The great number nine decline - where have England's strikers gone?
By Chris Bevan (BBC Sport journalist) and Chris Collinson (BBC Sport statistician) | 13 November 2025
The cupboard is effectively bare. Thomas Tuchel’s latest 25-man squad selection provides a grim diagnostic of the state of English centre-forwards: Harry Kane remains the sole specialist option.
Injury woes certainly complicate the picture. Ollie Watkins is being rested, Dominic Solanke has been unavailable since August, and Chelsea’s Liam Delap is only now regaining fitness after a two-month layoff. While Tuchel could look to versatile attackers like Marcus Rashford, Jarrod Bowen, Phil Foden, or Anthony Gordon to fill the void against Serbia and Albania, they are makeshift solutions at best.
Reliance on a 32-year-old Kane is a fragile strategy. As we look toward next summer’s World Cup and beyond, the lack of depth at the focal point of the attack is a genuine cause for alarm.
The pipeline is stagnant. Across the current Premier League season, a mere eight English strikers have seen game time, with 22-year-old Liam Delap the only representative under 26. The youth ranks offer little solace; the England Under-21 squad recently traveled to the European Championship devoid of a recognized striker, and their current iteration relies on Stoke-loanee Divin Mubama—a 21-year-old yet to break his Premier League duck.
Chris Sutton observes a modern tactical obsession: the rise of the wide-creator and the inverted left-footer at the expense of the traditional center-forward. He argues that while these roles offer scoring utility, they lack the specialized profile of a true line-leader.
Michael Owen, who dominated the 1997-98 Premier League alongside Sutton as co-recipients of the Golden Boot, doubts his own path in the contemporary game. Speaking on the Rio Ferdinand Presents podcast, the former striker admitted he likely wouldn't be deployed as an out-and-out frontman today. Lacking the physical frame to pin back a pair of central defenders, he posits he would have been funneled into a wide role.
The transition away from two-striker systems remains a point of frustration for Owen, who spent his career mastering the craft of playing off another forward. He questions whether the modern game will ever return to these partnerships, or if the evolution of tactical formations has rendered them permanently obsolete.
'We've got Kane, but then what?'
For current England boss Thomas Tuchel, the two-striker setup is functionally off the table. Sutton views this shift through the lens of a dwindling talent pool. While he acknowledges the 1990s and early 2000s benefitted from an embarrassment of riches—citing the likes of Alan Shearer, Robbie Fowler, and Les Ferdinand—he notes that modern English strikers face an almost empty field.
Sutton, whose own international career was cut short following a 1998 fallout with manager Glenn Hoddle, is blunt about the current state of the national squad: the barrier to entry has never been lower. "If you're an English center-forward now and you can kick a ball straight, you've got a good chance," he remarked.
The takeaway is stark: England remains dangerously reliant on Harry Kane. As the tactical preference for wing-focused play continues to sideline traditional strikers, the developmental pipeline for a proper backup to Kane has effectively dried up. Without a return to the strike partnerships of the past, the "number nine" role in English football risks becoming a relic of a bygone era.
