Steven Fletcher - Marseille's New Goal Machine?

You know it's been a boring transfer deadline day when the biggest shock is the completely left-field loan signing of Steven Fletcher. No offence to the guy, but amongst the other names touted for a move he doesn't exactly set the pulses racing.

There are a few reasons it has surprised me:

1. Marseille play with one striker, and he's unlikely to displace Michy Batshuaiyi from the starting line up, or play alongside him very often
2. His biggest strength lies when the ball is in the air - so why have Sunderland, scrapping away at the bottom of the table let him go? You'd assume he could strike up a good partnership with Defoe, plucking the ball out of the air and feeding it in to the little man.
3. He's a striker not renowned for his goalscoring prowess - 6 of his 8 international goals for Scotland have been scored against Gibraltar.

Anyway, I raided Whoscored.com for some stats and compared him to a couple of other attacking players from the Home Nations (England, Wales & Republic of Ireland) - I intended to inlcude Northern Ireland, but their main striker plays only slightly more top flight football than I do, thus rendering any comparion completely pointless (as opposed to only slightly pointless for the rest).

Fletcher doesn't really fit in with Marseille's current style of play, so I think their thought process in signing him is to lump the ball into the box late on in matches where they're drawing or losing. It's a ploy that could well work.

The visual gives you an overview of a few keys stats from the past 6 seasons, and lets you choose which player to look at. There are sparklines beneath each stat, so you can view the trend in each area: