What’s next for Jerome?

At the time of writing this, Cameron Jerome is still a Birmingham City player, but for how much longer, who knows. Fulham have been making bids for him and Stoke and Bolton are known to be interested too. Blues have turned down £3.5 m for him and Fulham say that’s their final offer. I wonder, when Jerome leaves Blues, how much we’ll miss him? I don’t think a player, in recent times, has divided opinion as much as Jerome. He has his supporters and detractors. If I was to say it was a 50/50 split, I think I would be being a tad generous to his supporters. I typed ‘Cameron Jerome’ in to Twitter’s search the other night and found a fair few Fulham fans not too happy about their pursuit of him and some Stoke and Bolton fans seemingly relieved that he wouldn’t be joining their clubs. It made me think how would us Blues fans feel, if we were looking to buy a striker with a similar goal scoring record as Jerome, which is about 1 goal every 5 matches for us. I don’t think too many would be jumping for joy. And yet, we are talking about three fairly established, middle of the table, Premier League clubs that are interested in buying him. Three well respected managers that think he could improve their team. Ok, two respected managers, plus Tony Pulis. So what is it they see in him that a lot of Blues fans don’t?

When we bought Jerome ahead of the 2006/07 season, there was a lot of excitement about him. An England Under 21 striker, that had just scored 20 goals in the Championship for Cardiff. St Andrews has been a bit of a wasteland for strikers, apart from Mikael Forssell, but here was a young hungry striker who had goals in him. The fee paid, £3 million rising to £4 million, was a lot of money for a club that had just been relegated to the Championship. The feeling was that the money came out of David Sullivan’s pocket after Steve Bruce convinced him that Jerome was the man that would take us back to the Premier League.

Jerome didn’t have the happiest of starts. Sent off a few minutes after coming on as a substitute, for something innocuous when chasing down a Colchester player. Even an opposing player, Wayne Brown pleaded with the ref not to send him off. He performed adequately in that first season, scoring 9 goals, but we were all hoping that there was more to come. The next two seasons were fairly similar in the goals stakes, 7 goals in 07/08 and 9 goals in 08/09. Jerome by now had become something of a scapegoat for many fans, unhappy with his goals return, citing his apparent laziness as the main reason for the lack of goals.

The 09/10 season saw Jerome sat on the sidelines injured for seven weeks, after just two games into the season and it was obvious, even to those who didn’t rate him, that we missed him. I guess you would miss him when you have to rely on the likes of Gary O’Connor. When he came back into the side he arguably had his best season for Blues, linking up well with Christian Benitez, scoring 11 goals in the Premier League which is not to be sniffed at. During this season, Alex McLeish said that they had done a lot of work with Jerome using Prozone. He said that Jerome’s statistics were good regarding ball retention, distribution and how much ground he covered. In fact, he said Jerome was wasting energy ‘running for the sake of running’. To my untrained eye, this was a bit of a shock. I thought the ball never ‘stuck’ to him, his passing average and as for wasting energy? Nothing infuriates me more about Jerome when he casually walks back from an offside position with his hand in the air, seemingly without a care in the world. But what do I know!

Last season 10/11, was even by a Blues striker’s standard, a poor one for Jerome. Just 5 goals all season, you could see how low his confidence was out on the pitch. A lot of this was due to McLeish’s tactics, with little or no service to the front line. Often played up on his own, Jerome cut an isolated figure, with his team mates 30 yards or so behind him. The partnership with Chucho the previous season was a distant memory, as players of a similar ilk couldn’t be persuaded to come to St Andrews. Being up front by himself did him no favours. I’ve said in previous blogs that its not so much 4-5-1 doesn’t work; it’s the fact that we never get enough bodies forward to support him, changing it to 4-3-3 when attacking. To me, a lone striker has to be able to hold the ball up and bring others into play. I don’t think Jerome’s game is suited to this because his first touch isn’t that great. In the 10/11 season, of the 5 goals he scored, 4 were first time instinctive finishes. Tap in volley v WBA, flick past keeper v West Ham and headers v Stoke and Millwall. The only goal where he took a touch first was in the FA Cup v Bolton. Any one on ones he had, weren’t finished (Bolton away, Everton home, Villa home, Sunderland home off the top of my head). If he had to think about it, he went to pieces, a sure sign of a player lacking in confidence.

Stoke were sniffing around him in the January transfer window and whilst he was inundated with offers to drive him there, I really wanted him to stay. There was no one else in the team with his pace. We all saw in the Fulham game how much we missed him. A funny player, Jerome. The sort of player you only realise his worth when he’s not in the team.

One thing I’ve thought about is that maybe Jerome has suffered from not having a forward on the coaching staff since Eric Black left in November 2007. McLeish and Roy Aitken were centre backs, Andy Watson and Peter Grant were midfielders. Now we have Chris Hughton and Paul Trollope, a defender and midfielder respectively. Not sure how much difference it makes, just food for thought. Jerome’s had his fair share of striking partners too, with maybe only Chucho working well with him.

I’m fairly undecided as to whether I want him to stay or go. I would like to see him work with Chris Hughton, in a more attacking team, to see if Chris could get the best out of him. It’s a shame that he’s been injured for pre season to see how things would work. He’s only 25 in a couple of weeks, so maybe his best years are ahead of him. It would be painful to see him scoring lots of goals for another club.

But I also think that maybe it’s best for him to move on. I don’t think Jerome’s that happy at Blues, he certainly never shows it (anyone seen him smile?) But maybe that will change now McLeish has gone. I wouldn’t begrudge him a move to the Premier League. He’s obviously taken a hit in wages, but not made any noises about getting a move elsewhere, unlike other players that have left.

The most frustrating thing about Jerome is that he seems to have all the natural ingredients to be a top player. He’s got pace, power and height; it’s just his finishing and control that lets him down. Pretty important if you’re the man who’s supposed to get the goals. His supporters tell you how hard he works for the team, but surely that’s a prerequisite for any player pulling on a Blues shirt. Stephen Carr works hard, but you wouldn’t play him up front.

Finally, should Jerome leave before September 1st, I’d like to thank him for his efforts at Blues. I just think he’ll be remembered at Blues as potential unfulfilled.

Richard Mullen

You can follow me on Twitter @richrd31