How much faith can you put in one man?
Speaking after the Swansea City game, head coach Sabri Lamouchi said that:
“Every game he smells football and he smells the goal. But he needs to have more of a killer instinct. I just want to work with him on that because he is so nice and he is working a lot for the team. But sometimes he needs to think more about himself, and inside the box be more of a killer, because he can score a lot for Forest. He has scored already but he will score more. I trust him because he is important for the group.”
And it’s that word at the end I want to talk about, ‘important’. Grabban has proved to be a key figure for Forest so far this season, scoring four goals in his seven appearances so far, with three of them resulting in four points, first his equaliser against Leeds and then the double against Fulham.
What my concern going forward is, is that he might be too important to the club. I have spoken before about how the club does have depth at the centre-forward position, with the likes of Zach Clough and Brennan Johnson, as well as Rafa Mir when he returns from injury. However, none of them are players that you can fully trust at this level, with Zach Clough’s return of 7 in 28 games from 15/16 the best numbers on offer.
Now whilst I may have faith in the likes of Johnson to be able to fill in on occasion, I’m not sure that I could trust them for a long period of time just yet.
So do we perhaps need to be careful with how we manage Grabban going forward in order to keep him available throughout the season? It’s something that Lamouchi has himself spoken about:
“We know what he can do. Now we need to put him in the fridge until next Saturday for Barnsley. The first defender is Grabban and he is our one attacker, so we need to take care of him.”
Forest have had a tremendous start to the season, and Grabban has been a huge part of that, so let’s just hope that he’s here for the long haul.
What about you? Are you concerned that Grabban is our only real source of goals and that an injury or suspension could put a dent in our season? Or do you think that the other guys will be able to pick up the slack?
