Rickie Lambert will be looking to end his goal drought when Saints take on Brighton.

There is no doubt that Rickie Lambert has been playing well lately, going forward he is the man Saints look to hit to create not only opportunities for others but goals for himself and in recent weeks although he has been involved in setting up the chances for others, he hasnt managed to score himself.

It might come as a shock to some but he has failed to hit the net in his last five league outings, a run that goes back well over a month and his equaliser up at Pride Park and he will want to get back to goal scoring form.

In those five games Saints have scored 11 goals so that makes it all the more surprising that our much loved number seven hasnt been amongst the goal scorers.

If he fails to score again on Saturday then he will equal his worst ever goaless run for Saints in the league, that occured last season when after hitting the net against Bristol Rovers in Alan Pardew's last match in charge, he didnt score again till he hit a brace in the home game against Bournemouth.

But the big difference between then and now is that back then Saints were in disarray, they were a club in turmoil and chances were few and far between for anyone in the team not just Rickie, that six game run saw us score only two goals in total, now as mentioned its a lot different, the team is scoring and Rickie is playing his fair part in providing the goals, the opposition in marking him down as the danger man and marking him tightly have to leave gaps elsewhere and we have a number of players capable of exploiting them to the full.

But goalscorers are only truly happy when they are scoring goals, and whilst SRL will be contented in seeing others score and the team win, he will want to get his name back on the scoresheet with more regularity than it has been of late.

Whether he is aware that he might equal his worst barren spell for the club is unknown, but either way he will want to see the net bulge from one of his efforts again and that can only be good for Saints.

But whats also good is that these stats show that Saints are far from a one man team, we have players all over the pitch that can score goals and that has to be a worry for our opponents.      

Photo: Action Images

st_mike added 13:16 - Nov 16 Although Rickie's not been scoring, his contribution and assists has been immense. Rickie would be sorely missed if injured. I think I'm right in saying that's he only missed a couple of games through injury, which is amazing considering the battering he takes.
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tolfree added 13:38 - Nov 16 Good article. I agree he's contribution is still crucial but it's interesting to note the 'drought' (which is incredible given that he's still the league's top goalscorer!). How did you manage to find the stats on when he last had a run of 6 games without scoring??
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SonicBoom added 13:49 - Nov 16 He seems to pull out wide in the build up which allows players like Chaplow to burst into the box and finish.
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SaintNick added 13:56 - Nov 16 I found the stats just by looking at his games record on line, I didnt count cup games just league games, although in both runs he has also failed to score in a cup game
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ThereIn76 added 17:46 - Nov 19 You were saying?
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