Here is another article by Nicole.

Imagine this. There is a player you‘ve been offered. He’s 23, he’s played in the Premier League this season and has a rough goal scoring ratio of one in three when he starts. He has bags of pace, and is the 5th best English goal scorer in the league. Even better, he’s only going to cost you 3 to 3.5 million pounds. You’d snap their hand off wouldn’t you?

No need to Blues fans, you already have him. He’s called Cameron Jerome.

Yes, that is Cameron Jerome. The player that sits almost uncomfortably above Anelka in the Premier League top strikers list. The same player that scored the potential goal of the season in the 2-2 draw against Liverpool.

Despite all the positives, Jerome’s name is the one that pops up on all the message boards, often accompanied with fierce debate between those who think he’s great, and those who just don’t get him. What is it about Cameron Jerome that splits opinion so much?

Jerome joined the Blues back in 2006 off the back of a Championship season which saw him score 20 goals for the Bluebirds. An impressive strike record for the young striker, and other teams were sniffing around, such as the likes of the Albion and Norwich. A Steve Bruce signing who was part of the Championship promotion team, contributing to the cause with nine goals. His first taste of the Premier League came during the 07/08 campaign, when as a promoted striker, he added seven goals to the cause, although the side ultimately got relegated. 10 goals in the Championship later, and the Blues found themselves back in the Premier League, and so far this campaign he has scored 10 goals. Compare this to previous Blues strikers, such as Clinton Morrison, who at the cost of £4.25 million and Andy Johnson, only managed 13 Premier goals for the Blues.

What does this say about Jerome? One of the statistics that must stand out is Jerome’s consistency. Although he isn’t a 30 goal a season striker, he is regularly producing the goods no matter what level he is playing in. Being 6 ft 1 with lightening quick pace, he is always going to be a handful for defenders, no matter their standard of football.

Scoring ten goals is no easy feat though, and when Jerome is on his game, he can produce some moments of brilliance. He can play some nice stuff with Benitez when they are given the chance to play together, and really puts the frighteners on defenders when he’s in the right mindset.

Let’s go back to the comparisons. Look at media darling Carlton Cole, who has been tipped by some as an outsider to travel with England this summer. The striker has played for West Ham in the top division since 2006, but has scored just 25 times in the Premier League for them, compared to Cameron’s 17 in two Premier League seasons. This isn’t to say that Jerome is a technically better player than Cole, but if you were going to base a strikers ability on goals scored, Jerome would have to be rated on a par similar to Cole.

The moments when he seems disinterested, or when he’s failing to get those final balls, are when the crowd do lose patience with him, and when you’ll hear the familiar cries of “gew up there you lazy lump, run for it Jerome! You could of got that!”

It’s almost as if all the fans recognise how good the player actually is, but he doesn’t show it all the time and the shouts are nothing more than pure frustration. Jerome has never been prolific, but if he was a bit more aware of what his team mates wanted him to do when they slip a ball into the area, or loop a ball over to him, he really could become a force to be reckoned with.

Part of the problem with Jerome maybe is the fact that we can’t play him in the right way because we haven’t found the perfect foil in strike partner. He has got some sort of partnership going with Chucho, but with it looking unlikely that  the player will be with us next season, we need to find a long term option for Jerome to play with. He cannot be used as a target man because his first touch and control isn’t good enough for this role. He plays best when he is fed chances by players like Benitez in the game at Portsmouth, or Michel at Sunderland. He isn’t going to create these chances on his own, and if he is a part of McLeish’s long term plans, McLeish needs to look for a player to complement Jerome and unlock the potential for a greater goal scoring return, as well as developing him as a player.

Really though, we can’t complain. We’ve got a player who gives us the goods, in terms of steady goal return, season after season. The talks of £40 million transfer pots have swayed us as fans a little, quite naturally, and we’re now talking of 20 – 30 goal a season strikers who are going to push us to the upper echelons of the Premier League. To get someone like that, we’d be looking at spending a good chunk, if not all, of our transfer budget on a player, who in all fairness, will probably act like a prima-donna and not put half the effort in that Jerome does.

Yes he is horribly frustrating at times and sometimes we wonder what the hell he is doing. It’s when we remind ourselves that we paid a pittance for him, he’s 23 and a regular goal scorer when we can smile to ourselves on the quiet and think we’ve done well here.

Get behind him – I don’t think we’ve seen the best yet.