Los Angeles Football Club has been very fortunate to have two great strikers to choose from with the 29 year old Norwegian, Adama Diomande, and the 27 year old recent USMNT call-up, Christian Ramirez. After the conclusion of the 2017-18 season, I was excited to see what Dio would be able to do with an entire season of starts. But much to my surprise, Bob Bradley has gone with Ramirez to start each of the first 3 games. Ramirez and Dio have played nearly the same amount of minutes with Dio subbing in for Ramirez each game pretty quickly after halftime.
For the fourth match of the season, Bradley had to start out with Dio with Ramirez on International team duty, which begs the question; Should Adama Diomande or Christian Ramirez be our main striker?
It shouldn’t be hard to understand why I was expecting Dio to be the starter from Match one on. All you need to do is look at the previous stats. I understand that Dio has a small MLS sample to pull from, but his numbers are simply better than Ramirez. After coming to LAFC from the English club, Hull City, Dio has been nothing short of impressive. On average, Dio scores a goal nearly every 94 minutes. That’s essentially a goal per game if he were to play from the start through the end of stoppage time. In comparison, Ramirez averages a goal every 127 minutes with LAFC and every 178 minutes in his MLS career.
I spoke with a few LAFC fans throughout the first three games and my sentiment seems to be echoed throughout the stadium. While Ramirez is a top class one-touch striker, as shown in all three off his LAFC goals dating back to last year, Dio is a much more complete player and should be the guy that we roll with moving forward.
Let us know what you think:
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