I do like the school of thought seeing the difference between not getting service and not doing anything about it yourself as a striker. There are strikers out there who will constantly be on the move to receive the ball to feet, chest or head. They're happy to take the hits from the big centre halves but never stop finding that clear line between themselves and the man who has the ball. They work on the basis that every pass can be to them as the outlet. It's especially prevalent in this modern PL where physicality is everything. It's sort of why Harry went from being my favourite ever striker to one that I was happy to call out on match days in many key moments. Don't blame him for leaving the PL. As a 27 year old he stopped really doing that early career stuff. The injuries perhaps took their toll and H was scared to take the hits that these big centre halves give you. He started deliberately jumping early and slightly ahead of what is optimal position. He was often on the way back down and a yard in front of the defender as they headed it away easy. He also wasn't on the move any more where he could relieve the pressure on his team mates. That wasn't the Harry I fell in love with from his early career. He had everything apart from perhaps express pace and especially the ability to give as good as he got from the centre halves. Even with the pace thing he hired a sprint coach to optimise what he had. I always respected him for that.
With Richi, he hasn't got an ounce of that first touch ability H had with any part of his body unfortunately. Prime Dom is much closer at playing with his back to goal and feeding others in. However, it's Hobson's choice at this point. Either the team setup has to compromise to Richi in the way we did with H. Alternatively, we have to get Richi to play to the team setup and accept the compromise. The latter is the answer as you would never build a setup around a player like Richi. He's just not at that level. So Richi will accommodate RDZ's tactics as much as he can and it will continue to look clumsy. The good news is that nobody is surprised when Richi, Tel or Muani score. I now believe one of them will score every single game. Kudus to RDZ for that.
It will be interesting how much more physical Lanks has got on his return to the club. He does sort of have that thick set build that we had with Harry. You never know.