Remarkably selfless, the reliably robust Emile Heskey put in the hard yards and did the dirty work to enable Michael Owen to thrive alongside him in a successful Liverpool front two under Gerard Houllier.
Yes, ok: Lionel Messi wasn't a striker for most of the 00s but Pep Guardiola's decision to deploy him as a false nine from 2009 represented such a seismic shift for football as a whole that we have to include him.
Mario Gomez become progressively more prolific with Stuttgart at the end of the 00s: the German international bagged 16 goals in 2006/07 helping his side to the Bundesliga title 28 in 2007/08, then banged in 35 in 2008/09. That form earned Gomez who earned the first of his 71 caps, and notched the first of his 31 goals, for Germany in 2007 a summer 2009 move to Bayern Munich, where he carried on scoring for fun.
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