Hemir & Harris (19) and Mayenda (18).

Thompson and Curry were 20 and 21 respectively, but both were seemingly bought to bolster the U21s (although Thompson is still here). Then you have Stewart and now, Rusyn right in the middle at 24.

Essentially, with the mental exception of Defoe, Rusyn was the first senior striker since Stewart, who in turn was the first we had signed since Kyle Lafferty, or, if you want to look at players on longer contracts, he’s the only one since Will Grigg.

What’s more astonishing then, is that since Will Grigg signed, only Stewart and Lafferty scored any league goals for the club, and both of Lafferty’s came in an ultimately futile 2-2 draw with Gillingham. Only four of the eight goalless wonders are still at the club, so fingers crossed for Rusyn, Hemir, Mayenda and Thompson.

A surprising stat from this come when you look at how long each of this lot were at the club for. The longest tenure belongs to both Steven Fletcher and Connor Wickham, who stayed for a full four years. Depressingly, the next in the list is Will Grigg, who we got stuck with for 3.5 years. On average, our strikers have been around for around 18 months, likely owing to short term stays of utter knackers, such as James Vaughan, McFadden, Scocco or, again, the second spells of Defoe and Graham.

As mentioned earlier, the £54m+ we spent on this list only saw a return of £19.7m+, but only 6 of them moved on for a fee at all; 14 of the players who left did so on a free, whether due to contracts expiring (Borini, Wyke), retirement (Defoe/Graham), or us simply letting them go (Curry).

What’s more startling is that Stewart is the only striker we have made a profit on during this time period. Prior to last week, Wickham was the closest, ultimately cost us £12m, and we sold him for £7m; the undisclosed fees for Altidore, Borini and Vaughan were thought to be minimal or part of an exchange deal, which means the aforementioned Scocco sale of £2.7m, netting us a profit of… -£400k was the best business we’ve done on a striker in 12 years until Stewart left.

This business is reflected in the teams the players moved on to, as only Defoe (Bournemouth) moved on to a club in a higher division than we were in at the time of the sale. Most players moved, at best, sideways, relative to where we sat in the football pyramid. Then of course you have Borini confusing everyone by going to AC Milan, Ji Dong-won to Dortmund, and somehow, a 65 year old Louis Saha to Lazio.

So all in, Sunderland have gone through 25 strikers in 12 years, none of which have played more than 100 games for the club, and none have come close to 50 goals.

Defoe’s first stint was an unexpected success in that I don’t think many of us thought we’d get 2.5 excellent years out of a 33 year old coming back from what looked like a pre-retirement tour in the MLS, particularly given that he was part of a trade deal to get Altidore off the books.

That means that in my eyes, not only have we not replaced Charlie Wyke, we arguably haven’t replaced Darren Bent as an all out goal scorer. Ross Stewart had the chance to take on that mantle, had he stayed, but for that chapter has now closed.

I have my doubts over whether Rusyn will be that player, not necessarily as a judgement of his ability (of which most of us known very little), but more from the noise being made from his end that he’s more of a wide forward than your out-and-out striker.

The loan signing of Mason Burstow seems a promising one, so he could certainly help plug the gap up top for the rest of this season, but another loan player is not the long term answer.

With Stewart now gone, the lads we’ve signed on deadline day will hopefully fix our striking issues short term, but I suspect we’ll be needing another big effort to bring in another goalscorer next summer.