Vaughan Or Buckley?

Donaldson will always be our main striker, well, until he hangs up his boots anyway. So there is no point discussing which strikers in the club are the best, because it is Donaldson. He is leading every single stat, from assisting to scoring to tackling. But who suits Donaldson’s style of play and who will compliment him in that attacking third?

Now, as you all probably know, I am a massive fan of Fabbrini. The little wizard impressed me on his previous loan spell, and I shall not hear a bad word said against him. However, for the purpose of this article, I would see him more of an attacking midfielder, a fluid midfielder. And therefore when discussing Donaldson’s partnership with a striker, I discounted him from this role. Just because I feel that he is better in other positions, rather than up top.

So I was left with two main options really; Vaughan and Buckley. Buckley so far this season has made 5 appearances, one of these which came as a substitute. In this time, he has scored one goal which was a very neat finish and we are all hoping a sign of things to come. Vaughan however, is yet to get off the mark despite playing 12 times but 7 of these were from the bench. Now, stats only show a snippet of the truth. If you want quick goals, you can argue that neither of these two have shown that they have settled in well enough to do this yet. The penalty miss by Vaughan may show that his confidence is not quite there yet.

But these stats are just showing what they are like when they get opportunities, but if opportunities cannot be created, then there is no hope of anyone scoring. This is the whole point of having a partnership. So they link up and feed off of each other in order to progress up the pitch and beat defenders. Now, in my opinion, Buckley isn’t the kind of player to do this. He is lanky and would be good doing what Donaldson does in terms of bringing the ball down and playing others in. But what is needed, is someone to have pace and can get onto flick ons beyond the last man.

I thought that Gray would make a good partner for Donaldson for this reason too. He had the pace to beat a man and all that is needed then is to finish calmly. Something that Vaughan can do even better than Gray. Buckley is more of a wide forward as is Maghoma where they can be on the end of crosses and even cut inside but their role is not to get onto flick ons.

Overall, I would prefer Vaughan and Donaldson as a front two with Buckley out wide. So there is room for all 3 of them in the team. What do you think?