Goals are a problem as I've long said. You can see that with England too as Hendo and Lallana and Clyne in their last match were putting balls in but goals weren't coming. Lallana seems to lack a bit of guile in his finishing and Hendo is scoring less because he's further back the pitch. Clyne's crossing is also not really the inviting type (unlike Smith, where crossing is basically the sole reason he gets first team action).
But I think the description of the team being 'vanilla' is just a bit of, I dunno, like self-racism or something. Because they look like the 'plodders' we so often see in our games or the A-League or whatever they seem boring, whereas someone with a more exotic background seems to have more magic to them. Lallana's footwork when receiving the ball is pretty darn fancy. Of course we'd all like him to take the next step to turn that into beating players, but it so far hasn't looked like happening. Isn't Firmino similar in that regard? Better with goals, but worse with passing? People like Allen now he has long hair and a beard because it's a bit different. They still think Milner is vanilla despite 15 assists or something... It just feels like we always want a 'young gun' or a continental 'gem' as Houllier might have called it. The unfamiliar is more appealing because we don't know them and we think they could therefore be awesome. But so many of those buys fail. We only remember the ones which were awesome. Masch was in the EPL already. Gerrard home-grown.
But, yep, getting some goalscorers would be flippin' awesome so all the pressure isn't on our #9 and #10.