CALL me an old cynic, but I don't thick Patrick Kluivert is a very good player.

He is one-paced, has the turning circle of a medium-sized oil tanker and I've rarely seen him score a goal that didn't bobble in off somebody else's thigh, elbow or backside.

He was always the ugly duckling of that great Ajax side in the mid 90s, and it seemed almost criminal that he rather than, say a De Boer, an Overmars or an Edgar Davids scored the winner when they claimed the Champion's League trophy.

Look at poor Finidi George, a star of that side who ended up amongst the Tractor Boys of Ipswich while his former teammate is starring at the Nou Camp stadium.

By my reckoning, 20 years ago the equivalent of Kluivert would have been Gary Birtles, yet, as the 90s drew to a close, defenders were suddenly struggling to cope with big, powerful, aggressive centre forwards.

How else do you explain the remarkable Indian Summer enjoyed by Tony Cascarino? Derided as a donkey at Celtic and Chelsea, the Irishman was suddenly the hero of all Marseille after firing that team back into the top flight after they were relegated for corruption.

Basically, there are three types of strikers.

There's the target man (Lancaster City's prolific Any Whittaker would be a good local example) typically, 6ft plus with a bit of power, pace is a bonus, but not essential.

They can normally hold the ball up as well.

There's what I like to call the 'small' striker (Robbie Talbot of Morecambe would be a good example, Michael Yates, the new kid on the block at Lancaster City, is another).

These players are often very quick, normally hard working and, certainly in the case of young Talbot, have a knack of finding a bit of space in the box to get their shot in.

Finally, and coming to the fore in recent years, there are the 'creative' forwards (think Brian Welch at City, John Norman and Ian Arnold at Morecambe).

These are the guys who come deep, pick up the ball and try to do something special with it.

Normally similar in build to the small strikers (a case could be made for putting Arnold or Norman into either category) these seem to have shot to prominence sine the days of Peter Beardsley.

Perhaps the recent re-emergence of the big hitman is down to the fact that 'classy' defenders are too busy worrying about small, tricky players to notice the giant lumbering towards the far post.

There is, undoubtedly, a place for players of all shapes and sizes in the game, but, personally, at the highest level I would prefer to see silky skills making the difference, instead of 6ft 2in goliaths.