Strikers That Don't Pan Out : Obafemi Martins

Back at the beginning of the season I made some comments on strikers that don't pan out. I mainly looked at the German Miroslav Klose and wondered why teams weren't making a move for him. But I tossed in the header "Will Martins Work For Newcastle?". So far, he has(n't). Obafemi Martins cost Newcastle United £10m PLUS wages. And as poorly as they've played as a team so far this year, he has 7 goals from 14 league starts. So that's why I want to say he has. But the best team he's scored on so far has been Tottenham (currently 7th). He scored one against West Ham (18th), one against Reading (9th), and had a brace each against Blackburn (17th) and Watford (20th) for the other 4. He failed to score against Pompey, Arsenal, ManU, Chelsea (league and Carling Cup) and others. Some of this does reflect that Newcastle is having a poor run of form. You see the same problems for other big strikers for other teams. Bobby Zamora's only scored 5 for West Ham and at that back in August (then again, the Hammers got him in a player swap, not £10 million transfer fee). Then again even Benny McCarthy, who cost Blackburn £2.5m, has 6 including one against Liverpool. And Blackburn's Nonda just nabbed a brace at Arsenal. So at some point the question becomes is Martins (or any striker for that matter) not performing because of his team, or his team not getting results because Martins isn't performing? In this case, I think it's a bit of both.