Roberts is now a Burnley player
So, with Lowe and Roberts departures we've just lost 19 goals and 7 assists. If Grimes leaves that's 22 goals and 10 assists. Add to these numbers Ayew's 17 goals and 4 assists, and we suddenly have a deficit of 39 goals and 14 assists.
Ok, let's be optimistic and say Piroe can score 20 goals this season. At his current form it's not impossible he scores between 20 and 25. Then we have Whittaker and Cullen who should score 10 goals each. Not impossible. But even if our strikers score 40 goals between them that's not enough. Having in mind that we concede a lot of goals, we'll need 20-30 goals more just to avoid relegation. And who is going to score these goals? Bidwell? No. Laird? No. Paterson? A couple of goals. Fulton? A couple of goals.
Apart from our three strikers, I can't see anyone in our squad who can score more than 3 goals per season, and that's a huge problem.
What can we do?
1. We can keep playing with wing-backs, but then we have to sign today two goal-scoring wingers who can play as wing-backs. Also, we have to sign today two goal-scoring attacking midfielders. Neither of this is going to happen.
2. We can change our formation and style of play to a more defensive one, and start playing counter-attacking football. If we can't score many goals when we dominate possession, then we can at least stop conceding goals. But Martin is not going to change his philosophy, so this is not going to happen either.
3. Improve our passing accuracy and our pressing so dramatically that there aren't any sloopy passes anymore and we recover the ball in no time. I am not sure Martin will be able to do that with this squad but it seems he has no other options.